‘The steroid Olympics fell short of its own finishing line’
Anjana Ahuja at the Financial Times
The Enhanced Games in Las Vegas “were informally billed as the ‘steroid Olympics’” and the “edgy experiment was meant to shatter world records and force a rethink of what it means to be the strongest or fastest human on Earth,” says Anjana Ahuja. But the “thing that was most pumped up was the marketing.” The games were “performance enhancement as a kind of DEI initiative — and one that mostly served to make current ‘non-enhanced’ Olympians look more superhuman.”
‘The Mali crisis could have a dangerous spillover effect’
Mohamed El Hajj Mahmoud El Talib at Al Jazeera
It “has been almost nine months since rebel groups imposed a fuel blockade on Mali’s capital Bamako” and the “present crisis is compounded by the weakening of the Malian state following the 2021 coup and foreign intervention,” says Mohamed El Hajj Mahmoud El Talib. In the “absence of any serious effort to address it, instability could spill over across the whole Sahel region.” The “ongoing humanitarian crisis could trigger a major migration wave toward Europe and North America.”
‘What if some fears can’t be conquered?’
Katie Arnold-Ratliff at The Cut
When “undertaken with the help of a clinician,” exposure therapy’s “success rate is well-known to be high — estimated at up to 90%,” says Katie Arnold-Ratliff. But “‘success’ in this context means feeling a reduction in fear upon completion of the program, a definition that belies a difficult and underpublicized reality of ET: its positive effects frequently wane with time.” Though “few therapists lead with this truth, many patients chip away at their phobia for years, not days or weeks.”
‘There’s a simple reason why I’m sure AI won’t achieve consciousness’
Noah Giansiracusa at Slate
AI chatbots “provide a convincing illusion of consciousness, but we know they are just a sequence of lifeless math calculations,” says Noah Giansiracusa. These chatbots are “estimated to have trillions of parameters” but “they are mere formulas.” It is “safe to say that a math formula written on a sheet of paper is not a conscious entity.” There is “no consciousness to discover here when you break down what is inside the machine that is AI.”
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