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Technology and media

A kindergarten-age child plays with a padlock and key at a white table

Thinking and intelligence

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Innovative three-year-olds expose the limits of AI chatbots

New experiments show that very young children are better at solving creative puzzles than ChatGPT and other AI models

by Shayla Love

People of different ages and genders sitting on park benches, some chatting, some looking at their smartphones

Technology and media

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The illusion of closeness: how social media redefined respect

As we share and like and post, have our notions of restraint transformed so profoundly that all dignity becomes abandoned?

by Lutif Ali Halo

A girl is shown reading from a device in her hand, her face illuminated by the screen’s light

Technology and media

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What does switching from paper to screens mean for how we read?

It’s well established that we absorb less well when reading on screen. But why? And can we do something to improve it?

by Lili Yu, Sixin Liao, Jan-Louis Kruger & Erik D Reichle

A man in a light suit stands with a smiling woman while a faceless figure with exposed circuitry stands in the background.

Technology and media

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Chatbots remind us that natural conversation is artificial too

People fret about the authenticity of AI chatbots but precisely the same issues confront everyday exchanges between humans

by Larry S McGrath

Silhouette of a lorry driver drinking from a bottle inside the cabin at dusk.

Work and vocation

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Why AI surveillance at work leads to perverse outcomes

In the name of efficiency, workplace AI technologies shift burdens long-assumed by employers onto workers

by Karen Levy

A person walks past a billboard under a bridge, featuring an image of eyes superimposed on a sky with clouds, next to a café entrance.

Work and vocation

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Kafka warned us: surveillance turns the watched into watchers

Surveillance changes us in powerful ways, as Franz Kafka warned. Neither the watched nor their watcher escapes unscathed

by George Alliger

A bowl containing a mobile phone, keychains, earrings, a key, and other small miscellaneous items.

Technology and media

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The pleasure, the pain and the politics of a digital detox

Studying why and how people take digital-media breaks can reveal what individuals and societies value in unmediated spaces

by Trine Syvertsen

A sepia-toned photograph of a man with a moustache, overlaid with handwritten text in cursive script.

Stories and literature

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Remembrance of telephony past: what Proust made of the phone

For Marcel Proust, the telephone gave distance a sensory form and allowed new ways to experience absence more profoundly

by John Attridge