Science & Technology Archives - Page 3 of 9

Readers Aren’t Flocking to Chatbot Novels Just Yet

Plus some thoughts on artistic possibilities of A.I. writing

May 24, 2023 • by Lincoln Michel

Let’s assume a future chatbot can live up to the predictions and, say, scan every Stephen King book and then produce a new Stephen King-ish novel. Who does that serve, exactly?...

Readers Aren’t Flocking to Chatbot Novels Just Yet

Politics

Science Under Stress, the New Issue of Social Research

The New School journal introduces its latest issue

April 20, 2023 • by Social Research

Social Research introduces its 2023 spring edition: "Science Under Stress."...

Science Under Stress, the New Issue of Social Research

The Internet

Why I Joined Twitter Blue

And why so many people are quietly doing it too

February 2, 2023 • by Claire Potter

Twitter Blue is essentially a different Twitter—and the other, nonsubscription one is not neglected or "broken"—it got broke....

Climate & Ecology

A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears

Stories of speaking with animals are as old as human history

November 3, 2022 • by Karen Bakker

Human ambivalence about animal language persists and is linked with our uncertainty about human status: Are we one animal among others, or does something truly set us apart? Debates over animal language are a touchstone for human uncertainties about our role in the cosmos....

Science & Technology

Ocellus XR: Visualizing Climate Risk, Vulnerability, and Equity in NYC

An open source mobile app democratizes access to local climate data

October 10, 2022 • by Daniel Sauter, Timon McPhearson and Christopher Kennedy

New technologies such as augmented reality and data visualization tools have emerged over the past decade offering new ways for audiences to not only view and understand big data, but to also interact with it. ...

Ocellus XR: Visualizing Climate Risk, Vulnerability, and Equity in NYC

Artificial Intelligence

Does It Matter If Artificially Intelligent Machines Think Like Humans?

What a Victorian author can teach us about the conflict at Google over sentient AI

August 19, 2022 • by Anna Neill

Machine cognition, like that of human and nonhuman animals, may or may not become conscious cognition. That remains to be seen. But what matters is how we already harness it and who profits....

Does It Matter If Artificially Intelligent Machines Think Like Humans?

Technology

Truth, Damned Truth, and Statistics: A Quiet Mathematical Revolution Reshaping our Algorithmically-Mediated World

An interview with Justin Joque

July 20, 2022 • by Lydia Nobbs and Justin Joque

There’s a shift in statistical approaches from one driven by what we traditionally think of as knowledge—knowing ‘the truth’—to a more economic approach. That shows what's always been the case but admits it in a more clear-eyed way: knowledge production is always tied to political economy. In fact, the ways ...

Truth, Damned Truth, and Statistics: A Quiet Mathematical Revolution Reshaping our Algorithmically-Mediated World

Artificial Intelligence

AI Spy With My Little Eye: Facial Recognition

Cautioning the increased use of AI in law enforcement

March 23, 2022 • by Patrick K. Lin

The diversity of faces used to train an algorithm can influence the kinds of photos and faces that an algorithm is most adept at examining. If the set of face images is skewed towards a certain race, the algorithm may be better at identifying members of that group as compared ...

AI Spy With My Little Eye: Facial Recognition

Technology

The Chip Wars Heat Up

Chips with a side of CHIPS

February 7, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

"...there’s something much bigger at work here: The Chip Wars, as I’ve dubbed them, are heating up, and revealing some of the tensions between national needs and extraction from local communities."...

Science & Technology

To Fight Covid Variants, Let’s Rethink the Sherman Anti-Trust Act!

We have another new threat, but two pills that might fight it. We know “cocktails” work but our laws prevent drug companies from cooperating to make them.

November 30, 2021 • by Donald G. McNeil Jr.

We are now threatened by Omicron, a new Covid variant with a name like a villain from a Transformers movie. Although on paper its genes look scary, we still know very little about its real-life behavior. So, while travel precautions make sense until we know more (and perhaps we could finally get serious about ...

To Fight Covid Variants, Let’s Rethink the Sherman Anti-Trust Act!

Technology

Water Is Life, and Also a Trade Secret

Google won’t tell you how much water it uses and an Oregon city has its back

November 5, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

Google may have been cowed into turning down subsidies for new office buildings in a few major cities, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t up to its usual shenanigans outside of those metro areas. Out in Oregon, in fact, Google is embroiled in a controversy in which it’s gotten a town to ...

Technology

Don’t Kill Facebook: Reform It

November 1, 2021 • by Claire Potter

In 2018, as we were all still digesting how disinformation campaigns upended the 2016 election, technologist and internet critic Jaron Lanier published a manifesto. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (Henry Holt) introduced readers to the methods by which platforms like Facebook and Twitter not only capture and ...