LINKS - May 29th, 2024
Welcome to LINKS — my attempt to provide Rhapsody readers with five interesting stories that tell us something about what it means to be human . LINKS is published every Wednesday. Have a link you want to share? Drop it in the comments.
The Big AI Risk Not Enough People are Seeing
By Tyler Austin Harper, The Atlantic (which ironically enough just signed a deal with OpenAI)
“Hypothetical AI dating concierges sound silly, and they are not exactly humanity’s greatest threat. But we might do well to think of the Bumble founder’s bubbly sales pitch as a canary in the coal mine, a harbinger of a world of algorithms that leave people struggling to be people without assistance. The new AI products coming to market are gate-crashing spheres of activity that were previously the sole province of human beings. Responding to these often disturbing developments requires a principled way of disentangling uses of AI that are legitimately beneficial and prosocial from those that threaten to atrophy our life skills and independence. And that requires us to have a clear idea of what makes human beings human in the first place.”
We Learn and Make Connections Better When Information Comes from People We Like
By Kate Graham-Shaw, Scientific American
“Now a study shows how cognitive biases could profoundly affect our most basic learning and memory processes. ‘What we show is not that people are biased; that we already kind of know,’ says Inês Bramão, a psychologist at Sweden’s Lund University and co-author of the new study, published in Communications Psychology. ‘We give an explanation of why people are biased. The fundamental mechanism may be that we are more likely to expand our knowledge based on information provided by people we like.’ Such bias could help explain how people develop strongly polarized views.”
Cultivating Modern Farms Using Ancient Lessons
“Drought-stricken farmers in Spain have reclaimed medieval Moorish irrigation technology. International companies hungry for carbon offsets have paid big money for biochar made using pre-Columbian Amazonian production techniques. Texas ranchers have turned to ancient cover cropping methods to buffer against unpredictable weather patterns.”
The Ephemeral Organ: Researchers Look Closer at the Placenta
By Claire Marie Porter, Undark
“Every year, there are approximately 5 million pregnancies in the United States. One million of those pregnancies end in miscarriage, and more than 20,000 end in stillbirth. Up to half of these pregnancy losses have unidentified causes. Recent and ongoing research, though, suggests that the placenta may hold the key to understanding and preventing some pregnancy complications, such as preterm birth and maternal and infant mortality. A closer look at the placenta — including its size and function — may have a significant impact on stillbirth rates.”
Skull Incisions Show Ancient Egyptians’ Interest in Medicine
By Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine
“‘It was surprising to see the cut marks at the microscope because we immediately realized the significance and implications of the discovery: Ancient Egyptians, more than 4,000 years ago were already performing a surgical intervention in relation to tumors,’ says lead author Edgard Camarós, a paleopathologist at the University of Santiago de Compostela.”