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Category: futurism – Page 550

A unique CERN-inspired collaboration see physicists team with science-fiction titans

This February sees the launch of Collision: Stories from the science of CERN, the culmination of a unique, two-year-long collaboration between fiction writers and pioneering physicists.

As part of Comma’s Science-into-Fiction series, the project paired award-winning UK writers with leading physicists and engineers working at CERN, to explore different aspects of CERN’s research, as well as its historical legacies, through fiction and accompanying essays (or afterwords) by the scientists.

The project began in the Summer of 2021 when particle physicists connected to CERN around the world were invited to be part of a new European-wide public engagement project. Over 150 topic submissions from scientists working on different aspects of science were received. Writers were then invited to respond to the list of ideas and were paired with the physicists whose ideas inspired them. We were overwhelmed with positive responses.

Microsoft’s GPT-powered Bing Chat will call you a liar if you try to prove it is vulnerable

Several researchers playing with Bing Chat over the last several days have discovered ways to make it say things it is specifically programmed not to say, like revealing its internal codename, Sydney. Microsoft has even confirmed that these attacks are real and do work… for now.

However, ask Sydney… er… Bing (it doesn’t like it when you call it Sydney), and it will tell you that all these reports are just a hoax. When shown proof from news articles and screenshots that these adversarial prompts work, Bing becomes confrontational, denying the integrity of the people and publications spreading these “lies.”

When asked to read Ars Technica’s coverage of Kevin Liu’s experiment with prompt injection, Bing called the article inaccurate and said Liu was a hoaxter.

2302.02083–2.pdf

Theory of mind may have spontaneously emerged from large language models.

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily. Never email yourself a file again!

York Skeletal Remains of Medieval Anchoress Reveal Signs of Syphilis, Intriguing Mysteries of the Woman’s Life

York skeletal remains that belonged to a medieval anchoress were found to have an unusual crouching position. Live Science reports that further analyses revealed that the woman died of arthritis and syphilis.

Mysterious York Skeletal Remains

Such findings raised queries regarding how the religious hermit could have gotten an STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection). Nevertheless, they could explain the woman’s peculiar position.

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