It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, February 07, 2023
‘Ugly fish’ caught in Vermont pond ignites debate. ‘Like it came out of an acid bath’
Mark Price Mon, February 6, 2023 at 6:09 AM MST·2 min read
A strange looking fish pulled from an iced-over Vermont pond has ignited an online debate about what exactly made it so “ugly.”
But this one looks more like a lab experiment: cream colored, with gray splotches and an odd yellow racing stripe down one side.
“Check out this odd looking chain pickerel,” the online angler group Vermont Fishing wrote on Facebook on Feb. 2.
“Anyone ever seen or caught anything like this? Is it a partial albino? A pie-bald fish? While it almost looks like a fish that’s been laying in a cooler in direct contact with ice for a few hours, the angler ensures us that it came through the hole exactly as you see it.”
College student Caden Hurley and his ice fishing buddies Dylan Partlow and Ryan Vassuer caught the fish Jan. 28 on Sabin Pond in Woodbury.
Hurley said they were definitely taken off guard by what came out of the ice.
“We saw the flag and went running,” Hurley told McClatchy News. “When we pulled it out, we knew the species, (but) ... I said ‘Dude look at this thing.’ I’d guess 22-24 (inches) and 3 pounds. We took our fair share of pictures and released it.”
Hurley hasn’t weighed into the online debate.
Vermont Fishing asked its 7,100 Facebook followers if they had caught anything like it, and responses suggest its rare.
Many guessed the fish was either a hybrid or a mutant born of water contamination.
Still others suggested it was something other than a pickerel. This is what a chain pickerel looks like.
“I think it’s super cool. I know it’s a major mutation but I think it looks awesome,” Carly Buswell posted.
“I would have kept it and put it on the wall,” Reva Bartlett said.
The Vermont Agency of Natural Resources confirmed to McClatchy News on Feb. 6 the fish is a chain pickerel, but counts as “a truly unusual catch.”
“It looks like a healthy individual exhibiting a condition called leucism,” the department said in an email.
“Leucism is a pigment condition that can unevenly affect coloration across an animal, resulting in white patches of varying extent. ... Unlike true albinism, leucism does not affect the eyes. ... In the case of this chain pickerel, you can see that the eyes are a normal color for a member of this species.”
Hurley, a civil engineering major at Norwich University, says he appreciates the interest in fishing the debate has generated.
“I didn’t realize it would get so much attention, but it’s great to see so many people interested in it, and a pretty cool memory for me and the boys,” he said.
Check out this odd looking Chain Pickerel caught by Caden Hurley in a central Vermont pond. Anyone ever seen or caught anything like this? Is it a partial albino? A pie-bald fish? While it almost looks like a fish that's been laying in a cooler in direct contact with ice for a few hours, the angler ensures us that it came through the hole exactly as you see it (and was released alive). We believe it to be exhibiting traits in line with the condition known as "Leucism".
Leucism is when there's a partial loss of pigmentation resulting in white, pale, or patchy coloration of the skin, hair, feathers, scales or cuticle, but not the eyes. It's not common in fish, but it does happen!
KARMA IS A BITCH DEPT. Skull-waving neo-Nazi Russian mercenary gets shot in head in execution-style attack
Sun, February 5, 2023 Igor Mangushev, a Russian mercenary and propagandist
According to reports circulating on social media, Mangushev was shot in the head at close range, execution-style, at a checkpoint in the Russian-occupied part of Luhansk Oblast.
Mangushev (call sign “Bereg”) was sent to the neurosurgery department of one of the hospitals in Kadiivka (which the Russians call Stakhanov) with a gunshot wound.
“So, performing with someone else’s skull has brought (Mangushev) misfortune,” Kazanskyi wrote.
“Mangushev got shot through his own skull. He is still alive, but with such an injury, the prospects are not very good.”
According to the journalist, “karma caught up” with Mangushev, and it was soldiers of Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov who most likely shot the Russian mercenary.
“The details are still uncertain, but they say there is a reason to shout ‘Akhmat-sila!’” Kazanskyi said, quoting what Mangushev’s attackers are reported to have cried during the shooting.
ПриZрак Новороссии/Telegram
Russian sources also confirmed that an “accident” happened to the mercenary. Russian authorities declined to release more information about the attack, but Russian milbloggers condemned the attack and speculated that Mangushev may have been on his knees and shot from behind.
“Information from the doctors: it was made from a short-barreled weapon, a bullet of approximately 9 mm, close-up, occipital-parietal region, wound channel from the back down at 45 degrees,” the Russians quoted one of the invaders who fought in the same unit as Bereg.
Mangushev is the leader of the neo-Nazi movement “Light Rus”. He is also considered the creator of PMC “Raccoon”, which closely cooperated with Russia’s FSB security service.
The U.S. think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW), quoting a Western expert, noted that Mangushev has ties to Wagner Group and that an attack against Mangushev may have been a message to the Wagner Group and its financier, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
During his shameful “skull brandishing” speech in the summer of 2022, Mangushev repeated the stereotypes of Russian propaganda and called for the genocide of Ukrainians.
The propagandist stated that the Russian Federation “is not at war with people, but with the idea” of Ukraine’s existence, and “all bearers of this idea must be destroyed.”
A Russian officer who brandished the skull of a Ukrainian soldier at a heavy metal concert was shot in an 'execution-style' hit: report
Joshua Zitser Mon, February 6, 2023 A view of a damaged building in the Luhansk region.
STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images
A Russian captain was shot "execution-style" in the head on Saturday, according to reports.
Igor Mangushev was filmed last year brandishing the supposed skull of a slain Ukrainian soldier.
An expert said the "hit" on Mangushev may have been a proxy attack on the head of the Wagner Group.
A captain in the Russian army, who previously worked as a propagandist, was shot in the head at close range in Ukraine over the weekend, according to reports.
British newspaper The Telegraph reported that Igor Mangushev was taken to a hospital in the town of Stakhanov early Saturday with a "close range" gunshot wound to the head.
According to The New Voice of Ukraine, citing unverified doctors' reports, Mangushev was shot "execution-stye" at a checkpoint in the Russian-occupied region of Luhansk Oblast.
He survived but is now being treated for the gunshot wound by a neurosurgery department at a hospital in Kaddivka, in eastern Ukraine, the outlet said.
The Institute for the Study of War, an American think tank, said on Saturday that Mangushev had ties to the private military contractor the Wagner Group.
It also noted that Mangushev gained notoriety for a stunt involving the skull of what he said was a Ukrainian soldier who had died at the Azovstal plant in Mariupol.
Last summer, Mangushev was filmed brandishing the skull during a heavy metal concert. Per The New Voice of Ukraine, during the recording he called for the destruction of all those who supported the existence of Ukraine.
According to MailOnline, Mangushev has repeatedly called for the murder of Ukrainian civilians in Telegram posts.
Images released on Telegram appear to show a bandaged Mangushev covered in blood, lying on a hospital bed.
The Telegraph reported that the photos were shared by Mangushev's friend Boris Rozhkin, who has been sanctioned by Ukraine for pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda.
"I think we can safely describe this as a hit," Mark Galeotti, a London-based expert on Russian security and director of Mayak Intelligence, said in a series of tweets about the incident.
In the posts, Galeotti theorized that the shooting could be a "proxy attack" on Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the head of the Wagner Group.
"This could be a warning, or taking a pawn off the board, or a sign that Prigozhin's more thuggish rivals feel he is weakened enough that they can move," he added.
The Antarctic and Arctic sounds rarely heard before
Georgina Rannard - Climate and science reporter Sun, February 5, 2023
What do you hear when you think of the Arctic and Antarctic?
"Singing" ice, a seal that sounds like it is in space, and a seismic airgun thundering like a bomb are some of the noises released by two marine acoustic labs.
The project introduces the public to 50 rarely heard sounds recorded underwater in the polar regions.
It highlights how noisy oceans are becoming due to increased human activity that also disrupts sea life.
"These sounds are fairly alien to most people," explains artist and researcher Dr Geraint Rhys Whittaker.
Ice shelf collapse
"We probably think we know what the poles sound like but often that is imagined," adds Dr Whittaker, who works at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity and the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.
The underwater microphones were attached to floats with scientific instruments left in the Arctic and Antarctic for about two years.
One sound captured was calls from the least-researched Antarctic seal. Ross seals live in the open seas and on pack ice that is difficult to reach. The scientists recorded five calls from the creature of different frequencies.
Crabeater seals, minke whales, narwhals and humpback whales were also recorded.
Humpback whales
It can be hard to capture these sounds due to the inhospitable environment and the vast distances that animals travel in the regions.
"The difficulty is knowing where the mammals will be because they move and you can't rely on where they will be," explains Dr Whittaker.
The roaring collapse of ice shelves was also recorded, a process that is being accelerated in parts of the polar regions by rising temperatures linked to climate change.
The delicate sound of ice "singing" is included in the collection. It is caused by ice moving in water, or contracting as temperatures rise and fall, or when ice melts and refreezes.
Few people read scientific research published by universities, Dr Whittaker suggests, and he hopes that listening to the sounds will make people stop and think about the polar oceans. Oceans occupy 71% of our planet's surface and are hugely important for preserving life on Earth but are severely impacted by climate change.
The project reveals just how noisy the oceans are, suggests Dr Whittaker, who says he hopes it highlights the need for laws to reduce noise from shipping and dredging damaging marine life.
"With Earth's poles warming faster than the global average, this collection of sounds aims to draw attention to a fascinating but rapidly changing environment, and encourages us to think about ways to preserve it for future generations," explains Stuart Fowkes, founder of Cities and Memory.
Dr Ilse van Opzeeland, from the Ocean Acoustics Group at Alfred Wegener Institute, hopes combining art and science will help raise awareness.
"A 'translation' through art breathes new life into our scientific data that goes beyond a traditional publication or policy paper by making it accessible to non-scientists," she said.
"We must make the greatest efforts to protect, conserve and restore our planet's endangered habitats. The interaction of art and science can help by creating awareness and brings attention to this."
Israeli scientists develop sniffing robot with locust antennae Israeli scientists create a bio-hybrid sniffing robot fitted with locust antennae
Mon, February 6, 2023
TEL AVIV, Israel (Reuters) - A new sniffing robot equipped with a biological sensor that uses the antennae of locusts could help advance disease diagnosis and improve security checks, its Israeli developers said.
Locusts have an acute sense of smell, which the researchers in Tel Aviv University have managed to harness to their bio-hybrid robot, making it far more sensitive than existing electronic sniffers, they said.
Locusts smell with their antennae. On the four-wheeled robot, the researchers placed the insect's antenna between two electrodes that send electrical signals as a response to a nearby odour. Each scent has a unique signature which, with machine learning, the robot's electronic system can identify.
"Ultimately, we are trying to create a robot with a sense of smell that will be able to distinguish between smells and to locate them in space," said Neta Shvil of the Sagol School of Neuroscience.
As scientists try to understand how some animals detect disease by smell, fellow developer Ben Moaz said the future applications would almost be endless, extending to the detection of drugs and explosives and even food safety.
"We are overwhelmed with possibilities," said Maoz of the Fleischman Faculty of Engineering and Sagol School of Neuroscience.
(Reporting by Rami Amichay; Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
Community Matters: The robots are coming for Beaver County
Sun, February 5, 2023 Daniel Rossi-Keen
If you’ve been paying much attention to the news lately, you’ve probably been hearing more and more about the growing role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in contemporary society.
Services like Siri and Alexa, in a relatively short period of time, have become common tools used in daily life. For at least several years now, mainstream society has been talking about the algorithms of platforms like Google, Facebook, TikTok and the like. Most of us have likely wondered if our phones are actively listening to us and feeding us curated content (spoiler alert: they are). Automated cars, though seemingly fraught with PR and safety concerns, continue to represent an ever-closer reality in everyday life.
In recent weeks, some of you may have heard (or have begun to experiment with) GPT-3. GPT-3, which stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, is what is known as an open-source language model. GPT-3 was first made available to the public in May 2020 and has since become one of the most popular and widely used language models. This service is capable of generating human-like text and can be used for a variety of applications, such as question-answering, dialogue generation, and text summarization. GPT-3 is considered to be the most advanced language model currently available and is continuing to be improved and developed.
Most of the preceding paragraph is in italics to indicate that the text was generated (with only very minor edits) by GPT-3 in response to the question: “Tell me about the history of GPT-3.” This brief illustration of the capabilities of this system is merely the tip of the iceberg, to put the matter quite mildly. Over the last couple of weeks, I have spent a considerable amount of time testing the limits of the system. I have chatted with it, I have used it to help write organizational documents, I have generated emails with it, and I have put it to work rewriting things that I have previously written on my own. When doing so, I have been alternately fascinated and horrified at nearly every turn. Fascinated because of its shocking sophistication. And horrified because of the many ways such technology will undoubtedly strain our current understanding of what it means to function as a human community in the coming years.
As a public leader whose work exists at the intersection of community development, education, public communication, and creativity, I have been thinking quite a bit about these issues of late. Truthfully, I have been thinking about what they mean for my own identity, as one whose brand is tangled up with my ability to read, write, and communicate. What happens to my own value if a computer can do many of those things increasingly well? What do I tell my teen-aged kids to do with their time and energy, particularly as it relates to education? How can we best prepare community leaders to be indispensable in a world where intellect, calculation, and communication are increasingly viewed as commodities that exist independent of character, history, and purpose?
Beyond questions about my own value, I have also been reflecting on the implications of such technology for the future of communities like ours. To a place like Beaver County, some of which still uses clip art and dot matrix printers, GPT-3 may sound like science fiction. And, I suppose, on some level it is. But here’s the thing: it’s a kind of science fiction that is now upon us and with which we must now contend. Because of this, I have found myself asking a bunch of questions about what such an automated future might mean for Beaver County. Here are just a few of the questions that we may explore together in the coming weeks.
1. Where are there unexpected opportunities on the horizon for a place like Beaver County when technology is rapidly and dramatically challenging historic assumptions about economic structures, employment, education, the nature of community, and more at every turn? How can our region take advantage of these shifting cultural and economic conditions in ways that generate healthier, more productive, and more vibrant communities?
2. Who are the leaders and organizations that are poised to utilize and deploy such technology in ways that are generative, constructive, and principled? How can we incentivize and empower such leaders and organizations, encouraging a more visionary and proactive response to what is certain to be widespread and rapid cultural change?
3. How will the rapid and widespread deployment of something like GPT-3 further expose Beaver County’s limitations, weaknesses, and general unwillingness to embrace change? How will such technological and cultural developments generate greater inequities and how can these changing conditions and tools also be leveraged to overcome the same?
4. In what ways will the coming AI revolution further highlight relational failures, dysfunctional systems, and shortsighted leadership that has long been associated with our region? As the world becomes increasingly more automated, and as creativity and innovation become more critical than knowledge, how will our region respond? Will we be able to leverage new tools to overcome our relational shortcomings, or will those shortcomings be all the more apparent in a world that is rapidly moving into new possibilities, new partnerships, and new ways of building communities?
As I continue to think about the constellation of issues referenced above, I keep coming back to this: what will distinguish communities, talent, organizations, and civilizations in the near future is directly proportional to their capacity for creativity, their sense of shared identity, their commitment to artistry, and their relentless pursuit of values-driven community formation. The wide-stream introduction of AI into mainstream society will highlight these matters in increasingly obvious and impactful ways. Together, it will be our task to sort out how to respond and how best to seize these opportunities for the greatest benefit of the communities in which we live.
Daniel Rossi-Keen, Ph.D., is the co-owner of eQuip Books, a community bookstore in Aliquippa and the executive director of RiverWise, a nonprofit employing sustainable development practices to create a regional identity around the rivers of Beaver County. You can reach Daniel at daniel@getriverwise.com.
EU lawmakers aim for common position on draft AI rules by early March
Mon, February 6, 2023 By Supantha Mukherjee and Foo Yun Chee
STOCKHOLM/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU lawmakers hope to agree on draft artificial intelligence rules next month, with the aim of clinching a deal with EU countries by the end of the year, one of the legislators steering the AI Act said.
The European Commission proposed the AI rules in 2021 in an attempt to foster innovation and set a global standard for a technology, used in everything from self-driving cars and chatbots to automated factories, currently led by China and the United States.
"We are still in good time to fulfil the overall target and calendar that we assumed in the very beginning, which is to wrap it up during this mandate," Dragos Tudorache, member of the European Parliament and co-rapporteur of the EU AI Act, told Reuters.
"It took slightly longer than I initially thought," he said. "This text has seen a level of complexity that is even higher than the typical Brussels complex machinery."
The proposed legislation has drawn criticism from lawmakers and consumer groups for not fully addressing risks from AI systems, but the companies involved have warned that stricter rules could stifle innovation.
Intense debate over how AI should be governed led several experts to predict that the draft legislation might hit a bottleneck and get delayed.
"There are a few loose ends for all the political families. I told them in the last meeting that you know you have success in a compromise when everyone is equally unhappy," he said. "Some people will say this is optimistic... I am hoping it will happen."
One of the areas of contention is the definition of "General Purpose AI", which some believe should be considered as high risk while others point to the risks posed by popular chatbot ChatGPT as an area that needs more regulatory scrutiny.
"During this year alone, we are going to see some exponential leaps forward not only for ChatGPT but for a lot of other general purpose machines," he said, adding that the lawmakers were trying to write some basic principles on what makes general purpose such a distinct type of AI.
ChatGPT can generate articles, essays, jokes and even poetry in response to prompts. OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft Corp, made it available to the public for free in November.
EU industry chief Thierry Breton has said new proposed artificial intelligence rules will aim to tackle concerns about the risks around ChatGPT.
Critics of regulatory over-reach however said such a move could lead to increased costs and more compliance pressure for companies, throttling innovation.
"I think if that will be the effect of this Act, then we will be severely missing our objective. And we haven't done our jobs if that's what's going to happen," Tudorache said.
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm and Foo Yun Chee in Brussels; Editing by Nick Macfie)
An interview with AI: What ChatGPT says about itself
Though others have interviewed ChatGPT, I had some anxiety-riddled questions of my own: Will you take my job? Are you sentient? Is the singularity upon us?
These questions are half facetious, half serious. If you've been hidden away and somehow missed the ruckus, here's what all the commotion's about: In November, conversational AI tool ChatGPT took the world by storm, crossing one million users a mere five days after its release, according to its developer, San Francisco's OpenAI. If you are still one of those who think this is all hype, take it up with Microsoft (MSFT). The tech giant announced on Jan. 23 it would invest $10 billion in ChatGPT and its maker OpenAI, a follow-up to the tech giant’s previous $1 billion investment.
To find out how good ChatGPT really is — and if I'll have a job by this time next year — I decided to give it a test drive, attempting to get as close as possible to interviewing it in the way I would any other source. I asked it some questions and made a few requests, from how many jobs it might replace to testing out its songwriting chops.
My first question was simple, more of a "get to know you," the way I would start just about any interview. Immediately, the talk was unconventional, as ChatGPT made it very clear that it’s incapable of being either on- or off-the-record.
Then, we cut to the-chase in terms of the bot's capabilities — and my future. Is ChatGPT taking my job someday? ChatGPT claims humans have little to worry about, but I'm not so sure.
You might want to be a little skeptical about that response, said Stanford University Professor Johannes Eichstaedt. "What you're getting here is the party line." ChatGPT has been programmed to offer up answers that assuage our fears over AI replacing us, but right now there's nothing it can say to change the fact our fear and fascination are walking hand-in-hand." He added: "The fascination [with ChatGPT] is linked to an undercurrent of fear, since this is happening as the cards in the economy are being reshuffled right now.”
Even now, ChatGPT’s practical applications are already emerging, and the chatbot's already being used by app developers and real estate agents.
"Generative AI, I'm telling you, is going to be one of the most impactful technologies of the next decade,” said Berkeley Synthetic CEO Matt White. “There will be implications for call center jobs, knowledge jobs, and entry-level jobs especially.”
LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 03: In this photo illustration, the home page for the OpenAI "ChatGPT" app is displayed on a laptop screen on February 03, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
'Confidently inaccurate'
ChatGPT says it's merely enhancing human tasks, but what are its limitations? There are many, the bot said.
Okay, there are all sorts of things ChatGPT can’t do terribly well. Songwriting, for one, isn't ChatGPT’s strength – that’s how I got my first full-fledged error message, when it failed to generate lyrics for a song that might have been written by now-defunct punk band The Clash.
Though other ChatGPT users have been more successful on this front, it's pretty clear the chatbot isn't a punk-rock legend in the making. It's also a limitation that's easily visible to the naked eye. However, there are tasks in which ChatGPT is more likely to successfully imitate a human’s work – for example, “write an essay about how supply and demand works." This problem’s compounded by the fact that ChatGPT can be “confidently inaccurate” in ways that can smoothly perpetuate factual inaccuracies or bias, said EY Chief Global Innovation Officer Jeff Wong.
“If you ask it to name athletes, it’s more likely to name a man,” Wong said. “If you ask it to tell you a love story, it’ll give you one that’s heteronormative in all likelihood. The biases that are embedded in a dataset that’s based on human history – how do we be responsible about that?”
So, it was natural to ask ChatGPT about ethics. Here's what it said:
I asked Navrina Singh, CEO of Credo AI, to analyze ChatGPT’s answer on this one. Singh said ChatGPT did well, but missed a key issue – AI governance, which she said is the "the practical application of our collective wisdom" and helps “ensure this technology is a tool that is in service to humanity.”
This image was created with the assistance of DALL·E 2, January 2023.
‘How human can you make it?’
ChatGPT’s default responses can sound robotic, like they’re written by a machine – which, well, they are. However, with the right cues you can condition ChatGPT to provide answers that are funny, soulful, or outlandish. In that sense, the possibilities are limitless.
“You need to give ChatGPT directives about personality,” said EY's Wong. “Unless you ask it to have personality, it will give you a basic structure... So, the real question is, ‘How human can you make it?’
"This is a perfectly anthropomorphizing technology, I think because it engages us through the appearance of dialogue with a conversational output, creating the illusion that you're engaging with a mind,” said Lori Witzel, director of thought leadership at TIBCO. “In some ways the experience is reminiscent of fortune-telling devices or ouija boards, things that generate a sense of conversation through the facade of a dialogue."
"There are responses that make you feel like you're getting close to the Turing Test,” Wong added, referencing mathematician Alan Turing’s famed test of a machine’s ability to exhibit human behavior.
However, by ChatGPT's own admission, "passing the Turing Test would require much more" than what it has to give:
‘The problem of other minds’
We're often inclined to think about sentience when it comes to AI. In ChatGPT’s case, we’re still incredibly far off, said University of Toronto Professor Karina Vold. “In a broad sense, sentience means having the capacity to feel,” she said. “For philosophers like me, what it would mean is that ChatGPT can feel and I think there's a lot of reluctance of philosophers to ascribe anything remotely like sentience to ChatGPT – or any existing AI.”
What does ChatGPT think? Here's what it told Yahoo Finance.
So, AI achieving sentience isn't on the table. At a certain point, why bother to ask? From Vold's perspective, it's simple – ChatGPT says it doesn't feel, but it's easy to fixate because we can never be truly sure. This "problem of other minds" applies to how humans interact, too – we can never really know for sure what others around us feel, or if they do at all.
“This reflects our view of minds in general – that outward behavior doesn’t reflect what’s necessarily going on in that system,” Vold added. “[ChatGPT] may appear to be sentient or empathetic or creative, but that’s us making unwarranted assumptions about how the system works, assuming there’s something we can’t see.”
‘It can only be attributable to human error’
For many, ChatGPT conjures up images of sci-fi nightmare movies. It might even bring back memories of Stanley Kubrick’s legendary 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey." For those not familiar with it, the movie's star, supercomputer HAL 9000, kills most of the humans on the spaceship it's operating. Its alibi and defense? HAL says that its conduct "can only be attributable to human error.”
So, a scary question for ChatGPT:
Okay, so it's more advanced than HAL, got it. Not exactly reassuring, but the bottom line is this: Does ChatGPT open up a window into a different, possibly scary future? More importantly, is ChatGPT out to destroy us?
Officially no, but if ChatGPT is ever responsible for a sci-fi nightmare, it will be because we taught it all it knows, including the stories that haunt us, from "2001" to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein." In sci-fi movies, when computers become villains, it's because they're defying their programming, but that's not how computers learn – in our world, AI follows its programming, faithfully.
If you take HAL 9000 at his word – and in this case, I do – the worst of what ChatGPT could do “can only be attributable to human error.”
I gave the last word to ChatGPT, speaking neither on- nor off-the-record.
Plastic-eating bacteria offer new hope for recycling
Saul Elbein Mon, February 6, 2023
Plastic-chomping soil bacteria could find future work in recycling centers, a new study has found.
A study by a team of researchers led by Northwestern University shed light on the metabolic mechanisms that allow a common bacterium, Comamonas testosteroni, to digest plastic, according to findings published on Monday in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.
The researchers hope their findings decrease the need for petroleum-based plastics and lead to new ways of making plastic using renewable resources.
Comamonas testosteroni, which lives in various environments such as soil and sewage sludge, has been known for its ability to break down complex waste products such as synthetic laundry detergents. But researchers also tapped the bacterium’s natural appetite for plastic and lignin (a fibrous, woody plant compound).
Society could exploit soil bacteria as “a naturally occurring resource of biochemical reactions … to help us deal with the accumulating waste on our planet,” said Northwestern microbiologist Ludmilla Aristilde in a statement.
In particular, Aristilde’s lab found a way to get C. testosteroni to break up long molecules of plastic or lignin into smaller chains that can be recombined to make new plastics.
Compared to previous attempts to engineer bacteria to break down plastic waste, this bacterium’s natural ability to digest plastics holds far greater promise for large-scale recycling.
Such a discovery would offer potential salvation for the embattled field of recycling — which has struggled for decades to establish a “circular economy” that could essentially end the need for new fossil fuel production for plastics.
Despite these dismal numbers, the plastics industry has for decades relied on the perception of recycling as both a public obligation and the primary means of fighting plastic pollution, as NPR reported.
That’s remained the message even though most plastic polymers can only be converted into another object once or twice before they fall apart, according to NPR.
Scientists have long hoped that plastic-eating microbes could offer a potential way around this problem. Microbes are intensely creative chemists with the ability to develop and trade new methods of sources of fuel — which, in this case, extends to the hardy, persistent molecules that make up plastic polymers.
Those scientists conjectured that the global overproduction of plastics had spurred the evolution of microbes that could eat them.
Scientists have also found a strain of bacteria, Pseudomonas, that can break down polyurethane, a type of plastic that is difficult to recycle or destroy.
And last year, Scandinavian scientists found a form of lake bacteria that grew more happily on the surfaces of plastic bags than on leaves and twigs.
However, these initiatives have yet to reach the point of mass commercial application.
While it isn’t easy to engineer bacteria for specific purposes, Aristilde said C. testosteroni is an excellent platform to turn against plastic because it can’t easily change its diet to something more digestible.
“C. testosteroni cannot use sugars, period,” she said, noting that these “natural genetic limitations” made the bacteria particularly effective for attacking plastics.
Aristilde believes that soil bacteria could be a valuable resource for dealing with the waste on our planet. Society can exploit the “untapped, unexplored” resource of bacterial chemical innovation to deal with the planet’s rising waste problem.
“The power of microbiology is amazing and could play an important role in establishing a circular economy,” she added.
