“Rare earths,” a list of metals with futuristic names such as yttrium, lanthanum, or neodymium (and 14 others), are used everywhere: from the construction of rockets and turbines to the …
Mapping
Which country the map in the photo below corresponds to is difficult for anyone to guess. It is Bangladesh. So, one would assume it is some kind of meteorological map. …
the armed parade : robot, work, ideology
In our parts, the issue is not burning. High unemployment but limited (compared to other places) use of information technology and its derivatives in the secondary sector. Internationally, however, it …
The “bad eye” and the blessing
Belief in the bad eye, in “counter-magic”, charms and blessings is a hallmark of the primitive mind and of humanity’s earliest, superstitious attempt to “protect” itself from dark forces believed …
At a glance
Would it ever cross your mind that something as commonplace as “I’m looking for my keys—where the hell did I leave them?” could become the subject of “scientific research”? No. …
Turing’s test: notes on a genealogy of “intelligence”
putting consciousness on the anatomical table If one takes stock of the declarations of scientists (and their funders), the last terra incognita that the techno-scientific spirit is called upon to …
far-right misinformation
When the far right tries to “expose” the “system’s conspiracies” and spews racism. According to the text, the photo is staged, the “refugees” (in quotation marks) are plants and have …
Sewing automata
Can a robotic machine (or a team of such machines) sew clothes? Anyone who has even an amateur relationship with sewing knows that fabrics have lots of whims. Sometimes two …
genetic predisposition; no, thank you!
Are we our genes? A large part of the so-called “scientific community” continues to support this view, albeit using statistical tricks. DNA is our “book of life,” written with just …
Ephemeral genes
It is one of those scientific procedures that (with our limited minds) we would hardly consider truly “scientific”: first (some claim) they found the genes for A or B, and …
Artificial racism
On the 23rd of last March, Microsoft launched an ambitious experiment on machines’ ability to learn and evolve mentally in real time. The goal of the experiment was to show …
eterna
Some extol the “intellectual” capabilities of machines, others make sure to harvest the crowd-intellectual capabilities. Or, more accurately, collective human intelligence; they can call it that (for now) without risk. …