OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy envisions a world in which artificial intelligence bots can be made into subject matter experts that are “deeply passionate, great at teaching, infinitely patient and fluent in all of the world’s languages.” Through this vision, the bots would be available to “personally tutor all 8 billion of us on demand.” The embodiment of […] … learn more→

Title of course: Multimodal Anthropology What prompted the idea for the course? “Multimodal” simply means using more than academic written text to present research findings. My first multimodal science project was a third grade project on humpback whales, which was inspired by a vinyl LP recording of their “songs” that National Geographic mailed out to subscribers. In […] … learn more→

In a recent post on world.edu , two anonymous authors decry the universities’ rush to wind back work-from-home arrangements that were instituted during the COVID crisis. In particular, the authors argue that return-to-office (RTO) arrangements are counterproductive for introverts. Their post adopts a widely-accepted definition of an introvert as someone who finds social encounters taxing, rather than energising, […] … learn more→

Artificial intelligence (AI) prophets and newsmongers are forecasting the end of the generative AI hype, with talk of an impending catastrophic “model collapse”. But how realistic are these predictions? And what is model collapse anyway? Discussed in 2023, but popularised more recently, “model collapse” refers to a hypothetical scenario where future AI systems get progressively dumber due to the increase of […] … learn more→

Eric Beecher is a rare beast: a combination of journalist, media owner and idealist. In 1984, aged 33, he became the youngest-ever editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and he has worked around the world as a journalist. He is currently chair and the largest shareholder in Private Media, owner of several Australian news websites, […] … learn more→

For more than a decade, researchers and journalists have relied on a digital tool called CrowdTangle to track and fight the spread of viral falsehoods online. But earlier this week, the owner of CrowdTangle, Meta, shut the tool down. The tech giant has replaced it with its new Content Library, which it says will serve the […] … learn more→

Academic writing can be challenging, even for experienced scholars. You may find yourself making common mistakes that undermine the quality and credibility of your work. Recognizing and avoiding these errors will significantly improve your academic writing skills. Common Grammatical Mistakes Subject-Verb Agreement Errors Subject-verb agreement is essential for clear communication in academic writing. Errors occur […] … learn more→

How can I improve my English? This was a question frequently posed by my students in South Korea. My initial advice was straightforward – dedicate time and effort. However, both my students and I found this advice unsatisfying and overly simplistic. As a fellow language learner who had reached only an intermediate level of Korean […] … learn more→

Parents are reporting worse mental health for their children than they did a decade ago, but different groups of children are struggling with mental health in markedly different ways. That’s what our team at the University of Southern California’s Center for Applied Research in Education found using a widely used mental health screening measure. More specifically, we found […] … learn more→

Not long after new college students have finished choosing the college that is right for them, they are asked to declare an academic major. For some students, this decision is easy, as their majors may have actually influenced their choice of college. Unfortunately, this decision is not always an easy one to make, and college students […] … learn more→