Author: The Conversation

We often imagine that human consciousness is as simple as input and output of electrical signals within a network of processing units – therefore comparable to a computer. Reality, however, is much more complicated. For starters, we don’t actually know how much information the human brain can hold. Two years ago, a team at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, US, mapped the 3D structure of all the neurons (brain cells) comprised in one cubic millimetre of the brain of a mouse – a milestone considered extraordinary. Within this minuscule cube of brain tissue, the size of a grain…

Recently developed artificial intelligence (AI) models are capable of many impressive feats, including recognising images and producing human-like language. But just because AI can perform human-like behaviours doesn’t mean it can think or understand like humans. As a researcher studying how humans understand and reason about the world, I think it’s important to emphasise the way AI systems “think” and learn is fundamentally different to how humans do – and we have a long way to go before AI can truly think like us. Read more: Robots are creating images and telling jokes. 5 things to know about foundation models and…

Apple has joined the thriving “buy now, pay later” industry, with a customised service called Apple Pay Later. The service was announced earlier this week at the 2022 Worldwide Developers Conference, and will initially be launched in the United States later this year. Pay Later will be built into the Apple Wallet and eligible for use on any purchase made through Apple Pay. Customers will be able to split the cost of a purchase into four equal payments, with zero interest and fees, spread over a period of four months. To qualify, however, Apple will first do a soft credit check on users wanting to…

A new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) models can produce “creative” images on-demand based on a text prompt. The likes of Imagen, MidJourney, and DALL-E 2 are beginning to change the way creative content is made with implications for copyright and intellectual property. While the output of these models is often striking, it’s hard to know exactly how they produce their results. Last week, researchers in the US made the intriguing claim that the DALL-E 2 model might have invented its own secret language to talk about objects. DALLE-2 has a secret language. “Apoploe vesrreaitais” means birds. “Contarra ccetnxniams luryca tanniounons” means bugs or pests. The…

When a state of disaster was declared in South Africa in 2020 in response to the COVID pandemic, a hard lockdown was instituted and schools were shut. This was followed by varying periods of lockdowns, school closure and rotational timetables to maintain social distancing across different grades. Administrative data show that children in South Africa missed at least three-quarters of a year of school in the past two school years. This reduced their opportunities to learn and allowed more time to forget what they had learnt. To measure the effect of time out of school on learning, we analysed the test performance of almost a quarter of a…

The discovery of a neutron star emitting unusual radio signals is rewriting our understanding of these unique star systems. My colleagues and I (the MeerTRAP team) made the discovery when observing the Vela-X 1 region of the Milky Way about 1,300 light years away from Earth, using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. We spotted a strange-looking flash or “pulse” that lasted about 300 milliseconds. The flash had some characteristics of a radio-emitting neutron star. But this wasn’t like anything we’d seen before. Intrigued, we scoured through older data from the region in hopes of finding similar pulses. Interestingly, we did…

While the potential benefits or drawbacks of children playing video games receives a lot of attention, little notice is taken of the place of children within video games themselves. However, the representation of children in media can tell us a lot about how they are viewed by society, and the rules, beliefs, and social systems that shape contemporary children’s place in the world. My recent research looked at how children were represented in over 500 commercially successful and critically acclaimed video games, published between 2009 and 2019. These included games aimed both at adults and at children. I found that there were…

Luxury fashion house Prada has a scheme for customers who want something even more exclusive than its usual range of clothing and accessories. Each month, on a first-come first-served basis, the Time Capsule Collection offers ultra-limited editions of Prada products. They’re only on sale for 24 hours, with purchases delivered straight to customers’ doors. For the new June edition, there’s an extra twist. Those who buy one of only 100 black and white button-down shirts by Cassius Hirst, son of renowned British artist Damien, will receive an NFT (non-fungible token) as part of the experience. They are GIFs of the black…

New rules on mobile app stores could trigger a wave of creative, cheaper apps with more privacy options for users. Every budding developer dreams of creating an app that goes viral and makes lots of money overnight. The Angry Birds game became a worldwide phenomenon within weeks when it launched in 2009 and made US$10 million (£8 million) in its first year. But, overall, the numbers make it clear that mobile apps don’t guarantee wealth. A 2021 study showed just 0.5% of consumer apps succeed commercially . Developers have to jostle for attention among the almost 3 million apps and games on Google…

Hate propagated on social media and other online spaces has grown exponentially in the past couple of years, driven to a significant degree by the COVID-19 pandemic. The occupation of Ottawa earlier this year by the so-called “freedom convoy” also exposed an increasingly worrisome relationship between online and offline environments. Making things worse It is difficult to argue against the motivations for the proposed anti-hate bill. At the same time, the discourse around the proposed bill is rapidly becoming fraught. There are serious concerns about the scope and unexamined assumptions of the bill which will result in legislation that is overly broad…