Thinking Allowed

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Newspocalypse now

"We will learn that the less something looks like what we have now, the better chance it has of being the thing on the other side of death."
Source: niemanlab.org

The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again

The internet seems ripe for change, and millions of people seem poised to connect in new ways, as they reconsider their relationship to technology.
Source: rollingstone.com

We're getting closer to OpenAI's first device

Sam Altman and Jony Ive have tapped Apple executive Tang Tan to build their new AI device.
Source: businessinsider.com

Apple’s iPhone Design Chief Enlisted by Jony Ive, Sam Altman to Work on AI Devices

Legendary designer Jony Ive and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are enlisting an Apple Inc. veteran to work on a new artificial intelligence hardware project, aiming to create devices with the latest capabilities.
Source: bloomberg.com

Why Are Alaska's Rivers Turning Orange?

Streams in Alaska are turning orange with iron and sulfuric acid. Scientists are trying to figure out why
Source: scientificamerican.com


Source: downes.ca

Monkeys in Thailand took up stone tools when covid-19 stopped tourism

Long-tailed macaques on the island of Koh Ped appear to have learned a new way to forage when the pandemic put a stop to feeding by tourists
Source: newscientist.com

Discovery of a structural class of antibiotics with explainable deep learning.

One of the challenges with deep learning (neural networks) is that although they find patterns the reasoning disappears into an endless detail of numbers. In this paper the researchers built an 'explainable' AI to discover antibiotics instead of such a 'black box'. "The discovery of novel structural...
Source: nature.com

Citations show gender bias — and the reasons are surprising

Homophily is the tendency for people to stick with similar people. Could this partly explain some of the gender bias in citations? "Women still tend to build more on women’s work, and men still tend to build on men’s work more." "Gender bias in paper citations is less common among younger scientists,...
Source: nature.com

NFTs died a slow, painful death in 2023 as most are now worthless

A reminder that early adoption of technology is not without risk. "Non-fungible tokens promised to revolutionise the concept of ownership using the blockchain technology behind bitcoin, but the market seems to have all but collapsed."
Source: newscientist.com

Innovating Pedagogy 2023

blog post image Looking for something innovative to try in 2024? MedEd professionals would benefit by looking through these ideas first. Open University's, Institute of Educational Technology's latest innovating pedagogy report from August 2023. This is the 11th annual report on emerging technologies in education...
Source: open.ac.uk

Machines may be better at assisting, not replacing us.

Journalist Kawandeep Virdee sees if he can be replaced by AI by writing some predictions for 2024. "I gave ChatGPT the last 13 years of Nieman Lab predictions ... [and asked it what I'd write about in 2024]" [ChatGPT suggested] Navigating the infodemic: Strategies for media in the era of misinformation...
Source: niemanlab.org

The Biggest Discoveries in Computer Science in 2023

"Artificial intelligence learned how to generate text and art better than ever before, while computer scientists developed algorithms that solved long-standing problems." Links to further papers and discussion on topics including: Tackling "P versus NP" Emergent behaviours in large language models...
Source: quantamagazine.org

Opinion: OpenAI's drama marks a new and scary era in artificial intelligence

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, professors at MIT, lend their insight to the recent drama at OpenAI. "Sam Altman’s dismissal and rapid reinstatement as CEO of OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, confirms that the future of AI is firmly in the hands of people focused on speed and profits, at the expense...
Source: latimes.com

These six questions will dictate the future of generative AI

Generative AI took the world by storm in 2023. Its future—and ours—will be shaped by what we do next. TL;DR 1. Will we ever mitigate the bias problem? (Probably) 2. How will AI change the way we apply copyright? (A lot) 3. How will it change our jobs? (Maybe not as much as feared but things will...
Source: technologyreview.com

The rise of the AI class

"In an industry shedding publishers and jobs and routinely challenged to do more with less, we’re foolish not to at least try on the generative AI suit."
Source: niemanlab.org

Meta Trained Its New AI Image Generator on a Billion Of Your Facebook, Instagram Posts

Your cat photos, your friends’ selfies, and my desert landscapes are now a part of Imagine, whether we like it or not.
Source: extremetech.com

AI can tell which chateau Bordeaux wines come from with 100% accuracy

A machine-learning algorithm was able to tell which estate 80 Bordeaux red wines came from with 100 per cent accuracy by assessing their chemical signatures
Source: newscientist.com

Cornwall: Nearly £5m awarded to tackle health inequalities

The aim of the work is to enable "more research on issues that affect people in Cornwall".
Source: bbc.com

The first results from the world’s biggest basic income experiment

Money always helps, but for the very poor, one lump sum can last a long time.
Source: vox.com