By Francesco Grillo, Academic Fellow, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University
The conflict in Iran – but also the war in Ukraine – show not only that AI is radically changing the economics of war (which may be good news), but also that we may be heading towards some kind of “Chernobyl moment”. We may soon experience a disaster that will force us to belatedly realise we should have drawn up some shared rules to govern a technological development that we ourselves triggered.
Even Dario Amodei, the founder of AI company Anthropic,…
(Full Story)
|
By Rachel Handforth, Senior Lecturer in Doctoral Education and Civic Engagement, Nottingham Trent University
Around 1% of the global population has a PhD. It’s the highest academic qualification, the result of years spent on original research. But – and this is a question that many PhD students will have faced, at some time or another – what’s the point?
The number of PhDs being undertaken globally is rising. Around a fifth of all PhDs studied for by UK students are funded through UK Research and Innovation,…
(Full Story)
|
By Rachael Jolley, Environment Editor, The Conversation
This roundup of The Conversation’s environment coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.
In 1968 a photo of the Earth was taken by the crew of Apollo 8 as they orbited the Moon.
It’s hard for us to imagine today what that would feel like for both the crew and the public who first saw the shot of Earth snapped from so far away. All those years ago this was a fantastic, and perhaps shocking, picture taken from somewhere many people would never have imagined humans could go.
That Earthrise shot from 1968,…
(Full Story)
|
By Ifeoluwa Wuraola, PhD Candidate, Artificial Intelligence, University of Hull
Daniel Marciniak, Lecturer in Criminology, University of Hull
Nina Dethlefs, Professor of Computer Science, Loughborough University
AI tools can help communities respond to floods, heatwaves and other climate emergencies – but only once trained to interpret the nuance of everyday language.
(Full Story)
|
By Daniel Sims, Associate Professor of First Nations Studies; Adjunct Professor of Education, University of Northern British Columbia
News recently broke about how the RCMP’s security service infiltrated and surveilled Indigenous rights organizations in the 1970s.
Many of the people whose privacy was violated pointed out how these activities highlight the colonial nature of the Canadian state, but another theme also emerged — they weren’t surprised, and had suspected, that they were being watched.
These perceptions have been repeated as the…
(Full Story)
|
By Jerrid Kruse, Professor of Science Education, Drake University
Some school districts, including ones in Maine, New Mexico, Iowa and Oregon, are shifting to standards-based grading, where students are graded on the skills and concepts they learn instead of points accumulated from assignments and tests throughout the school year.
Jerrid…
(Full Story)
|
By Ryan Creps, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership, University at Buffalo
In 1976, a small Christian college refused to comply with Title IX. The ensuing legal back-and-forth still matters today as the Trump administration places pressure on universities.
(Full Story)
|
By Mathew Schmalz, Professor of Religious Studies, College of the Holy Cross
Africa represents the fastest-growing part of the Catholic Church. The pope’s 2026 journey will stop in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Algeria and Angola.
(Full Story)
|
By Ross Channing Reed, Lecturer in Philosophy, Missouri University of Science and Technology
It may seem like a paradox, but it takes good friends for someone to really understand themselves – and grow in virtue, as Aristotle argued.
(Full Story)
|
By Rui Du, Assistant Professor of Economics, Oklahoma State University
Corruption crackdowns are bad for businesses that thrive on their proximity to political power centers. In fact, they can change the physical layout of an entire industry.
That is what my colleagues and I found when we looked at the impact of a major Chinese government campaign against corruption on Beijing’s restaurants.
In 2012, the Chinese Communist Party introduced its eight-point regulation…
(Full Story)
|