If a computer system has no intelligence, creativity, or understanding but can mimic these qualities, when does it become a distinction without a difference? ChatGPT still falls short, but ChatGPT 2031 may be a different story. What is our place in such a world? - 3 Quarks Daily
How does a billion years go missing? The Great Unconformity has long been a geological mystery, in no small part because it is a challenge to reconstruct history when records of history are missing. - Nautilus
History is not a window into the past, but something made by people looking at the past through whatever evidence survives. Rather than hiding this process behind claims to historical accuracy, we wanted historical sources and the historian’s research process to be front and centre. - The Conversation
Even if there is a very strong neurological similarity between memories and experiences, we know that they can’t be exactly the same. “People don’t get confused between them." - Quanta
Over time, laughter-inducing play transformed into practical uses: Laughter and amusement signified a situation was safe, and positive emotions could be used to help cheer others up. Then, around 40,000 to 45,000 years ago humor evolved to serve more modern applications. - Vox
These systems are master imitators of human creativity. They have been trained on millions upon millions of human artifacts such as documents, articles, drawings, paintings, movies, or whatever else can be stored in databases at scale. - Big Think
What’s the point of watching workers? Maybe, as Franz Kafka suggested in a short parable, the point is not simply to alter a person’s behaviour temporarily, but to fundamentally change them. Through this transformation, the demarcations separating those who watch from those who are watched begin to dissolve. - Psyche
Beauty is what we find, create, and propagate, either through imitation – creating a copy, another iteration – or through distribution of the thing itself. - Psyche
A small coastal town "was selected as the location for an experiment that looked a little bit like tourism, a little bit like a future-of-work demo, a little bit like selective immigration—and a lot like a test for a strained local housing market." - Wired
The environmental crisis is one of overconsumption, carbon emissions, and corporate greed. But it’s also a crisis of miscommunication. In 2023, storytelling will finally enable a united global response to the environmental crisis. - Wired
"Sometimes we can pretend we’re in a moment of stability, despite the ever-changing landscape around us; at other times, it’s all too apparent that we’re living in a time of profound shifts." (Guess what 2023 may bring.) - NiemanLab
The Irish Embassy in Berlin had the idea for a dedicated cultural officer for Germany, and idea that "was so popular that similar roles have been created in London, New York, Los Angeles and Beijing – with Paris and Latin America to follow." - Irish Times
The death of Vanessa and Virginia Stephen's parents was a disaster, but it freed the future Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf - and their brothers - to find, and found, a center of artistic life in London. - LitHub
I would argue that part of the reason that wisdom has been downgraded in education is because of the very opposition between universal truth and particular experience. We are told to seek a wisdom outside of our identities but, everywhere we go, we find ourselves and others enmeshed in these very identities. - Aeon
A reasonable reaction to generative AI is concern; if not even the imagination is safe from machines, the human mind seems at risk of becoming obsolete. - The Atlantic
