The cover of the 15 Jan issue of Nature is a blurry reconstitution of snapshots from the James Webb Space Telescope, which contributed to uncover these new astronomical objects, deemed to be young supermassive black holes. A notion I only came across recently, during a pre-defence lunch near the Paris Observatory.
Apart from that astronomical advance, Nature puts its focus on the 25th anniversary of Wikipedia. With a tribune bemoaning the insufficient investment of academics in the platform (with mentions of hypocrisy and betrayal). Which sounds rather unfair, since it requires an additional levy on research time, even though I did contribute to a few entries. And recognise the worth of most scientifics pages, as well as the parasitism by LLMs. And an interview of of Jimmy Wales’ about his Wikipedia memoir, Seven Rules of Trust. Kudos to his vision! He sounds rather optimistic about the chances of Wikipedia surviving the tsunAImi, but only if the users keep resorting (and indeed contributing) to the platform rather than accepting the LLM production at fa(r)ce value!
Other entries on
- LLMs suffering (!) from “anxiety, trauma, shame and post-traumatic stress disorder”, although the arXiv reporting the experiment is criticized by others for anthropomorphising the machines. The danger is more in them inducing real trauma in vulnerable (human) users!
- LLMs exhibiting aggressive behaviour (if trained accordingly)
- the oldest evidence on human controlled fires using pyrite (in SE England), 400,000 years ago
- the rise of academics being harassed (and not only in the US) and six recommendations for protecting our digital security (mentioning organisations such as Scholars at Risk Europe, Expert Voices Together, and Faculty First Responders)
- a “Where I work” picture of a food scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico flipping a tortilla, with fermented ingredients to improve health and combat malnutrition in poor communities
Xi'an's Og