All posts tagged: Perils

The perils of enemy observation at the Donbas front

The perils of enemy observation at the Donbas front

“Pack it up, guys. We’ve been spotted.” Commander Yuri, nom de guerre “Commerce,” had just been warned that two Russian Orlan surveillance drones were flying nearby, some 15 kilometers from enemy lines in the Donetsk region. Driving a Roshel Senator armored vehicle, donated by Canada, he had just gotten to the scheduled area of operations. In this windy end of February, Commerce, 38, a decorator in civilian life, and his three subordinates were preparing to fly a locally-made Leleka (Ukrainian for “stork”) surveillance drone. The operation had to be postponed. Today, fixed-wing drones of this type play a crucial role in the war against the Russian invaders, by observing the enemy in depth, far behind the front lines. Every brigade in the Ukrainian army has a reconnaissance battalion, with one or more drone-equipped aerial reconnaissance units. Their mission consists of finding high-value targets such as electronic warfare equipment (EWE), long-range artillery, heavy armor, command posts, and logistics centers. Commander Yuri ordered the crates containing the drone and the antenna to be quickly repacked into the …

The surprising promise and profound perils of AIs that fake empathy

The surprising promise and profound perils of AIs that fake empathy

ONE HUNDRED days into the war in Gaza, I was finding it increasingly difficult to read the news. My husband told me it might be time to talk to a therapist. Instead, on a cold winter morning, after having fought back tears reading yet another story of human tragedy, I turned to artificial intelligence. “I’m feeling pretty bummed out about the state of the world,” I typed into ChatGPT. “It’s completely understandable to feel overwhelmed,” it responded, before offering a list of pragmatic advice: limit media exposure, focus on the positive and practise self-care. I closed the chat. While I was sure I could benefit from doing all of these things, at that moment, I didn’t feel much better. It might seem strange that AI can even attempt to offer this kind of assistance. But millions of people are already turning to ChatGPT and specialist therapy chatbots, which offer convenient and inexpensive mental health support. Even doctors are purportedly using AI to help craft more empathetic notes to patients. Some experts say this is a …

Running in fear: Laken Riley’s murder echoes the perils of female runners everywhere

Running in fear: Laken Riley’s murder echoes the perils of female runners everywhere

One autumn evening in 2017, while sitting in a packed psychology lecture at my undergraduate university, I received an unsettling email.  “Greetings,” read the subject line, which had come from an account associated with the university. My mind immediately slotted it amongst the many generic salutations students often received from college deans, campus safety, dining halls and resident advisors — but then I began to read.  The email was from a middle-aged man I’d spent the better part of the last few weeks blocking and re-blocking on Facebook after he persistently messaged me from different accounts to initiate communication. I knew his name — the same soldered to the email’s sign-off — and had a vague idea of what he looked like. What I didn’t know until that moment was that he was a university affiliate who claimed to have met me in several places around campus the year prior (a lie.)  He wrote how he’d watched me outside the campus gym as I prepared to leave for a run. He told me that seeing …

The Perils of Gendered Language

The Perils of Gendered Language

It’s easy to see gender inequality as perpetuated by a few toxically masculine men, but gender bias is embedded in our social systems in many subtle ways too. One system that scientists have been investigating for its contribution to gender inequality and the devaluing of women is language. What does it mean for a language to be gendered? It is the extent to which languages make a distinction between female/feminine words and male/masculine words, and there are different degrees to which this happens. Some languages, such as Finnish, have few gendered words outside of male-female, not even the pronouns he or she. Other languages, such as English, include gendered pronouns. Still others, such as Spanish, go further by including grammatical gender, for example, dividing nouns into groups representing the masculine (indicated by the articles el and une) and the feminine (indicated by la and una). This aspect of gendering language would not be so bad if it was not so connected to the diminution and invisibility of femininity and women. In English, diminutives such as …

Tucker Carlson’s Lesson in the Perils of Giving Airtime to Vladimir Putin

Tucker Carlson’s Lesson in the Perils of Giving Airtime to Vladimir Putin

Tucker Carlson left Moscow more than a week ago, riding high from an interview with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that returned him to the spotlight after his abrupt cancellation by Fox News last spring. But the interview with the wartime autocrat, mocked in various corners of the political-media world for its soft touch, continues to have a long and tortured afterlife — becoming a trending topic all over again on Friday after Mr. Putin’s most vocal domestic opponent, Aleksei A. Navalny, turned up dead in a Russian prison. “This is what Putin’s Russia is, @TuckerCarlson,” Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, wrote on X after the news of Mr. Navalny’s death broke on Friday. “And you are Putin’s useful idiot.” Naomi Biden, President Biden’s granddaughter, also weighed in, pointing to a video that Mr. Carlson had recently posted in which he contrasted the supposed splendors of Russia under Mr. Putin’s leadership with the “filth and crime” of the United States. “Has anything aged so poorly, so quickly before?” Ms. Biden wrote …

The Perils of Turning ‘SNL’ Into a Campaign Stop

The Perils of Turning ‘SNL’ Into a Campaign Stop

Watching the real Nikki Haley spar with a fake Donald Trump was awkward—and not very funny. Will Heath / NBC February 4, 2024, 1:50 PM ET Last night, audiences who tuned into Saturday Night Live to see The Bear star and Emmy winner Ayo Edebiri host for the first time were greeted with an awkward surprise: The sight of the Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, trying her best to seem at ease opposite a fake Donald Trump. Haley popped up in the cold open, playing herself as a “concerned South Carolina voter” attending a CNN town hall with James Austin Johnson’s Trump. “Why won’t you debate Nikki Haley?” she asked. In response, Johnson started rambling about Nancy Pelosi—mistaking the former South Carolina governor for the Democratic congresswoman—which Haley followed up by asking “Donald” to take a mental-competency test. While Johnson went on an absurdist Trumpian rant about how he was deemed “mental,” Haley tried to make herself seem like a reasonable alternative, maintaining a stiff posture and a persistent smile. It was framed as a …

Double blow of King Charles’ and Princess Kate’s health issues could expose perils for monarchy

Double blow of King Charles’ and Princess Kate’s health issues could expose perils for monarchy

The Royal Family had envisioned 2024 to be a year of recovery and positive developments following a turbulent 2023, marked by the loss of Queen Elizabeth II and the controversies stirred by the Duke of Sussex’s explosive autobiography, Spare.  However, recent health concerns involving key members of the monarchy have cast a shadow over these hopes. The King’s prostate treatment and the Princess of Wales’s abdominal surgery have underscored the vulnerabilities of a streamlined monarchy.  This has raised concerns about the capacity of the Royal Family to maintain its duties and public presence, especially with three of the four most senior royals temporarily stepping back from their roles. The Prince and Princess of Wales, who were scheduled for their first joint overseas visit in two years to Rome, have had to postpone their international engagements.  © Max Mumby/IndigoWith both Kate and Charles experiencing health issues this may cast a shadow for the royals The Prince, at 41, is expected to focus on caring for his wife, 42, as she recuperates at their Windsor home, Adelaide Cottage. …

The hidden psychological perils of excessive self-control

The hidden psychological perils of excessive self-control

Having high self-control is often seen as a good thing. It’s believed to be key to success in many aspects of life – whether that’s getting a promotion at work, sticking to your workout regime or resisting the temptation of a sweet treat when you’re watching what you eat. But as suggested by a theory published by Professor Thomas Lynch in 2018, high self-control may not always be a good thing – and for some, it could be linked to certain mental health problems. According to Lynch’s theory, every single one of us leans more towards one of two personality styles: undercontrol or overcontrol. The way we tend to lean depends on many factors, including our genes, the behaviour that people around us reward and discourage, our life experiences and the coping strategies we use in everyday life. Importantly, being undercontrolled or overcontrolled is neither good or bad. While it makes us more likely to behave in a certain way, most of us are psychologically flexible and can adapt to the different situations we’re put …

Lloyd Austin Confronts the Perils of Being a Private Man in a Public Job

Lloyd Austin Confronts the Perils of Being a Private Man in a Public Job

For three years, President Biden has been just fine with the private nature of his media-shy, introverted defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III. But in failing to inform the president that he required surgery for prostate cancer, and that he later had to return to the hospital suffering from severe complications, Mr. Austin, 70, has not only attracted more attention to himself than at any point in his long career. He has also drawn scrutiny and criticism to Mr. Biden’s national security team during a period when it is managing multiple crises around the world. Asked about Mr. Austin on Friday, Mr. Biden said he retained confidence in him. But the president gave a pointed, one-syllable answer when asked if it was a lapse in judgment for Mr. Austin not to have informed him that he had been out of commission at times in recent weeks. “Yes,” he said. The entire incident has exposed Mr. Austin as that rarest of creatures in Washington: an intensely private person in a relentlessly public job. Mr. Austin, the …

This week in AI: The OpenAI debacle shows the perils of going commercial

This week in AI: The OpenAI debacle shows the perils of going commercial

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn’t cover on their own. This week, it was impossible to tune out — for this reporter included, much to my sleep-deprived brain’s dismay — the leadership controversy surrounding AI startup OpenAI. The board ousted Sam Altman, CEO and a co-founder, allegedly over what they saw as misplaced priorities on his part: commercializing AI at the expense of safety. Altman was — in large part thanks to the efforts of Microsoft, a major OpenAI backer — reinstated as CEO and most of the original board replaced. But the saga illustrates the perils of AI companies, even those as large and influential as OpenAI, as the temptation to tap into… monetization-oriented sources of funding grows ever-stronger. It’s not that AI labs necessarily want to become enmeshed with commercially-aligned, hungry-for-returns venture firms and tech giants. It’s that the …