Author: The Conversation
Where is the global economy heading in 2023? After all the challenges of last year, it’s a question we ask with trepidation. Just as the economy was dealing with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February ramped up inflation. Significant rises in the cost of vital items such as food and energy created a cost of living crisis that has engulfed households and businesses. Central banks reacted with a raft of interest-rate hikes, while a wave of industrial action saw workers in many countries fighting for pay and conditions to keep pace with this…
Imagine starting your work day with a fresh coconut juice perched by your laptop as you gaze over the ocean or a tropical rainforest. It’s the sort of thing to fantasise about during long, tiresome commutes and days in a claustrophobic, noisy office. But so long as you have the right type of job, and an accommodating employer (not Elon Musk), it could be your reality. The war for talent is no longer just between companies. More than 40 nations or territories now offer “digital nomad” visas to attract those able to be employed in one country while living, and…
By Bomikazi Zeka Debt, in some form or another, is part of our financial profiles whether we like it or not. And it can be a useful way to build wealth if it is managed carefully and wisely. For example, you may borrow money from the bank to buy an asset – a resource of economic value that generates income from its productive use. Investment property is an example. So investing in an income-producing property can be a good idea. If you are already in the property market, the home equity you’ve accumulated – the share of the property value…
Your heart beats around 100,000 times every day. Heart rate is a key marker of cardiovascular activity and an important vital sign. But your pulse is not as steady as a precision clock – nor would you want it to be. As a cardiovascular physiologist, I measure heart rate in nearly every experiment my students and I perform. Sometimes we use an electrocardiogram, such as you’d see in a medical clinic, which uses sticky electrodes to measure electrical signals between two points of your body. Other times we use a chest strap monitor, like ones you might see on someone…
The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot has given us a glimpse into the future of teaching and learning alongside artificial intelligence. Educators immediately pointed out the chatbot’s ability to generate meaningful responses to questions from assessments and exams. And it’s often not possible to attribute these responses to a particular source – making it difficult to detect plagiarism. Concerns didn’t go unnoticed. Shortly after ChatGPT’s release, OpenAI announced it was developing a “digital watermark” to embed into the chatbot’s responses. This kind of watermark is embedded as a digital signal that can identify the content as being AI-generated, and which…
A group of researchers studied 15 months of human mobility movement data taken from 1.5 million people and concluded that just four points in space and time were sufficient to identify 95% of them, even when the data weren’t of excellent quality. That was back in 2013. Nearly ten years on, surveillance technologies permeate all aspects of our lives. They collect swathes of data from us in various forms, and often without us knowing. I’m a surveillance researcher with a focus on technology governance. Here’s my round-up of widespread surveillance systems I think everyone should know about. CCTV and open-access…
In August 1955, a group of scientists made a funding request for $13,500 to host a summer workshop at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. The field they proposed to explore was artificial intelligence (AI). While the funding request was humble, the conjecture of the researchers was not: “every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it”. Since these humble beginnings, movies and media have romanticised AI or cast it as a villain. Yet for most people, AI has remained as a point of discussion…
In the four years since an experiment by disgraced scientist He Jiankui resulted in the birth of the first babies with edited genes, numerous articles, books and international commissions have reflected on whether and how heritable genome editing – that is, modifying genes that will be passed on to the next generation – should proceed. They’ve reinforced an international consensus that it’s premature to proceed with heritable genome editing. Yet, concern remains that some individuals might buck that consensus and recklessly forge ahead – just as He Jiankui did. Some observers – myself included – have characterized He as a…
We’ve all had some kind of interaction with a chatbot. It’s usually a little pop-up in the corner of a website, offering customer support – often clunky to navigate – and almost always frustratingly non-specific. But imagine a chatbot, enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI), that can not only expertly answer your questions, but also write stories, give life advice, even compose poems and code computer programs. It seems ChatGPT, a chatbot released last week by OpenAI, is delivering on these outcomes. It has generated much excitement, and some have gone as far as to suggest it could signal a future…
Musicians worldwide have been placing their tracks with global streaming platforms such as Spotify for many years. South African musicians, however, have reported only sparse earnings from streaming music online. When our 2020 survey revealed this, we wondered if part of the reason was inexperience. At the time, COVID lockdowns had made live performances impossible, driving many South African musicians to try what looked like an alternative revenue stream. In 2022 we broadened and deepened that research. And we discovered that earnings from music streaming remained poor. Further, major international studies were also now demonstrating the same earnings trend everywhere.…