Did sexual selection make male mosquitofish really smart?
Sexual selection — and natural selection — only show why smartness might be an advantage. They don’t explain how the trick is done.
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Ottawa ceases funding the search for phantom graves
Misinforming children is a very small part of the damage that private truth, which is incompatible with an open and science-based society, does.
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Turning the writings of deceased loved ones into chatbots
An industry is springing up to help survivors create an imaginary being that resembles the deceased — except for when they want to change it.
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Gene therapy treats preborn girl for motor neuron disease
Richard Finkel, first author of a study of the case, hopes that this early-start approach can be applied to other cases and other diseases as well.
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Can AI replace psychiatrists? Some programmers are trying…
Given how health insurers will love the crashed costs, the next big mental health fight may be for the right to get in front of an actual human therapist.
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Mammoth bone structure of 24,000 years ago illuminates Stone Age
One of about 70 such structures, it is, in one science writer’s view, “one of the most surreal ancient structures ever built.”
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Programmers admit fundamental limits to chatbot thinking
Curiously, that’s not what the AI celebs are saying. They’re promising the moon. We can believe the celebs or the hands-on programmers.
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Misinformation scholar becomes a star example of the problem
Starting the day with a bit of natural irony: A misinformation expert was found to be inadvertently using fake citations in a court case.
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Which universities have the most science papers retracted?
Chatbots may make the problem harder to spot but one outcome of attempts to address the problem is a spike in new research integrity tools.
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Wired: Google ads target sensitive user info, despite rules
The more a data set can pinpoint specific users, the more profitable it will be to acquire and sell.
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Researchers reveal some closely guarded YouTube secrets
The median number of views for one of YouTube’s nearly 15 million videos is only 41 and only 0.21% are monetized. It’s mostly Amateur Hour.
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Are fake science papers becoming a danger, not just a nuisance?
AI automates frauds that would have taken much longer to perpetrate using traditional methods — but researchers are developing screening tools to combat fakery.
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Could chatbot goofs be developed into a party game?
Gemini informed her that she was married to a guy she’d never heard of who had died in the 1980s. But think of the entertainment potential…
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Did people really think Earth was flat centuries ago?
Lawyer Barry Arrington shows that fashionable supporters of Darwin were attempting to weaken the influence of Christianity by constructing such myths.
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Allstate demands that tech mag delete evidence of AI e-mails
Allstate needs to remember: If the shout hits the fan, don’t start threatening media. Nothing spreads the story faster or guarantees it more publicity than that
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U.S. educational test scores remain low, despite public funding
Ingraham thinks competition among education options will help improve schools. but parent oversight is still needed. Charter schools, for example, may fail.
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The BBC responds to USAID funding shutoff
In my view, an outreach of the sort the BBC Media Action CEO describes is best funded by disparate private philanthropists who have an interest in media.
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Film Academy ponders mandatory disclosure of AI use in films
Will de-aging venerable stars and giving them AI “foreign” accents spur model collapse in films by constantly recycling old stuff instead of finding fresh stuff?
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Funk and Smith at MarketWatch: AI is staring at another bubble…
AI companies have far less revenue than did dot-com companies before the burst; their revenue is 50 times smaller.
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Politico strikes back against US government funding charge
Despite the angry denials, government data shows that key media outfits found a huge new source of income when Joe Biden took power in January 2021. Why?
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