Author: The Conversation

NFTs or non-fungible tokens first captured the public imagination when a digital collage by an artist named Beeple sold for US$69 million (£51 million) at Christie’s in March 2021. Since then, there has been an explosion in the use of these units for storing digital content, which are bought and sold using online ledgers known as blockchains. Since that initial connection with art, we are seeing NFTs being used in numerous other ways. Notably, many are being traded as collectables on exchanges like OpenSea and Rarible. Lately, for example, a series of 8,888 adorable “Pudgy Penguins” made a splash, each reflecting its own unique characteristic,…

Galaxies – massive collections of gas, dust, and billions of stars and their solar systems – are a fundamental component of our Universe. Understanding how they have formed and evolved over cosmic eras remains one of the greatest challenges of modern astronomy. There are a few reasons for this. First, the number of galaxies: astronomers have estimated that there are roughly 200 billion galaxies in our Universe. Second, the sheer size and age of these galaxies. Their ages range from 100 million to 10 billion light years and the size ranges from roughly 3,000 to 300,000 light years. One light year is…

If you think your manager treats you unfairly, the thought might have crossed your mind that replacing said boss with an unbiased machine that rewards performance based on objective data is a path to workplace happiness. But as appealing as that may sound, you’d be wrong. Our review of 45 studies on machines as managers shows we hate being slaves to algorithms (perhaps even more than we hate being slaves to annoying people). Algorithmic management — in which decisions about assigning tasks to workers are automated — is most often associated with the gig economy. Platforms such as Uber were built on…

It’s a well-worn stereotype: the image of an elderly person fiddling with technology that leaves them completely bamboozled. The media often depict older people struggling to use or manage digital technology. While this is often designed to be humorous, it can undermine them as users of technology. And that’s a problem if it turns older people off from trying to engage with digital devices, as it can affect their wellbeing. Older adults are already at a digital disadvantage: 18% of over-65s do not have internet access. Propelled by enforced isolation, older people increasingly turned to technology during the pandemic, but not all were able…

Over the past year, we’ve seen how dramatically misinformation can impact the lives of people, communities and entire countries. In a bid to better understand how misinformation spreads online, Twitter has started an experimental trial in Australia, the United States and South Korea, allowing users to flag content they deem misleading. Users in these countries can now flag tweets as misinformation through the same process by which other harmful content is reported. When reporting a post there is an option to choose “it’s misleading” — which can then be further categorised as related to “politics”, “health” or “something else”. According…

Artificial systems such as homecare robots or driver-assistance technology are becoming more common, and it’s timely to investigate whether people or algorithms are better at reading emotions, particularly given the added challenge brought on by face coverings. In our recent study, we compared how face masks or sunglasses affect our ability to determine different emotions compared with the accuracy of artificial systems. The study used full and partial masks and sunglasses to obscure parts of the face. Author provided We presented images of emotional facial expressions and added two different types of masks — the full mask used by frontline workers and…

We rely on experts all the time. If you need financial advice, you ask an expert. If you are sick, you visit a doctor, and as a juror you may listen to an expert witness. In the future, however, artificial intelligence (AI) might replace many of these people. In forensic science, the expert witness plays a vital role. Lawyers seek them out for their analysis and opinion on specialist evidence. But experts are human, with all their failings, and the role of expert witnesses has frequently been linked to miscarriages of justice. We’ve been investigating the potential for AI to study evidence…

It’s now well known that usernames and passwords aren’t enough to securely access online services. A recent study highlighted more than 80% of all hacking-related breaches happen due to compromised and weak credentials, with three billion username/password combinations stolen in 2016 alone. As such, the implementation of two-factor authentication (2FA) has become a necessity. Generally, 2FA aims to provide an additional layer of security to the relatively vulnerable username/password system. It works too. Figures suggest users who enabled 2FA ended up blocking about 99.9% of automated attacks. But as with any good cybersecurity solution, attackers can quickly come up with ways to…

Vaccine and drug development, artificial intelligence, transport and logistics, climate science — these are all areas that stand to be transformed by the development of a full-scale quantum computer. And there has been explosive growth in quantum computing investment over the past decade. Yet current quantum processors are relatively small in scale, with fewer than 100 qubits — the basic building blocks of a quantum computer. Bits are the smallest unit of information in computing, and the term qubits stems from “quantum bits”. While early quantum processors have been crucial for demonstrating the potential of quantum computing, realising globally significant applications will likely require processors with upwards…

This year the Internet Archive turns 25. It’s best known for its pioneering role in archiving the internet through the Wayback Machine, which allows users to see how websites looked in the past. Increasingly, much of daily life is conducted online. School, work, communication with friends and family, as well as news and images, are accessed through a variety of websites. Information that once was printed, physically mailed or kept in photo albums and notebooks may now be available only online. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed even more interactions to the web. You may not realize portions of the internet are constantly disappearing.…