Author: The Conversation

Google announced the launch of AI Overviews, its generative artificial intelligence-fuelled search feature, in May 2024. Initially named Search Generative Experience, AI Overviews offers Google users AI-generated answers by sourcing and summarizing information from different websites. These AI responses are positioned at the top of the page for immediate visibility. The aim is to improve user experience by providing an alternative and more straightforward way to access information while enhancing the relevance of search results. This feature has slowly been offered to the public, having initially been made available exclusively in the United States. AI Overviews is available worldwide and…

Roblox is one of the world’s most popular online platforms for children, offering a variety of “experiences” including games and virtual spaces. Most of the experiences are free, but offer upgrades, bonuses and random items in exchange for cash. What do kids make of it? In new research, we interviewed 22 children aged seven to 14 (and their parents) from November 2023 to July 2024. Some 18 of the 22 played Roblox. In the interviews, we gave children an A$20 debit card to spend however they liked, to help us understand children’s decision-making around spending. While four children purchased non-digital items…

When someone sees something that isn’t there, people often refer to the experience as a hallucination. Hallucinations occur when your sensory perception does not correspond to external stimuli. Technologies that rely on artificial intelligence (AI) can have hallucinations, too. When an algorithmic system generates information that seems plausible but is actually inaccurate or misleading, computer scientists call it an AI hallucination. Researchers have found these behaviours in different types of AI systems, from chatbots such as ChatGPT to image generators such as Dall-E to autonomous vehicles. We are information science researchers who have studied hallucinations in AI speech recognition systems. Wherever AI systems are used in daily life,…

Ice cores in freezers, dinosaurs on display, fish in jars, birds in boxes, human remains and ancient artifacts from long gone civilizations that few people ever see – museum collections are filled with all this and more. These collections are treasure troves that recount the planet’s natural and human history, and they help scientists in a variety of different fields such as geology, paleontology, anthropology and more. What you see on a trip to a museum is only a sliver of the wonders held in their collection. Museums generally want to make the contents of their collections available for teachers and researchers,…

Throughout history, when pioneers set out across uncharted territory to settle in distant lands, they carried with them only the essentials: tools, seeds and clothing. Anything else would have to come from their new environment. So they built shelter from local timber, rocks and sod; foraged for food and cultivated the soil beneath their feet; and fabricated tools from whatever they could scrounge up. It was difficult, but ultimately the successful ones made everything they needed to survive. Something similar will take place when humanity leaves Earth for destinations such as the Moon and Mars – although astronauts will face…

In February this year, Google announced it was launching “a new AI system for scientists”. It said this system was a collaborative tool designed to help scientists “in creating novel hypotheses and research plans”. It’s too early to tell just how useful this particular tool will be to scientists. But what is clear is that artificial intelligence (AI) more generally is already transforming science. Last year for example, computer scientists won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing an AI model to predict the shape of every protein known to mankind. Chair of the Nobel Committee, Heiner Linke, described the AI system as the…

US astronauts Suni Williams and Barry Wilmore have been stranded in low earth orbit onboard the International Space Station for nine months. They are now finally due to return to Earth. Their planned return from their one-week mission was abandoned due to concerns with the return vehicle, the Boeing Starliner-1, and this resulted in them being in space for 290 days. Wilmore and Williams do not hold the record for the longest stay in orbit, which belongs to cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 continuous days on the Soviet Mir space station. Nine other US astronauts have spent more than 200…

Over a billion people use Google Maps to help them navigate their world every month. If you own a smartphone, the odds are better than average you’re one of those people. If you’re using Google Maps in the United States, you may have noticed some recent changes to your world. The “Gulf of Mexico” is now the “Gulf of America,” and “Mount Denali” is again “Mount McKinley.” These are both changes instigated by U.S. President Donald Trump. Google is reportedly systematically removing resistance to these changes. When compared to how common it is for the Google search engine to boost misinformation and fake news, and feed into confirmation bias, changing…

Social media is a complex environment that presents both opportunities and threats for adolescents, with self-expression and emotional support on the one hand and body-shaming, cyberbullying and addictive behaviours on the other. This complexity underscores the challenge to regulating teen social media use, but it also points to another avenue for protecting young people online: how social media platforms are designed. The growing debate around teen social media use has intensified, with recent bipartisan policy efforts in the U.S., such as the Kids Online Safety Act, seeking to protect young people from digital harms. These efforts reflect legitimate concerns. However, broad…

You’ve probably noticed lately that a lot of people are trying out alternatives to the big social media networks X, Instagram and Facebook. For example, after Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and started allowing far more disinformation and hateful content on the site, renamed X, advertisers and users started backing away. More recently, Meta’s decision to roll back hate speech rules has prompted many people to consider leaving Instagram and Facebook. Some of the most popular new destinations include “federated” services like Mastodon and Pixelfed, as well as the quasi-federated Bluesky. Federated means decentralized – rather than one central service, like X, federated systems have tens of thousands of servers. They also…