Author: The Conversation

More than 10,000 Starlink satellites currently orbit the Earth. We see them crawling across dark skies, no matter how remote our location, and streaking through images from research telescopes. SpaceX recently announced that it wants to launch one million more of these satellites as orbital data centres for AI computing power. A few years ago, we wrote a paper predicting what the night sky would look like with 65,000 satellites from four planned megaconstellations: SpaceX’s Starlink, Amazon’s Kuiper (now Leo), the U.K.’s OneWeb and China’s Guowang. We calibrated our models to observations of real Starlink satellites and came up with a startling prediction: One in 15 visible points in the night sky would…

During the First World War, the British government was looking for ways to help people stretch their limited food supplies. It found pamphlets from a noted 19th-century herbalist who said rhubarb leaves could be used as a vegetable along with the stalks. The government duly printed its own pamphlets advising people to eat rhubarb leaves as a salad rather than throwing them out. There was one problem: rhubarb leaves can be poisonous. People reportedly died or became ill. The advice was corrected, and the pamphlets were pulled from circulation. But during the Second World War, the government was again looking for…

Since tools like ChatGPT burst into higher education, debate has focused on two extremes: either students are all committing underhanded academic fraud and plagiarism or artificial intelligence (AI) will magically revolutionise learning. The latest research project I co-authored with Anna Holland, and carried out among recent Management graduates in the United Kingdom, suggests something more complicated and surprisingly more human. Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT are increasingly used in business and management education for tasks like analysing cases, brainstorming ideas, and drafting reports, improving efficiency and personalised learning but also raising concerns about academic integrity and assessment design. AI literacy and ethical use…

Science in the modern era is increasingly reliant on enormous datasets and automated analysis. In astronomy, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) – a ten-year survey covering the entire southern sky almost a thousand times over the next decade – will test the limits of this reliance. The Rubin Observatory, located on a mountaintop called Cerro Pachón in Chile, is expected to catalogue the night sky in exquisite detail. The observatory aims to answer a number of questions about the universe by studying different phenomena in the sky, including supernovae (exploding stars), asteroids, dark matter and…

K-12 teachers and students across the country are increasingly using AI in and out of classrooms, whether it is teachers turning to AI to refine lesson plans or students asking AI to help them research a particular topic. An estimated 85% of K-12 public school teachers recently reported that they used AI during the 2024-2025 school year – often for curriculum and content development. In 2023, 13% of teens said they used ChatGPT to complete their schoolwork, while 26% of them said in 2025 that they were using ChatGPT for this purpose. Similarly, 86% of K-12 students shared in 2025 that they have used AI in general.…

I remember the first time I attended a linguistics lecture as an undergraduate in Argentina. The lecturer asked a simple question: Where does language come from? My instinctive answer was: books. After four decades of researching language and linguistics, that response now seems almost absurd. But it reflects a common bias among those of us raised in text-based cultures. We tend to view written language as the ultimate form of expression, knowledge transmission, and even thinking itself. Yet linguists know that speech comes first – historically, developmentally and cognitively. Writing is a relatively recent technological invention layered on top of something much…

It’s a familiar feeling: You start a text message, and your phone’s auto-complete function suggests several choices for the next word, ranging from banal to hilarious. “I love…” you, or coffee? Or you’re finishing an email, and merely typing the word “Let” prompts your app to suggest “Let me know if you have any questions” in light grey text. Predictive language technologies have become so routine – baked into smartphones, email services and chatbots – that we barely notice them anymore. But they raise a difficult question: What happens to a writer’s unique voice when AI routinely completes their thoughts – or…

I was early to the generative AI wave in higher education: I was among the first professors who teach writing to publish in an academic journal about generative AI and critical thinking, and I am now part of an interdisciplinary team at Babson College thinking about how AI is impacting education, industry and society. But that does not mean I am all in on AI – nor am I anti-AI. I am pro-learning. As my co-authors and I argue in a forthcoming book on realising the promise of higher education, even the most powerful tools are only as good as the learning environments we…

In the past few months, a wave of tech corporations has announced significant staff cuts and attributed them to efficiency gains driven by artificial intelligence (AI). Companies such as Atlassian, Block and Amazon have announced they would lay off thousands of employees due to increased reliance on AI. The narrative these companies offer is consistent: AI is making human labour replaceable, and responsible management demands adjustment. The evidence, however, tells a more nuanced story. FYI: Atlassian to shed ten percent of staff, because AI [image or embed] — The Register (@theregister.com) 14 March 2026 at 09:42 The automation story is partly true Genuine disruption is…

This past Christmas, I helped my parents choose a water filter. The latest “smart” models all came with a smartphone app that promised to monitor filter life, track water quality and automatically request service. Yet my father, age 75, and mother, 67, were quick to reject them in favour of a nondigital model. “Every time it updates or I forget how to use it, we’ll have to call you,” my dad said. As an only child living 8,000 miles (12,875 kilometres) away, I didn’t need convincing. My parents are ageing in place and don’t need traditional caregiving – they cook,…