Author: The Conversation

One-third of the Earth’s land surface is already degraded. The UN estimates that more than 2.6 billion people are harmed by land degradation, with countries losing up to US$10.6 trillion a year because of damage to “ecosystem services”, including the benefits people get from nature, such as water and food. Unhealthy soil is a major contributor to land degradation. This can lead to loss of biodiversity, harm plants and animals, cause sand and dust storms and affect crop yields. These consequences affect the regulation of the planet’s climate and water cycle, socioeconomic activities, food security and forced migration of people. Emerging smart technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI),…

To think about an artificial limb is to think about a person. It’s an object of touch and motion made to be used, one that attaches to the body and interacts with its user’s world. Historical artefacts of prosthetic limbs are far removed from this lived context. Their users are gone. They are damaged – deteriorated by time and exposure to the elements. They are motionless, kept on display or in museum storage. Yet, such artefacts are rare direct sources into the lives of historical amputees. We focus on the tools amputees used in 16th- and 17th-century Europe. There are few records…

Professional astronomers don’t make discoveries by looking through an eyepiece like you might with a backyard telescope. Instead, they collect digital images with massive cameras attached to large telescopes. Just as you might have an endless library of digital photos stored in your cellphone, many astronomers collect more photos than they would ever have the time to look at. Instead, astronomers like me look at some of the images, then build algorithms and later use computers to combine and analyse the rest. But how can we know that the algorithms we write will work, when we don’t even have time to…

Everything in space – from the Earth and Sun to black holes – accounts for just 15% of all matter in the universe. The rest of the cosmos seems to be made of an invisible material astronomers call dark matter. Astronomers know dark matter exists because its gravity affects other things, such as light. But understanding what dark matter is remains an active area of research. With the release of its first images this month, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has begun a 10-year mission to help unravel the mystery of dark matter. The observatory will continue the legacy of its namesake, a trailblazing…

Mattel may seem like an unchanging, old-school brand. Most of us are familiar with it – be it through Barbie, Fisher-Price, Thomas & Friends, Uno, Masters of the Universe, Matchbox, MEGA or Polly Pocket. But toys are changing. In a world where children grow up with algorithm-curated content and voice assistants, toy manufacturers are looking to AI for new opportunities. Mattel has now partnered with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, to bring generative AI into some of its products. As OpenAI’s services are not designed for children under 13, in principle, Mattel will focus on products for families and older children.…

While there’s been much negative discussion about AI, including on the possibility that it will take over the world, the public is also being bombarded with positive messages about the technology and what it can do. This “good AI” myth is a key tool used by tech companies to promote their products. Yet there’s evidence that consumers are wary of the presence of AI in some products. This means that positive promotion of AI may be putting unwanted pressure on people to accept the use of AI in their lives. AI is becoming so ubiquitous that people may be losing their ability to say no to using it.…

New partnerships are forming between tech companies and power operators — ones that could reshape decades of misconceptions about nuclear energy. Last year, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) put out a call for nuclear proposals, Google agreed to buy new nuclear reactors from Kairos Power, Amazon partnered with Energy Northwest and Dominion Energy to develop nuclear energy and Microsoft committed to a 20-year deal to restart Unit 1 of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. At the centre of these partnerships is artificial intelligence’s voracious appetite for electricity. One Google search uses about as much electricity as turning on a household light for 17 seconds. Asking a Generative AI model like…

Since ChatGPT appeared almost three years ago, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on learning has been widely debated. Are they handy tools for personalised education, or gateways to academic dishonesty? Most importantly, there has been concern that using AI will lead to a widespread “dumbing down”, or decline in the ability to think critically. If students use AI tools too early, the argument goes, they may not develop basic skills for critical thinking and problem-solving. Is that really the case? According to a recent study by scientists from MIT, it appears so. Using ChatGPT to help write essays, the researchers say, can…

The decision to start advertising on WhatsApp marks a major shift for a private messaging service that has long positioned itself as being different from other social media platforms. Back when Meta (then known simply as Facebook) bought it in 2014 for US$19 billion, WhatsApp had an unusual and simple business model. Users were required to pay a very small annual fee (US$1 (£0.69)) in return for a minimalist, ad-free experience. That fee was scrapped in 2016, and WhatsApp became fully free. But it always had the potential to eventually align with Meta’s wider operation of offering free services for users to connect to others –…

More than 80% of children aged ten to 12 in the UK own a smartphone, according to a recent report by media watchdog Ofcom. Many people think this is a bad thing: there has been much debate about whether children should be allowed to have smartphones. The discussions around the potential negative aspects of children’s smartphone use often focus on the possible mental health risks of social media, or how spending too much time glued to a screen rather than in nature or interacting with others might affect children. On the other hand, smartphones may help children stay connected and interact with supportive communities. But there’s another aspect…