Artificial intelligence used to be the sort of technology most people encountered without thinking about it. It filtered spam, ranked search results, recommended movies and helped cameras recognize faces. Then generative AI arrived in the m...
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Ask a modern AI whether it is frightened, lonely or aware of its own existence and it may produce an answer that sounds uncannily introspective. It can discuss its “thoughts,” describe imagi...
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Few English words have traveled as far politically as “woke.” Depending on who says it, the word can mean alert to racial injustice, broadly progressive, excessively politically correct, per...
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Artificial intelligence has become one of those phrases that seems to describe everything at once. It can mean the system that recommends a song, the software that detects a suspicious bank...
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Seal a cat inside a box with a radioactive atom, a radiation detector and a mechanism capable of releasing poison. Arrange the experiment so that, after an hour, the atom has a 50 percent ch...
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Imagine exchanging messages with an unseen stranger. The replies are witty, coherent and sensitive to context. The stranger remembers what you said earlier, catches a joke, explains a diffic...
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From the ground, Earth is almost too large to understand. Nations fill maps. Mountain ranges divide regions. Oceans separate continents. Political borders seem concrete because they organize...
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An old tree can carry the shape of an injury long after the branch that caused it has disappeared. A swollen collar may surround the site of a lost limb. Growth rings can bend around the old...
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Why Do We See Colors the Way We Do? Why is the sky blue, grass green, or a ripe apple red? These may sound like simple questions, but they open the door to a much deeper mystery: how and...
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Consciousness is something we all experience—it's the feeling of being awake, aware, and able to think, sense, and reflect. Yet when we ask why consciousness exists or how it arises, we run...
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