Academia is in a credibility crisis. A record-breaking 10,000 scientific papers were retracted in 2023 because of scientific misconduct, and academic journals are overwhelmed by AI-generated images, data, and texts. To understand the roots of this problem, we must look at the role of metrics in evaluating the academic performance Read more…
More than 150 Nobel and World Food prize laureates have signed an open letter calling for “moonshot” efforts to ramp up food production before an impending world hunger catastrophe. The coalition of some of the world’s greatest living thinkers called for urgent action to prioritise research and technology to solve Read more…
U.K. public sector and critical infrastructure organizations could be banned from making ransom payments under new proposals from the U.K. government. The U.K.’s Home Office launched a consultation on Tuesday that proposes a “targeted ban” on ransomware payments. Under the proposal, public sector bodies — including local councils, schools, and Read more…
Meta is cutting roughly 5% of its staff through performance-based eliminations and plans to hire new people to fill their roles this year, according to a company memo. As of September, Meta employed about 72,000 people, so a 5% reduction could affect roughly 3,600 jobs. “I’ve decided to raise the Read more…
Mikey Shulman, the CEO and founder of the AI music generator company Suno AI, thinks people don’t enjoy making music. “We didn’t just want to build a company that makes the current crop of creators 10 percent faster or makes it 10 percent easier to make music. If you want Read more…
While worrying about AI takeover might seem like a modern idea that sprung from War Games or The Terminator, it turns out that a similar concern about machine dominance dates back to the time of the American Civil War, albeit from an English sheep farmer living in New Zealand. Theoretically, Read more…
U.S. companies are increasingly using AI to curb hiring plans, citing “cost avoidance” as a key metric to justify AI investments amid pressure to show returns. At software firm TS Imagine, AI-powered email sorting saves 4,000 work hours annually at 3% of employee costs, while Palantir reported AI reduced future Read more…