Chatbots – trainable software applications capable of conducting intelligent, informed conversations with users – have tremendous potential for vast societal benefits but also tremendous mischief. We are at the earliest stage of the learning curve.
Other Science News
When a guy is standing at a urinal in a public men’s room how do subsequent urinators choose where to stand? This vital matter is the subject of an academic paper which I will try (but fail) to explain. Who cares? We both know this is thinly-disguised juvenile (and hopefully offensive) humor. In honor of June 21st - National Urine Day!
The chemistry of global warming (GW) driven by heat-trapping air pollutants is measured and reported. Various mathematical models have been used to project future global scenarios. Since natural sources of greenhouse agents are largely beyond our control, here we focus on anthropogenic sources mainly involving combustion – typically byproducts, rather than end products. I use statistical methods to estimate the situation in 2050.
Both political parties use misinformation
Feynman’s learning technique
Anxious carnivore?
Car Dealers “one of the most important secular forces in American conservatism”?
The Agency's drug approval and enforcement actions are falling through the cracks, while regulators are squandering time and resources on insubstantial trivia.
The media have sounded smoke alarms throughout the Northeast this week, for good reason. We haven’t seen air this bad since the 1960s when heavy (and dirty) fuel oil was the heating medium of choice. The main culprit was particulate matter from black smoke, especially severe in the winter heating seasons. Now we see dirty skies emanating from Canadian forest fires transported by unfavorable wind conditions.
Color me concerned?
Walking About
What does Saudi Arabia have in common with Arizona?
Does the duck-rabbit illusion explain our polarization?
The nightly news often brings a surfeit of environmental disasters: forest fires, floods, tornados, drought, iceberg melting. What have we done to deserve them? Here I draw on various sources of climate change data to provide some understanding of what may lie ahead.
Science and law are both relatively recent human creations. Applied science made its appearance well before its written version. The people of the British Isles erected Stonehenge, and the Egyptians built the pyramids. The science of that time was goal-directed, finding a better way to live in the world and connect with the controlling powers of their gods. Today, science has taken on new roles, especially in understanding those controlling powers and seeking ways to better predict and manage them.
EPA has a long history of pandering to activists, encouraging them to sue the Agency and then capitulating to their agenda. Their stock in trade is shoddy science and dishonesty, resulting in farmers deprived of safe, effective pesticides.
The Lessons of COVID
Chimp lessons
A.I. comes for you
Sabbath bread
Credit card purchases, unlike those made with cash, are traceable. Leaving the value of untraceability for criminal enterprise aside, do consumers choose one over the other based on traceability? A new study suggests we choose cash when we wish to “forget” a purchase.