Cogent – Curated – Updated || Since 1999 || Information you need-produced by humans
It can seem–sometimes very visibly and brutally–that we are losing the ability to make and influence decisions about our own lives. That no matter what we do and what we want, forces greater than us and our families and even our communities will steamroll us in order to impose someone else’s will–and that generally means greater power and greater wealth for a set of politicians…
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It is common these days to see people walking their dogs or walking along streets, in parks, staring at or speaking to their smart phones. Yes, they are physically out in the “real” world but, in reality, they are deeply immersed within the artificial world created by AI, social media, and, yes, the Internet. In this hybrid existence, what is real? What actually exists? What…
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Aaron French, Kennesaw State University (from The Conversation) Back in 2008, The Atlantic sparked controversy with a provocative cover story: Is Google Making Us Stupid? In that 4,000-word essay, later expanded into a book, author Nicholas Carr suggested the answer was yes, arguing that technology such as search engines were worsening Americans’ ability to think deeply and retain knowledge. At the core of Carr’s concern…
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Artificial intelligence (AI) and its impacts on education (K-12 and higher ed) … Follow the developing story at — Artificial Intelligence and Education Recent additions: *AI and the death of student writing: The move away from true hands-on scholarship feels tragic (The Chronicle of Higher Education; requires subscription) *The Handwriting Revolution: Five semesters after ChatGPT changed education forever, some professors are taking their classes back…
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We live in a world awash with misinformation and disinformation. “Misinformation is false or inaccurate information—getting the facts wrong. Disinformation is false information which is deliberately intended to mislead—intentionally misstating the facts.” Disinformation in particular, often leveraged through X, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms, and created by political, corporate, criminal, and other bad actors besieges us on a daily basis. It’s a never…
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One of the most important parts of any search for information–whether academic or for personal reasons–has always been to think critically about the information you find; to be skeptical, to not assume the information must be true and/or objective just because it happens to come from a particular source or person. No one is entirely objective. And we/human beings are easily misled. Our entire digital…
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The easy answer is that it is much faster and requires less effort to click a button and get a custom summary of academic papers and their connections–rather than spending the time and mental effort to do it yourself. Or, is this preference just an extension of the utility of abstracts that have been used to summarize academic papers for decades–long before the public rise…
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Frederik Joelving, Retraction Watch; Cyril Labbé, Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA), and Guillaume Cabanac, Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (from The Conservation) Over the past decade, furtive commercial entities around the world have industrialized the production, sale and dissemination of bogus scholarly research, undermining the literature that everyone from doctors to engineers rely on to make decisions about human lives. It is exceedingly difficult…
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“… Dishonesty in politics is a long-standing tradition. Many politicians have clearly benefitted from telling voters what they want to hear or what they want to believe, and history is filled with examples of politicians lying to cover up crime and corruption.” “Dishonesty in politics is important because it poses a threat to electoral accountability. Citizens who can detect political lies are more safeguarded against…
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Keep up-to-date on science topics that matter to you. Avoid being inundated by hundreds or thousands of articles or misled by out-of-date AI-generated summaries. Get current science news from five well-known, respected sources. For Alzheimer’s disease, climate change, cancer, and other topics, use CuratedSci. Questions? Please let me know (engelk@grinnell.edu).
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