Daniel Rourke /stream

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Though defining exactly what art is is a near-impossible art all its own, human involvement seems to be an essential tenet, whether it's in creation or conceptualization.

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Homo sapiens now rivals the great forces of nature. Humanity is a prime driver of change of the Earth system. Industrialised societies alter the planet on a scale equivalent to an…

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We have learned how to manipulate the code of life. Why this hasn’t received more attention is beyond me. Synthetic Biology is a multidisciplinary field that often defies definition. Yet despite…

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BEIJING—A mysterious character named “Master” has swept through China, defeating many of the world’s top players in the ancient strategy game of Go. Master played with inhuman speed, barely pausing to…

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Human-engineered structures and gadgets from cities to cellphones now represent an enormous mass weight of nearly 30 trillion tonnes on the planet, or vastly more than the world’s forests or life…

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There is no sign that 2017 will be much different from 2016. Under Israeli occupation for decades, Gaza will still be the biggest open prison on Earth.

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Pop culture these days is awash in tales of AI run amok, from machines that act like humans to humans in love with machines. The reason seems clear enough: We're anxious…

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We can now quantify how much humans have changed the surface of the planet.

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From Trump to climate change, this multiheaded crisis presages collapse. And there’s no hope of exiting the ‘other side’ if political alternatives are shut down Please don’t read this unless you…

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One of the big trends we’ve seen over the last five years is automation. At the same time, we’re also seeing more intelligence built into tools we already have, like phones…

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Humans invented it—and not that long ago. How and why did the modern world and its unprecedented prosperity begin? Many bookshelves are full of learned tomes by historians, economists, political philosophers…

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The Holocene is dead; welcome to the Anthropocene. Once a controversial stance, the notion that human activities have altered planetary geology adequately enough to warrant the demarcation of another epoch has…

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Through the past few decades of summer blockbuster movies and Silicon Valley products, artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly familiar and sexy, and imbued with a perversely dystopian allure.

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In 1984, the philosopher Aaron Sloman invited scholars to describe ‘the space of possible minds’. Sloman’s phrase alludes to the fact that human minds, in all their variety, are not the…

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Though defining exactly what art is is a near-impossible art all its own, human involvement seems to be an essential tenet, whether it's in creation or conceptualization.

Bookmark

Homo sapiens now rivals the great forces of nature. Humanity is a prime driver of change of the Earth system. Industrialised societies alter the planet on a scale equivalent to an…

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Perhaps you’ve noticed, amid the hot invective and dry mockery of daily events in your social-media feeds, reports of the glaciers melting at each pole.

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BEIJING—A mysterious character named “Master” has swept through China, defeating many of the world’s top players in the ancient strategy game of Go. Master played with inhuman speed, barely pausing to…

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­­The conditions that obtained when life had not yet emerged from the oceans have not subsequently changed a great deal for the cells of the human body, bathed by the primordial…

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There is no sign that 2017 will be much different from 2016. Under Israeli occupation for decades, Gaza will still be the biggest open prison on Earth.

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Glitch art resonates with the increasingly complex love-hate relationship humans have with technology. Errors, and by extension the changes, that can occur within software source code and data can provide a fertile…

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We can now quantify how much humans have changed the surface of the planet.

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From Trump to climate change, this multiheaded crisis presages collapse. And there’s no hope of exiting the ‘other side’ if political alternatives are shut down Please don’t read this unless you…

Bookmark

One of the big trends we’ve seen over the last five years is automation. At the same time, we’re also seeing more intelligence built into tools we already have, like phones…

Bookmark

Humans invented it—and not that long ago. How and why did the modern world and its unprecedented prosperity begin? Many bookshelves are full of learned tomes by historians, economists, political philosophers…

Bookmark

Human-level intelligence is familiar in biological hardware – you’re using it now. Science and technology seem to be converging, from several directions, on the possibility of similar intelligence in non-biological systems.

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In 1984, the philosopher Aaron Sloman invited scholars to describe ‘the space of possible minds’. Sloman’s phrase alludes to the fact that human minds, in all their variety, are not the…

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People might be behind a speciation boom that cancels out the extinction crisis—but that’s not necessarily good news. The tunnels of the London Underground are hot, dark, and damp. Crowds of…