Journalist: As deepfakes improve, social trust begins to fray
Get ready for deepfakes of people we know that sound just like the originals — except that they are asking for money in an emergency.
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Researchers: Humans use far more baby talk than apes
Apes probably don’t need to simplify their language as much because there just isn’t nearly as much to get across.
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Those AI ghosts will not be quiet or harmless
Conversing with an AI version of a deceased loved one means embracing a harmful myth.
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At Nautilus: Slime molds show intelligence without a brain
At minimum, slime molds should warn us against false certainties that we have, for example, “found the secret” of animal intelligence or “know how it evolved.”
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Study: Neanderthals followed river systems, speeding up migration
At Gizmodo, Margherita Bassi reports on new insights into how Neanderthals crossed Asia speedily: Our prehistoric cousins likely first reached Asia around 190,000 to 130,000 years ago, with another substantial migration to Central and Eastern Eurasia likely between 120,000 and 60,000 years ago. But how did they get there? “Neanderthals Spread Across Asia With Surprising Speed—and Now We Know How,” Read More ›
Will there be any reckoning for COVID misinformation?
Journalist David Zweig looks at the bad information and bad decision-making that made the COVID panic especially painful for kids.
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Why electronics and AI don’t really save us time
The processes and devices developed to save time proliferate, creating new demands for our attention by their very existence.
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The rise of citizen journalism as a win for readers
Servicing hard core supporters can be a recipe for success but it will not give traditional media the market dominance it had in days gone by.
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Will you become a chatbot for grieving relatives? Maybe…
The biggest problem with an AI ghost is that it is a simulation, not the real person. It does not grow, shrink, or change.
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Did humans first start using fire to smoke, not cook, meat?
Bringing down an elephant meant food for families for months but that food needed to be protected both from predators and from spoiling.
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Is tech hype starting to get deflated?
Our fine writers, technology consultant Jeffrey Funk and Gary Smith have been covering this gap between hype and performance for years.
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Is Bluesky finding the limits of the sky?
The echo chamber of approved speech is turning off users, entrepreneur Mark Cuban charges
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Smartphones in North Korea — a surveillance paradise
An escapee reports, “The squads would confiscate her phone and read her text messages, she adds, to make sure she had not used any South Korean terms.”
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Famous Harvard ethics researcher fired for data fraud
Harvard’s motto is Veritas (Truth). That may require a hard limit on the creative rule-breaking celebrated in Gino’s bestselling book.
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Jobs that are safe from AI — and why they are
In many jobs, most people would really prefer to work with a sympathetic fellow human being.
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Will white collar work really be obsolete any time soon?
Some of us would look forward to a measured analysis of why hype triumphs so easily over observation in these matters.
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Hawk learns to monitor traffic signals to catch urban prey
Urban environments created by humans may bring out many unexpected adaptations in other life forms, taking advantage of the regularity that humans build in.
Read More ›AI is booming in every way except in productivity
Funk and Smith point out that the AI industry acts like it knows this, even if it doesn’t admit as much.
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OpenAI announces that it will remain a non-profit — sort of
Sam Altman, chatbot developer OpenAI’s CEO, is a billionaire ($1.5B) so non-profit status should not be assumed to be equivalent to voluntary poverty.
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AI developer wants to try to translate animal languages
Caution: If we assume that cats have a language that needs translation the way human languages do, we will likely find instead that his behavior IS his language
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