Author: The Conversation

Nearly everyone has encountered the unthinkable: Your smartphone landed in the toilet. Or you forgot to take off your smartwatch before jumping into the pool. Or maybe you meant to take those earbuds out of your pocket before running the laundry. What now? Internet forums are chock-full of advice to dry out that drenched device, but problematic myths about liquid protection and repair make it hard for consumers to separate fact from fiction. I’m a researcher who studies how technologies play a part in people’s everyday practices and experiences. My new book, “License to Spill: Where Dry Devices Meet Liquid Lives,” explores…

On 23 June 2025, the world will get a look at the first images from one of the most powerful telescopes ever built: the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Perched high in the Chilean Andes, the observatory will take hundreds of images of the southern hemisphere sky, every night for 10 years. In doing so, it will create the most complete time-lapse record of our Universe ever assembled. This scientific effort is known as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Rather than focusing on small patches of sky, the Rubin Observatory will scan the entire visible southern sky every few nights. Scientists…

The world’s oceans cover more than 70% of Earth’s surface. They’re filled with currents, some much stronger than the fastest flowing large rivers. These currents can be harnessed as clean, marine renewable energy. Marine energy is much more predictable and reliable than many other forms of renewable energy because, unlike sun and wind, which regularly do not produce electricity, ocean currents never stop moving around the planet. New research has found that the eastern and south-eastern coasts of Africa have currents that put them among the world’s top potential locations for ocean energy production. Researchers Mahsan Sadoughipour, James VanZwieten, Yufei Tang…

This week, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed that two men suspected of bombing a fertility clinic in California last month allegedly used artificial intelligence (AI) to obtain bomb-making instructions. The FBI did not disclose the name of the AI program in question. This brings into sharp focus the urgent need to make AI safer. Currently, we are living in the “wild west” era of AI, where companies are fiercely competing to develop the fastest and most entertaining AI systems. Each company wants to outdo competitors and claim the top spot. This intense competition often leads to intentional or unintentional…

As winter approaches, memories of the past haunt South Africans in more ways than one. The country has experienced years of rolling blackouts, known locally as load shedding. During the worst periods of these power cuts in 2022 and 2023, South Africans who did not own solar photovoltaic systems or generators would go without electricity for up to 12 hours a day. Due to the extent of the damaging power outages, solar power was adopted quickly in South Africa. For example, in 2020, smaller systems installed at homes or businesses made up just 38% of the country’s solar systems. At that time, 62%…

As meaning-makers, we use spoken or signed language to understand our experiences in the world around us. The emergence of generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT (using large language models) call into question the very notion of how to define “meaning.” One popular characterisation of AI tools is that they “understand” what they are doing. Nobel laureate and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton said: “What’s really surprised me is how good neural networks are at understanding natural language — that happened much faster than I thought…. And I’m still amazed that they really do understand what they’re saying.” Hinton repeated this claim in an interview with Adam Smith, chief…

Whether you’re streaming a show, paying bills online or sending an email, each of these actions relies on computer programs that run behind the scenes. The process of writing computer programs is known as coding. Until recently, most computer code was written, at least originally, by human beings. But with the advent of generative artificial intelligence, that has begun to change. Now, just as you can ask ChatGPT to spin up a recipe for a favourite dish or write a sonnet in the style of Lord Byron, you can now ask generative AI tools to write computer code for you.…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) began as a quest to simulate the human brain. Is it now in the process of transforming the human brain’s role in daily life? The Industrial Revolution diminished the need for manual labour. As someone who researches the application of AI in international business, I can’t help but wonder whether it is spurring a cognitive revolution, obviating the need for certain cognitive processes as it reshapes how students, workers, and artists write, design and decide. Graphic designers use AI to quickly create a slate of potential logos for their clients. Marketers test how AI-generated customer profiles will respond to ad campaigns. Software engineers…

Last month, Google announced SynthID Detector, a new tool to detect AI-generated content. Google claims it can identify AI-generated content in text, image, video or audio. But there are some caveats. One of them is that the tool is currently only available to “early testers” through a waitlist. The main catch is that SynthID primarily works for content that’s been generated using a Google AI service – such as Gemini for text, Veo for video, Imagen for images, or Lyria for audio. If you try to use Google’s AI detector tool to see if something you’ve generated using ChatGPT is flagged, it won’t work. That’s because, strictly speaking, the…

The Little Engine That Could wasn’t the most powerful train, but she believed in herself. The story goes that, as she set off to climb a steep mountain, she repeated: “I think I can, I think I can.” That simple phrase from a children’s story still holds a lesson for today’s business world – especially when it comes to artificial intelligence. AI is no longer a distant promise out of science fiction. It’s here and already beginning to transform industries. But despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on developing AI models and platforms, adoption remains slow for many employees, with a…