Author: TheConversation

By Emily Midkiff, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Leadership, and Professional Practice, University of North Dakota Science fiction can lead people to be more cautious about the potential consequences of innovations. It can help people think critically about the ethics of science. Researchers have also found that sci-fi serves as a positive influence on how people view science. Science fiction scholar Istvan Csicsery-Ronay calls this “science-fictional habits of mind.” Scientists and engineers have reported that their childhood encounters with science fiction framed their thinking about the sciences. Thinking critically about science and technology is an important part of education in...

By Ravi Sen, Associate Professor of Information and Operations Management, Texas A&M University Google, Microsoft, and others boast that generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT will make searching the internet better than ever for users. For example, rather than having to wade through a sea of URLs, users will be able to just get an answer combed from the entire internet. There are also some concerns with the rise of AI-fueled search engines, such as the opacity over where information comes from, the potential for “hallucinated” answers and copyright issues. But one other consequence is that I believe it...

By Joseph L. Kimmel, Part-Time Faculty Member (Theology Department), Boston College Jesus has been portrayed in many different ways: from a prophet who alerts his audience to the world’s imminent end to a philosopher who reflects on the nature of life. But no one has called Jesus an internet guru – that is, until now. In his latest role as an “AI Jesus,” Jesus stands, rather awkwardly, as a white man, dressed in a hooded brown-and-white robe, available 24/7 to answer any and all questions on his Twitch channel, ask_jesus. Questions posed to this chatbot Jesus can range from...

By Amelia Tseng, Assistant Professor in Spanish and Linguistics, American University A young Latina mother I was interviewing once laughed uncomfortably as she described her sons’ embarrassment when put on the spot by older Latinos. They would speak to her sons in Spanish, before quickly adding in the same language, “How awful! You don’t understand me in Spanish?” Her sons would then sheepishly reply – in Spanish – “Yes, I understand. But I don’t speak it.” Despite our different backgrounds, her story hit close to home. I grew up in Arizona as the child of Chinese immigrants, learning to...

By Michael Scott Bryant, Professor of History and Legal Studies, Bryant University Late in 1938, Nazis across Germany attacked Jews and their homes, businesses and places of worship and arrested about 30,000 Jewish men. The attacks became known as Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” for the streets littered with broken glass from the vandalism. But the pogrom of November 9 to 10, 1938, went beyond the broken glass of Jewish-owned shops on the streets of German cities and has rightly been called a major turning point in the history of the Holocaust. As a scholar specializing in the...

By Mark R. Reiff, Research Affiliate in Legal and Political Philosophy, University of California, Davis Former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric has regularly bordered on the incitement of violence. Lately, however, it has become even more violent. Yet both the press and the public have largely just shrugged their shoulders. As a political philosopher who studies extremism, I believe people should be more worried about this. Mark Milley, the outgoing chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, is guilty of “treason,” Trump said in September 2023, just for reassuring the Chinese that the U.S. had no plans to attack in...