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Submission + - College Students Flock to a New Major: AI

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "At M.I.T., a new program called 'artificial intelligence and decision-making' is now the second-most-popular undergraduate major," reports the New York Times. "Artificial intelligence is the hot new college major. This semester, more than 3,000 students enrolled in a new college of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity at the University of South Florida in Tampa. At the University of California, San Diego, 150 first-year students signed up for a new A.I. major. And the State University of New York at Buffalo created a stand-alone 'department of A.I. and society,' which is offering new interdisciplinary degrees in fields like 'A.I. and policy analysis'."

The fast popularization of products like ChatGPT, along with skyrocketing valuations of tech giants like the chip maker Nvidia, is helping to drive the campus A.I. boom. Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft have poured billions of dollars into the technology. And this year, Google and Microsoft announced company efforts to train millions of students and adult workers on A.I."

Submission + - Chinese reusable booster explodes during first orbital test (cnn.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A private Chinese space firm successfully sent its Zhuque-3 rocket to orbit but failed in its historic attempt to re-land the rocket booster Wednesday – the first such trial by a Chinese firm as the country’s growing commercial space sector races to catch up with American rivals like SpaceX.

The rocket entered orbit as planned, but its first stage did not successfully return to a landing site, instead crashing down, the company said in a statement.

“An anomaly occurred after the first-stage engine ignited during the landing phase, preventing a soft landing on the designated recovery pad,” the statement said. “The debris landed at the edge of the recovery area, resulting in a failed recovery test.”

Submission + - Poor mental health linked to dark web use (phys.org) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A new Florida Atlantic University study reveals significant mental health differences between dark web users and those who use only the surface web, and sheds light on a group whose involvement in this secretive online space has largely kept them outside the scope of traditional research.

Published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, the study finds that dark web users reported substantially higher levels of depressive symptoms and paranoid thoughts as compared to surface web users. In addition, there were substantial differences between dark web users and surface web users pertaining to suicidal thoughts, non-suicidal self-injury and digital self-harm.

Adults who reported suicidal thoughts had nearly three times greater odds of reporting dark web use. Likewise, those who reported non-suicidal self-injury (e.g. cutting or burning oneself) were nearly five times more likely to report use of the dark web, and individuals who had engaged in digital self-harm (anonymously posting hurtful or negative comments about themselves online) had more than 19 times greater odds of reported dark web use.

"Our findings suggest that many individuals who turn to the dark web may be doing so not just for privacy concerns, but as a reflection of deeper mental health struggles and the possible desire to socialize and engage in information-seeking in a context free of scrutiny that might otherwise be experienced on the surface web or offline," said Meldrum.

Submission + - Why meetings can harm employee well-being (phys.org) 1

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: On average, managers spend 23 hours a week in meetings. Much of what happens in them is considered to be of low value, or even entirely counterproductive. The paradox is that bad meetings generate even more meetings in an attempt to repair the damage caused by previous ones.

A 2015 handbook laid the groundwork for the nascent field of "Meeting Science". Among other things, the research revealed that the real issue may not be the number of meetings, but rather how they are designed, the lack of clarity about their purpose, and the inequalities they (often unconsciously) reinforce.

Faced with what we call meeting madness, the solution is not to eliminate meetings altogether, but to design them better. It begins with a simple but often forgotten question: why are we meeting?

Comment Absolutely pointless (Score 4, Insightful) 36

by AuMatar (#65816395) Attached to: Jony Ive and Sam Altman Say They Finally Have an AI Hardware Prototype

There's only 2 reasons to have a new piece of hardware rather than make this an app on your phone:

1)It adds new sensors that your phone doesn't have (yet) that will enable new functionality. This won't be the case, as there's no usecase for it
2)It adds a new IO methods that aren't possible on the phone. AR goggles might do this. An AI assistant doesn't, it's all audio and voice.

This is basically just going to be replacable with a bluetooth microphone paired to an app on your phone. Which means nobody is going to buy it- even if they can actually find a usecase people want AI for (doubtful).

Comment Re:WhatsApp? (Score 1) 84

Those exist, but divide the view count by number of comments. It will show for the most part thousands of views per comment. That means most people aren't using the social part. I've yet to ever write a youtube comment, but I use it daily. So if you asked me if I use YouTube you'd get a yes, but it's not social media for me. If you limit it to those who read/write comments it would be fair, but I'm not sure they did that.

Comment Re:WhatsApp? (Score 4, Interesting) 84

I'd say the same for YouTube. It's used to watch videos. The number of people who comment on them is minimal compared to the userbase. I'd be very curious to the exact definition of "social media" they use is. I don't think it's what most people consider to be social media.

Comment Re:Good use. (Score 1) 74

Not anything. Especially when dealing with nuclear. There are some parts that once degraded cannot be safely replaced. For example, the containment unit. And others where making a new one makes more economic sense than replacing even when technically possible. What state this plant is in I have no idea, and am not qualified to have an opinion on. I just hope experts are making the decision based on economics and power requirements and not politics.

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