Super Bowl ads tend to kick off trends, and it looks like the automotive industry will ramp up its pitch for electric vehicles after giving them center stage. Even Tesla, which has never run a Super Bowl ad, managed to sneak its Model Y into a Popeyes commercial, while Ram boasted that its new electric pickup truck’s […] … learn more→
Monthly Archives: February 2023

Super Bowl car ads sell Americans the idea that new tech will protect them

Should we fear algorithms?
Algorithms are automating many human actions and activating fear responses in us, which is nothing more than a primary emotion formed by biochemical algorithms whose adaptive function is protection. It is curious that automating causes us an emotional response that in turn is an automatism. But we tend to fear the unknown. The emergence of artificial intelligence […] … learn more→

Associations, volunteering: why do students get involved ?
Over the past few decades, the terms for referring to active members of causes or organizations have changed. The “volunteer” – which rather referred to charitable action, or solidarity, customary in part of the associative sector, has increasingly replaced in current discourse the “activist” of rather union or political connotation. And, even more recently, no doubt by […] … learn more→

Five years after Parkland shooting, a school psychologist offers insights on helping students and teachers deal with grief
Whenever a school shooting takes place, school officials often arrange for grief counseling services to be made available for whoever needs them. But what exactly do those services entail? To answer that question, The Conversation reached out to Philip J. Lazarus, a school psychology professor at Florida International University who counseled students and educators affected […] … learn more→

3 Things to do before your Senior year of College ends
College seniors deal with more challenges today than in the past. Between finishing up your courses and searching for positions, it’s easy to lose sight of your end goal of getting a great job once you graduate. There are several things you can do to prepare yourself for the search as you finish up your […] … learn more→

Open-plan classrooms are trendy but there is little evidence to show they help students learn
If you step into a newly built school these days, chances are you will see classrooms that look very different to the classrooms most of us spent our school years in as children. On a recent visit to a new primary school in Melbourne, Grattan Institute’s education team entered a large room that contained two […] … learn more→

Google’s search business doesn’t have to be killed by AI chatbots – here’s the ugly workaround
Google’s parent company Alphabet has lost a hefty US$100 billion (£83 billion) or nearly a tenth of its market value after its new AI chatbot, Bard, botched an answer to a query on an ad promoting its launch. It claimed that the James Webb space telescope took the first pictures of planets outside the Earth’s solar system […] … learn more→

African researchers are ready to share more work openly – now policy must make it possible
Librarians are the curators of creativity. They collect success stories and share it with the world. Traditionally, the success was from published authors, which libraries shared with the local community. More recently, the model has been flipped: libraries have started to collect from the local community to share with everyone. In academic libraries, this is […] … learn more→

Is 13 too young to have a TikTok or Instagram account?
The surgeon general is the “nation’s doctor” in the United States. They are tasked with giving Americans the “best scientific information” about their health. Late last month, the current US surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, warned 13 is too young to join social media. He said it poses a risk to young people’s “self-worth and their relationships”, adding: […] … learn more→

Bard, Bing and Baidu: how big tech’s AI race will transform search – and all of computing
Today, if you want to find a good moving company, you might ask your favourite search engine – Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo perhaps – for some advice. After wading past half a page of adverts, you get a load of links to articles on moving companies. You click on one of the links and finally […] … learn more→