Author: The Conversation

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a question that would have been unthinkable a few years ago: do we really need to be in the office all the time? At the height of the pandemic, working remotely was viewed as a safeguard, protecting employees from the spread of infections. Over time a consensus has developed that working remotely has had benefits but has also raised health concerns. To provide some answers to the question, I did research on the experience of working remotely from the perspective of 23 female middle managers working in the South African public service. It was…

California is embarking on an audacious new climate plan that aims to eliminate the state’s greenhouse gas footprint by 2045, and in the process, slash emissions far beyond its borders. The blueprint calls for massive transformations in industry, energy and transportation, as well as changes in institutions and human behaviors. These transformations won’t be easy. Two years of developing the plan have exposed myriad challenges and tensions, including environmental justice, affordability and local rule. For example, the San Francisco Fire Commission had prohibited batteries with more than 20 kilowatt-hours of power storage in homes, severely limiting the ability to store…

When people think about artificial intelligence (AI), they may have visions of the future. But AI is already here. At its base, it is the recreation of aspects of human intelligence in computerised form. Like human intelligence, it has wide application. Voice-operated personal assistants like Siri, self-driving cars, and text and image generators all use AI. It also curates our social media feeds. It helps companies to detect fraud and hire employees. It’s used to manage livestock, enhance crop yields and aid medical diagnoses. Alongside its growing power and its potential, AI raises moral and ethical questions. The technology has…

Copper is all around us. The metal is both ever-present and invisible in our world. Copper makes reading the words on this screen possible. And the global spread of artificial light, electric power and telecommunications all required ever-increasing quantities of copper. Where does all of this copper come from? How was it produced, distributed, controlled, and sold on an ever-increasing scale? These are some of the questions addressed in a recenty published book, Born with a Copper Spoon: A Global History of Copper. The book is a global study of a metal that has transformed the globe. Contributors to the…

Experienced directors of companies are in high demand in countries around the world. For this reason, many hold multiple directorships. There’s an upside to this. Directors with multiple directorships are able to gain more knowledge, experience and access to social networks and resources, thus adding more value to the company. But there’s also a downside. When directors sit on too many company boards they might become what’s referred to as ‘overboarded’. When directors serve on an excessive number of boards, they run the risk of not having the time or capacity to contribute effectively to the work of each board.…

ChatGPT is a powerful language model developed by OpenAI that has the ability to generate human-like text, making it capable of engaging in natural language conversations. This technology has the potential to revolutionise the way we interact with computers, and it has already begun to be integrated into various industries. However, the implementation of ChatGPT in the field of higher education in the UK poses a number of challenges that must be carefully considered. If ChatGPT is used to grade assignments or exams, there is the possibility that it could be biased against certain groups of students. For example, ChatGPT…

You may know nothing about it, but your phone – or your laptop or tablet – could be taken over by someone else who has found their way in through a back door. They could have infected your device with malware to make it a “bot” or a “zombie” and be using it – perhaps with hundreds of other unwitting victims’ phones – to launch a cyberattack. Bot is short for robot. But cyberbots don’t look like the robots of science fiction such as R2-D2. They are software applications that perform repetitive tasks they have been programmed to do. They…

It’s hard to imagine that the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the fourth industrial revolution can be part of the same conversation. But, as a briefing paper by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) points out: Over 70% of the 136 SDG targets could be enabled by technology applications already in deployment. To be achieved, both ideas – sustainable development and the fourth industrial revolution – require innovative thinking and a change of attitude. The fourth industrial revolution is defined by many as a period of rapid evolution caused by digitalisation, globalisation and technological innovation. It has…

China has rapidly become Africa’s most important infrastructure builder, and the footprint of Chinese construction companies is seen in cities, towns and villages across the continent. With the launch of Beijing’s “Go Global” policy in 2000, and President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, the volume of roads, bridges, railways, power stations and other infrastructure built by China has increased markedly. The number of overseas contracts signed by Chinese companies more than doubled from just under 6,000 in 2004 to almost 12,000 in 2019. In 2019, Chinese companies won over US$250 billion of infrastructure contracts around the world,…

From steam power and electricity to computers and the internet, technological advancements have always disrupted labor markets, pushing out some jobs while creating others. Artificial intelligence (AI) remains something of a misnomer – the smartest computer systems still don’t actually know anything – but the technology has reached an inflection point where it’s poised to affect new classes of jobs: artists and knowledge workers. Specifically, the emergence of large language models – AI systems that are trained on vast amounts of text – means computers can now produce human-sounding written language and convert descriptive phrases into realistic images. The Conversation…