CAPTCHAs are those now ubiquitous challenges you encounter to prove that you’re a human and not a bot when you go to log in to many websites. Websites and mobile apps have long been attacked by bots on a massive scale. Those malicious bots are programmed to automatically consume a large amount of computing resources, post spam messages, […] … learn more→

The higher education sector in the UK is in financial crisis. Over 60 institutions have announced severance or redundancy programmes, and around 40% expect to be in deficit in 2023-24. The financial collapse of one or more universities is now a distinct possibility, with disruptive economic and social repercussions for the regions in which they are based. This alarming situation is the […] … learn more→

New scientific understanding and engineering techniques have always impressed and frightened. No doubt they will continue to. OpenAI recently announced that it anticipates “superintelligence” – AI surpassing human abilities – this decade. It is accordingly building a new team, and devoting 20% of its computing resources to ensuring that the behaviour of such AI systems will be aligned […] … learn more→

One day, the Russian physicist Piotr Kapitsa asked Paul Dirac for his opinion on the book Crime and Punishment . The latter’s laconic response: “Very well, but the author was mistaken, because he described two sunrises on the same day.” Dirac spoke little, very little and never to say nothing. It is said that his physicist colleagues and students […] … learn more→

We are currently witnessing the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, large language models such as GPT and Claude have been developing rapidly since 2018. These models can generate text that resembles human speech, to visual generative AI (GenAI) such as DALL-E and Midjourney that are able to create images from text descriptions. Other examples include AI models that can […] … learn more→

People share common traits; however, as unique beings, it is normal for us to be different. During childhood and adolescence, these differences can become enormous and that is why each course and each classroom are a miniature world : no two students are the same, nor are there two groups of students the same . But diversity is not a scourge of the […] … learn more→