【推荐1】A new study examined scientists’ peer reviews, or researchers’ official statements on others’ work, across multiple AI-related conferences. At one such conference, those peer reviews used the word “meticulous” — a buzzword often associated with generative A.I., like ChatGPT — almost 3,400 percent more than the previous year. Other major conferences showed similar patterns. In other words, many researchers were handing, at least, parts of their peer review over to A.I.

What’s going on in science is a slice of a much bigger problem. Any viral post on social media now almost certainly includes A.I.-generated elements. There are synthetic videos for children on YouTube, like music videos about parrots where the birds have eyes within eyes, singing in an unnatural voice. The narratives make no sense, and characters appear and disappear randomly.

As a neuroscientist, this worries me. Isn’t it possible that human culture contains within it cognitive micronutrients — things like reasonable sentences, narrations and character continuity — that developing brains need? Einstein supposedly said: “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” But what happens when a child is consuming mostly A.I.-generated waste? We find ourselves in the middle of a vast developmental experiment.

A.I.’s cultural pollution is driven by a desire to fill the Internet’s appetite for content as cheaply as possible, which in turn pollutes our culture. And despite public appeals to act against it, A.I. companies are dragging their feet because it goes against the industry’s bottom line to have detectable products, which they fear might weaken the model’s performance, although there is no current evidence.

To deal with this general refusal to act, we need a Clean Internet Act. Perhaps the simplest solution would be to force built-in watermarking to A.I. generated outputs, like patterns not easily removable. Just as the 20th century required action to protect the shared environment, the 21st century is going to require actions to protect a different but equally critical resource: our shared human culture.

【推荐2】The first apes evolved 20 million years ago in the forests where they would go up a tree to get their food, and then come back down to move on to the next tree. Getting out of a tree presents all kinds of new challenges. Big apes can’t afford to fall because it could kill or badly injure them. Natural selection would have favored those with body structures that allowed them to descend safely.

Dartmouth researchers report in the journal Royal Society Open Science that apes probably evolved free-moving shoulders and flexible elbows to slow their descent from trees as gravity pulled on their heavier bodies. These flexible body parts passed on from ancestral apes would have allowed early humans to climb trees at night for safety and comedown in the daylight unhurt. When early humans transitioned from forests to open savannas (热带稀树草原), flexible shoulders and elbows were crucial for gathering food and using tools for hunting and defense.

The researchers used sports analysis and statistical software to study how primates(灵长目动物) like chimpanzees and small monkeys called mangabeys climbed in the wild. They found that chimps and mangabeys scaled(攀爬) trees similarly, with shoulders and elbows mostly bent close to the body. When descending, however, chimpanzees extended their arms above their heads to hold on to branches, much like a person using a ladder, to counteract(抵消) their heavier weight pulling them downward.

Luke Fannin, the lead author of the study, emphasized that their findings highlight the importance of “down climbing” in the evolution of apes and early humans. He explained, “Our research introduces the idea that down climbing played a significant role in shaping the structural differences between monkeys and apes, which eventually manifested in humans.”

“Our field has thought about apes climbing up trees for a long time, but we’ve been ignoring the second half of this behavior,” said Professor Jeremy DeSilva, “The findings are among the first to identify the significance of “down climbing” in the evolution of apes and early humans.

【推荐1】Even the most intuitive (直觉的) people make dumb decisions now and then. Being “intelligent” or “smart” doesn’t make anyone immune to making a bad decision, explains author and investment strategist Michael J. Mauboussin in his book Think Twice. If you want to improve your luck and make better decisions more often, Mauboussin writes, your best bet is to think twice and follow a few simple rules, which involves doing some planning first and avoid the faults that often trap many decision makers who think their intuitive feelings are infallible.

Believing that each of our problems is unique is often our first decision-making mistake. Simply considering outside views and the experiences of others can improve all decisions. Failing to consider alternatives is another way to make bad decisions.”Tunnel vision” is created when we reduce our options instead of opening our minds to more choices or forget how hidden incentives (激励) can influence our decisions.

Overvaluing an expert opinion is another common pitfall for decision-makers, the author explains. Thanks to modern technology, we no longer have to limit our decisions to the opinions of a few experts. Today, we can tap into more accurate computer models and powerful social networks that offer us the “wisdom of crowds” to help us make better decisions.

Another common decision-making mistake is failing to notice how much we are influenced by other people. Peer pressure can be powerful, so Mauboussin encourages us to make an effort to recognize the conscious and subconscious social influences that could be weighing on our choices.

By providing us with the tools to challenge our subconscious intuition, Mauboussin shows us how to recognize our problematic habits, take them into account when we make decisions and move past them to get to the better decisions and better rates of success on the other side.

【推荐2】“Dear Afu, who is Beyonce?”

“Beyonce is an American singer, songwriter, actress, record producer, and dancer, who set a record with 32 Grammy wins...”

“Good. Tell me how I can have two girlfriends.”

“Are you crazy? If you do that, your secret won’t go undiscovered!”

This was a conversation I had in a WeChat group called “Talking with your robot”, an account based on Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer technology. To me, the respondent was no different than a real person. ChatGPT as the new-generation talking AI has impressed global users, me included, ever since it surfaced online on Nov 30.

The new feature can answer questions, do translations, summarize essays and even draft codes for a computer program. It is as good as a human living inside a computer.

ChatGPT is making life very convenient. A time might come when one hands it content and it produces a well-made Powerpoint presentation. That could, however, mean job losses. After all, if a computer program can write code, then it would make a programmer redundant.

That may be a worry, but it is still premature. ChatGPT has more advanced learning features, but it still follows the same technological path. Its biggest advantage lies in the ability to carefully examine an ocean of data and rebuild words into a language, but it’s still not that creative.

Artificial intelligence can quickly draw a picture, but that picture will be based on pictures it is fed. It can also write science fiction, but based on content about the future that it has read.

In comparison, a human brain imagines the future and then puts in efforts to realize it. AI can imagine a future with faster spaceships, but it can’t imagine a world of space elevators as humans can. So, there is no need to worry too much. By being creative there will be plenty of opportunities for humans to score over AI.

【推荐3】Plants are our useful companions on Earth. They consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen, provide us with dietary and medicinal products and brighten up our environment. However, they are the victims of circumstances. Planted in an adequately sunny spot and provided with water they thrive (茁壮成长). However, put in unfortunate conditions, they have no choice but to wither (枯萎) and die. Bu what if plants could relocate to better places?

It was this question that Sun Tianqi, founder of a Chinese robotics firm Vincross, asked himself while watching a dead sunflower. "I thought if it could have taken a 30-foot walk out of the shadow to where the other sunflowers were, it would have lived healthily," he said.

He decided then to build a robot that would let plants do just that. The innovative roboticist took one of his company's traditional HEXA robot models and built a "flowerpot," which replaced HEXA's shell.

According to its site, HEXA is a "six-legged robot that comes complete with all the necessary sensors." The result is an impressive plant robot that can chase (追逐) the sun, hide for shelter, interact with humans when tapped and perform a funny dance to indicate it is thirsty.

Although the plant robot may have many useful future applications, Tiangi's reasons for creating it seem to have been philosophical. "Plants are passive. No matter if they are being cut, bitten, burned or pulled from the earth, or when they lack sunshine, water, or are too hot or cold, they will hold still and take whatever is happening to them," he said. "They have the fewest degrees of freedom among all the creatures in nature. This is simply the setting that nature gives to plants. I do hope that this project can bring some inspiration to the relationship between technology and unfavorable natural settings," concluded Tianqi.