Do AIs need a good sleep to function well?
It seems possible that all animals with brains need to sleep and dream or, like us, they would presumably lose touch with reality. Perhaps the same is true of artificial intelligence? Researchers might like to build in periods of enforced inactivity or who knows what AI might do (16/23 December 2023, p 44).
Use CO<SUB>2</SUB>, not warming, as gauge of climate change
Why chase the theoretical date of a global temperature rise of 1.5掳C when carbon dioxide levels can be measured in real time anywhere?
Adopting temperature rise as a measure of the climate emergency is akin to using rates of skin cancer as a measure of the extent of the ozone hole. CO2 is the issue and failing to factor emissions into goods and services is, and always has been, the problem that has got us into this mess (9 December 2023, p 10).
Worms can save us from pointless leaf raking
At last, an advocate in James Wong for leaving nature to deal with leaf fall on your lawn. I would like to add that worm species are also important recyclers. In the UK at least, anecic earthworms form vertical burrows and drag leaves underground. No need to do any work ourselves (9 December 2023, p 44). I never do!
Collapse of oil states would spark major problems
The collapse of national income for states reliant on coal, oil and gas production and export could lead to frightening scenarios (9 December 2023, p 11).
The problem of climate refugees fleeing countries or areas such as Pacific islands due to devastating climate change impacts are very likely to be compounded by many millions of people displaced by economic collapse and consequent privation, as income from fossil fuels dries up. Future COP climate meetings must consider this imminent problem and devise means of economic support.
Modern society seems pretty fragile to me
I sincerely hope that Peter Turchin is right in his predictions of the growing resilience of modern-day societies, but I fear that few of the civilisations of the past 5000 years on which he has based his conclusions would have had communication networks that could spread panic in minutes, along with just-in-time supply chains that result in bare shelves after an accident on a major road (9 December 2023, p 36).
Combine that with successive governments whose planning for a pandemic is to hope one never happens, and I suggest we have a very fragile supply infrastructure.
To find signs of alien life, look closer to home
If we are trying to find alien life, why go to all the trouble of searching for biosignatures on remote exoplanets? Several novelists have pointed out that, if aliens are as enthusiastic tourists as we are, they will leap at the chance of visiting Earth, where, by pure coincidence, the sun and moon are about the same size in the sky. This produces the spectacle of annular solar eclipses (25 November 2023, p 40).
So, just go to such an event and watch for suspicious characters, in particular those staying apart from the Earthlings and perhaps wearing baggy clothes to disguise their non-human shape. They might also be green.
Quite prepared to cough up extra for hidden costs
Graham Lawton’s article on the true cost of goods when emissions are factored in led me to wonder about the true cost of a copy of 快猫短视频. The only applicable research I could find was done in Sweden by the KTH Royal Institute of Technology’s Centre for Sustainable Communications in 2007. It compared print and e-newspapers. Using this, I came up with a figure of about 2 kilograms of carbon dioxide per printed copy of 快猫短视频. The cost of carbon can be anything from 拢5 to 拢200 per tonne depending on the source. Using an average of 拢100 per tonne would add 20 pence to each printed copy of 快猫短视频. I would happily pay that, so long as it went towards carbon offsetting (2 December 2023, p 40).
I really think sentient robots are a bad idea (1)
Has Josh Bongard considered the consequences of embodied AI if he does manage to develop artificially intelligent robots that can feel and think with true, human-like understanding?
The present level of AI already raises many serious problems 鈥� social, economic and psychological. The primary safeguard is that you can turn it off if things are going wrong. Could you turn off a sentient robot? This project seems to cross a line that suggests robots will become feeling beings in a totally new and disturbingly unrestricted sense (9 December 2023, p 40).
I really think sentient robots are a bad idea (2)
Having read the call to develop embodied AI, I couldn’t help but wonder if there were only some way that two ordinary people 鈥� a man and woman for instance 鈥� could get together in the privacy of their own homes and undertake some kind of experiment that resulted in a fully functioning intelligence, body included.
This could even be the breakthrough needed for general intelligence, not to mention consciousness. Get to work scientists. We can work out how to make them corporate slaves later.
Why were the Swiss so prone to long covid?
You report that by far the highest known rate of long covid has been in Switzerland, a wealthy country with a northern temperate climate. This rate variation points to unknown factors being involved in developing long covid. Does some factor put certain wealthy Westerners at greater risk? Intriguingly, among the earliest recorded outbreaks of the similar illness myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS, was (2 December 2023, p 36).
For the record
The earliest supernovae were glimpsed in the galaxy GS-z12 (2 December 2023, p 13).