Publication Date: December 15, 2023
The AI Direction
This book addresses the benefits and harms arising from social media and its close relationship to the ongoing discussion about artificial intelligence. Will AI systems partially trained on social media be beneficial or harmful to humanity? Entrepreneur and technologist Juliet Boyle and writer and educator Art Kleiner provide an excellent analysis and sometimes terrifying review of engineering, social justice, commerce, and governance. They compare the development of AI tools by humans to first-time parenting. They recommend guiding AI systems “as we guide a child toward full maturity.”
Consciousness
This book is a brief addition to a wide range of thought that dates back to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, where cellular and molecular pharmacist John Barrington acknowledges that the material basis of human consciousness is one of the biggest unresolved issues in science. He discusses various theories and proposes his own. He asserts that humans are characterized by conceptual thinking and language, in addition to tool design and technology skills. The evolution of these powers has transformed our brains and created meaning and consciousness.
Democracy in a Hotter Time
Environmentalist David Orr writes in the introduction to this timely collection that the planet faces two interconnected crises: “rapid climate change and potential lethal threats to democracy.” He notes that the U.S. Constitution strictly protects private property but does not mention ecosystems. The contributors—mostly from the United States and from a wide range of fields—examine the need for political reform. The book consists of four parts: the nature of democracy; obstacles to change; politics and law; and education, including academic culture.
Extinctions
When paleontologist Michael Benton learned about dinosaurs as a boy, “I loved the fact that they were extinct.” They were like real science fiction. Perhaps he also felt that their extinction made his existence possible. As his book reveals dense yet readable information, the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago allowed a new array of creatures—including mammals—to inherit the Earth, as occurred in four previous extinction events. Living species represent less than 1% of all species that have ever existed.
The Puzzle of Interpretation
The physical interpretation of quantum mechanics has been a controversial puzzle for decades, since Niels Bohr argued that the internal processes of the atom could not be described in physical terms. Today, many philosophers and physicists disagree, but there is no consensus on an alternative. Philosopher David Albert, in his controversial book, argues in three essays that Bohr’s quantum measurement problem begins to make sense if the wave function is understood as the fundamental physical matter of the universe.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-04054-7
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-04054-7
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