Technology

Friends of the Earth and other litigation groups opposed to science are cheering the closure of AquaBounty's AquAdvantage salmon - the poster-child (decades of regulatory roadblocks) for how the US regulatory system is manipulated by lawyers to hold back technology and medicine - but progress marches on despite the public relations campaign by Greenpeace, NRDC, and others who stand against it. Their persistent efforts to get pesticides either banned or regulated so tightly they act as bans have been wildly successful during the Biden years, but with Chevron Deference overturned at the Supreme…

Artificial Intelligence is artificial, but it is not intelligence. That could change some day but it isn't happening soon, Large Language Models are fine for a few things but limited in most. That is why Ben Affleck can talk in a hurry and assure fellow film creatives that their jobs are safe. LLMs can't write a great script. Yet not all creatives are equal, some are instead like early 1980s bank tellers insisting their interactions with customers were what made them valuable and saying ATMS could never replace that. They didn't realize customers most often just want to get money and content…

General medicine, routine visits and such, have gradually gone from M.D.s to including Osteopaths and now Physicians Assistants with no decline in quality, and Large Language Models, colloquially called "Artificial Intelligence", like ChatGPT can assist at very low cost. A recent experiment found that Chat GPT Plus alone had a median diagnostic accuracy of more than 92%.  Since most medical personnel won't have expertise in how to prompt the tool, that could easily go higher if organizations purchase predefined prompts to implement in clinical workflow and documentation. The…

This came up on 2nd November 2024 (give or take a day), a broadcaster objecting to a carbon capture scheme being pushed by the UK Energy Secretary, who along with a considerable number of our politicians is aiming to achieve Net Zero carbon emissions as soon as possible, if not before.  This has left many in this country fearing the spectre of freezing in their own homes.While there is a lot of politics involved, I wonder if what she is saying about carbon capture is true, and is the proposal a lot of соbblers? Readers, please give your views on this matter.

Robots have a 200-year-old problem: motors. Even walking robots feature arms and legs that are powered by motors and that is a barrier to helping the living but a new muscle-powered robotic leg can jump and move and fast while detecting and reacting to obstacles.  As in humans and animals, an extensor and a flexor muscle ensure that the robotic leg can move in both directions. These electro-hydraulic actuators are attached to the skeleton by tendons. The actuators are oil-filled plastic bags, similar to those used to make ice cubes. About half of each bag is coated on either side with a…

Misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories have always been with us. The belief that Republican Vice-President Dan Quayle couldn't spell 'potato' or that Democratic President Barack Obama was not a citizen are common modern ones that still get repeated as facts. In the old days, when reporters were common in newsrooms, they were less likely to begin, whereas in modern times when editors instead hire journalists to appeal to advertisers selling products to clear demographics, they are easier to launch. What really gets bizarre claims like that PFAS in water is killing people going…

Large Language Models, colloquially called Artificial Intelligence by companies selling rebranded autocomplete tools to other companies and the public, can automate a lot of entry-level projects but when it comes to anything more complex the flaws are quickly seen. When Black people using social media exhibit possible depression in their prose, a paper claims LLM/AI tools don't detect it as easily as they do other skin colors. Before we go on a social justice rampage, let's keep in mind that is in PNAS, the magazine that claimed an herbicide magically turns frogs 'gay' and that female-named…

Over the last two years, generative AI has smashed our ideas of what intelligence means, what AI can and cannot do, and of our place in the cosmos. A two-thousand year old journey from Aristotle to today, has culminated in a moment where human exceptionalism has finally been challenged. The barriers to human-like thought that people have seen as standing between AI and thinking, keep falling away, and with it, there emerge new attempts to redefine AI.  In a remarkable essay in 2017, “How Aristotle Created the Computer”, Chris Dixon argued that, The history of computers is often told…

There is a lot of concern about the ability of ChatGPT to replace lower-skilled workers but it will probably make them better. In the 19th century a phrase went, "God man but Sam Colt made them equal" and ChatGPT could give those without inherent gifts that same leg up soon. The days when you could seem smart by having a good memory and confident delivery style may be over, which means greater equity for all. An experiment involving 453 college-educated people showed generative AI systems like ChatGPT or DALL-E can go way beyond historical automation technologies like the cotton gin or…

The brain and the digestive tract are in constant communication, relaying signals that help to control feeding, and the implication that this communication network may also influence our mental state - as if "hangry" is science any more than a child getting hyperactive if they eat a piece of candy is - means it has been linked to everything from autism to Parkinson's disease. Because there is very little science, it is mostly suggestion used to sell supplements and yogurt that makes you poop. A new technology hopes to introduce data to brain-gut mysticism.  Using fibers embedded with a…