From deciphering burnt Roman scrolls to reading crumbling cuneiform tablets, neural networks could give researchers more data than they’ve had in centuries. (30 Dec 2024) In October 2023, an e-mail pinged onto Federica Nicolardi’s phone with an image that would transform her research forever. It showed a fragment of a papyrus scroll that had been…
(27 Dec 2024) All but one member of the editorial board of the Journal of Human Evolution (JHE), an Elsevier title, have resigned, saying the “sustained actions of Elsevier are fundamentally incompatible with the ethos of the journal and preclude maintaining the quality and integrity fundamental to JHE’s success.” Among other moves, according to the statement,…
(8 Jan 2025) Members of Singapore’s literary and publishing community issued a statement on Tuesday (Jan 7) denouncing Singapore’s National Library Board (NLB) for its current approach towards generative artificial intelligence (AI). The statement expressed concerns over what the group says is NLB’s “uncritical endorsement of generative AI”. It initially had a total of…
(8 Jan 2025) ‘AI Talks with Bone & Joint’ is a new podcast that will turn ground-breaking papers from the journals Bone & Joint Open, Bone & Joint Research and Bone & Joint 360 into bitesize audio summaries. This new service will give their audience a new way to keep up-to-date with the latest articles while multitasking, enabling them to discover which…
(11 Dec 2024) Today marks the official release of AGORA (AI GOvernance and Regulatory Archive), ETO’s latest tool. Previously in beta, AGORA is a living collection of AI-relevant laws, regulations, standards, and other governance documents from the United States and around the world. Plain-English summaries, thematic tags, and a variety of filters help you quickly discover and…
(19 Dec 2024) In 2023, much of the conversation about AI centered around academic integrity and fears that students would use AI as another cheating tool. In 2024, more universities started thinking about adopting these tools, though an Inside Higher Ed survey of chief technology officers showed that just 9 percent said they believed higher education is prepared for AI’s rise. …
(16 Dec 2024) Google Scholar turned 20 last month and Nature wrote a piece with the title “Can Google Scholar survive the AI revolution?” and quoted as saying “Up until recently, Google Scholar was my default search,” says Aaron Tay, an academic librarian at Singapore Management University. It’s still top of his list, but “recently, I started…
(9 Dec 2024) In many cases, AI systems gather external information to use as context when answering a particular query. For example, to answer a question about a medical condition, the system might reference recent research papers on the topic. Even with this relevant context, models can make mistakes with what feels like high doses of…
(27 Nov 2024) ChatGPT search—which is positioned as a competitor to search engines like Google and Bing—launched with a press release from OpenAI touting claims that the company had “collaborated extensively with the news industry” and “carefully listened to feedback” from certain news organizations that have signed content licensing agreements with the company. In contrast to the original rollout…
(4 Dec 2024) AI-assisted document query and summarization services are becoming more common. This post compares the ‘ask a PDF’ outputs of several services. Overall responses were good, with reasonable variation, and no significant hallucinations. It also touches on some characteristics of AI-based services. Lorcan Dempsey shares his observation on such services including Microsoft…