Author: TheConversation

By Robert Mahari, JD-PhD Student, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Jessica Fjeld, Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School; and Ziv Epstein, PhD Student in Media Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) In 2022, an AI-generated work of art won the Colorado State Fair’s art competition. The artist, Jason Allen, had used Midjourney, a generative AI system trained on art scraped from the internet, to create the piece. The process was far from fully automated. Allen went through some 900 iterations over 80 hours to create and refine his submission. In 2022, an AI-generated work of art won...

By James R. Elliott, Professor of Sociology, Rice University; and Zheye (Jay) Wang, Senior Spatial Research Analyst, Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Rice University After Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans in 2021, Kirt Talamo, a fourth-generation Louisianan, decided it was time to go. He sold his flooded home, purchased his grandmother’s former house on New Orleans’ west bank, which had not flooded, and moved in. It felt good to be back within its familiar walls, but his mind was on the future. “My other house wasn’t supposed to flood, and now insurance costs are going through the roof; it’s...

By Katherine Drabiak, Associate Professor of Health Law, Public Health Law and Medical Ethics, University of South Florida Over the past year, cities across the United States have unveiled new policy plans to address homelessness amid rising concerns about health and crime – for homeless people themselves, as well as for surrounding communities. Notably, several proposals include civil commitment, also referred to as involuntary treatment, for people with severe mental illness or substance use disorders. In November 2022, for example, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan to use mental health laws to facilitate involuntary treatment when...

By Cyril Tarquinio, Professeur de psychologie clinique, Université de Lorraine Those who have experienced the horrors of war see their lives clearly delineated between a “before” and an “after.” This singular ordeal does not, as is often believed, mean that it is impossible to live, but generally forces people to live in a very different way. The disruption of the life process that results from this situation causes upheavals that each individual faces by drawing onto their capacity to adapt. But not everyone reacts in the same way. To describe the mechanisms at work, health psychologists have coined the...

By Ritika Prasad, Associate Professor of History, University of North Carolina – Charlotte A devastating rail crash that left almost 300 people dead has refocused international attention on the importance of railways in the lives of Indians. To many Western observers, images of men and women crammed into overcrowded cars serve as a metaphor for modern India. Take, for example, a report by German newspaper Der Spiegel on India’s population surpassing China’s. Published just weeks before the accident in Odisha province on June 2, the now much-criticized cartoon depicted a shabby Indian train crammed with passengers rushing past a...

By Svetla Ben-Itzhak, Assistant Professor of Space and International Relations, Air University Headlines proclaiming the rise of a new “space race” between the United States and China have become common in news coverage following many of the exciting launches in recent years. Experts have pointed to China’s rapid advancements in space as evidence of an emerging landscape where China is directly competing with the U.S. for supremacy. This idea of a space race between China and the U.S. sounds convincing given the broader narrative of China’s rise, but how accurate is it? As a professor who studies space and...