Author: The Conversation

A recent New York Times article released a list of people “behind the dawn of the modern artificial intelligence movement” – and not a single woman was named. It came less than a week after news of a fake auto-generated woman being listed as a speaker on the agenda for a software conference. Unfortunately, the omission of women from the history of STEM isn’t a new phenomenon. Women have been missing from these narratives for centuries. In the wake of recent AI developments, we now have a choice: are we going to leave women out of these conversations as well – even as…

When South Africa became a constitutional democracy in 1994, it replaced its apartheid-era intelligence apparatus with a new one aimed at serving the country’s new democratic dispensation. However, the regime of former president Jacob Zuma, 2009-2018, deviated from this path. It abused the intelligence services to serve his political and allegdly corrupt ends. Now the country is taking steps to remedy the situation. In November 2023, the presidency published the General Intelligence Laws Amendment Bill. It proposes overhauling the civilian intelligence agency, the State Security Agency, to address the abuses. The bill is extremely broad in scope. It intends to amend 12 laws – including the main intelligence laws of…

Over ten years ago, the Dark Energy Survey (DES) began mapping the universe to find evidence that could help us understand the nature of the mysterious phenomenon known as dark energy. I’m one of more than 100 contributing scientists that have helped produce the final DES measurement, which has just been released at the 243rd American Astronomical Society meeting in New Orleans. Dark energy is estimated to make up nearly 70% of the observable universe, yet we still don’t understand what it is. While its nature remains mysterious, the impact of dark energy is felt on grand scales. Its primary effect is to drive the accelerating expansion…

The Sun’s energy is effectively limitless. While resources such as coal or gas are finite, if you are able to capture and use solar power it doesn’t prevent anyone else from also using as much sunshine as they need. Except that isn’t quite the full story. Beyond a certain size, solar farms become large enough to affect the weather around them and ultimately the climate as a whole. In our new research, we have looked at the effect such climate-altering solar farms might have on solar power production elsewhere in the world. We know that solar power is affected by weather conditions…

South Africa experienced unprecedented electricity shortages in 2023 as ageing coal plants became increasingly prone to breakdowns. The country urgently needs to develop new electricity generation facilities and reduce reliance on coal power. In the first week of 2024, the South African energy minister, Gwede Mantashe, released a proposed roadmap for the future of electricity in South Africa. Unfortunately, the draft Integrated Resource Plan is a major disappointment. Described by some analysts as “shoddy”, the plan contains, among many flaws, huge errors in costing the different future energy scenarios. Firstly, the plan’s costing estimates aren’t credible. It does not even consider the most inexpensive combination…

What is the universe made of? This question has driven astronomers for hundreds of years. For the past quarter of a century, scientists have believed “normal” stuff like atoms and molecules that make up you, me, Earth, and nearly everything we can see only accounts for 5% of the universe. Another 25% is “dark matter”, an unknown substance we can’t see but which we can detect through how it affects normal matter via gravity. The remaining 70% of the cosmos is made of “dark energy”. Discovered in 1998, this is an unknown form of energy believed to be making the…

You are walking back home. Suddenly the ground seems to open and a security drone emerges, blocking your way to verify your identity. This might sound far-fetched but it is based on an existing technology – a drone system made by the AI company Sunflower Labs. As part of an international project looking at the impact of AI on cities, we recently “broke ground” on a new field of research called AI urbanism. This is different from the concept of a “smart city”. Smart cities gather information from technology, such as sensor systems, and use it to manage operations and run services more…

ChatGPT has repeatedly made headlines since its release late last year, with various scholars and professionals exploring its potential applications in both work and education settings. However, one area receiving less attention is the tool’s usefulness as a conversationalist and – dare we say – as a potential friend. Some chatbots have left an unsettling impression. Microsoft’s Bing chatbot alarmed users earlier this year when it threatened and attempted to blackmail them. Watch as Sydney/Bing threatens me then deletes its message pic.twitter.com/ZaIKGjrzqT — Seth Lazar (@sethlazar) February 16, 2023 Yet pop culture has long conjured visions of autonomous systems living with us as social companions, whether…

Microsoft recently launched a new version of all of its software with the addition of an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant that can do a variety of tasks for you. Copilot can summarise verbal conversations on Teams online meetings, present arguments for or against a particular point based on verbal discussions and answer a portion of your emails. It can even write computer code. This quickly developing technology appears to take us even closer to a future where AI makes our lives easier and takes away all of the boring and repetitive things we have to do as humans. But while these advancements are all very impressive…

Two commercial spacecraft are scheduled to launch to the Moon early in 2024 under a NASA initiative called the Commercial Lunar Payload Service CLPS. This programme is intended to kickstart a commercial transportation service that can deliver NASA experiments and other payloads to the lunar surface. If successful, these missions will represent the first landings on the Moon by spacecraft designed and flown by private companies. They could potentially open up a new era of commercial lunar exploration and science. CLPS was inaugurated by Nasa in 2018. An initial pool of nine companies received an invitation to join the programme.…