Audiologists suspect noise-cancelling headphones are affecting youngsters’ brain development. CC-licensed photo by TE3JMAN on Flickr.
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A selection of 10 links for you. I’m listening. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.
AI agents will outmaneuver salespeople by optimizing persuasion • Big Think
Louis Rosenberg:
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Most people don’t realize this, but each of the four ghosts [in Pac-Man] was programmed with a different “personality.” Good players can observe their actions and learn to predict their behaviors. For example, the red ghost (Blinky) was designed with a “pursuer” personality that charges directly towards you. The pink ghost (Pinky), on the other hand, was given an “ambusher” personality that predicts where you’re going and tries to get there first. As a result, if you rush directly at Pinky, you can use her personality against her, causing her to actually turn away from you.
I reminisce because in 1980 a skilled human could observe these AI agents, decode their unique personalities, and use those insights to outsmart them. Now, 45 years later, the tides are about to turn. Like it or not, AI agents will be soon deployed that are tasked with decoding your personality so they can use those insights to optimally influence you.
In other words, we are all about to become unwitting players in “The Game of Humans” and it will be the AI agents trying to earn the high score. I mean this literally: Most AI systems are designed to maximize a “reward function” that earns points for achieving objectives. This allows AI systems to quickly find optimal solutions. Unfortunately, without regulatory protections, we humans will likely become the objective that AI agents are tasked with optimizing.
I am most concerned about the conversational agents that will engage us in friendly dialog throughout our daily lives. …Unless there are clear restrictions, these agents will be designed to conversationally probe us for information so they can characterize our temperaments, tendencies, personalities, and desires, and use those traits to maximize their persuasive impact when working to sell us products, pitch us services, or convince us to believe misinformation.
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Not that humans don’t do this already, but the point about the AI agents is that they would be indefatigable.
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Audiologists raise concern over headphone use in young people • BBC News
Hannah Karpel:
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Sophie, a 25-year-old administration assistant from London, who is used to being told she doesn’t listen, zones out, or is “a bit ditsy”.
“Even though I can hear that there are noises going on, I can’t listen to where the noise is coming from. I know it’s the person’s voice, I just can’t really compute it quick enough,” she said.
After a hearing test came back normal, Sophie met a private audiologist for further testing. She was eventually diagnosed with auditory processing disorder, external (APD), a neurological condition where the brain finds it difficult to understand sounds and spoken words.
Her audiologist and others in England are now calling for more research into whether the condition is linked to overuse of noise-cancelling headphones.
Having grown up on a peaceful farm in the countryside, it wasn’t until a few years ago when Sophie started university in London that she noticed a change in her hearing – specifically trouble identifying where a sound was coming from.
She rarely attended her university lectures in person, instead opting to watch them online and with subtitles.
“All the words sounded like gibberish when I was in the actual lecture, and I was trying to hear,” she said. It affected her social life too and Sophie would leave bars and restaurants early because of the “overwhelming noise”.
…Claire Benton, vice-president of the British Academy of Audiology, suggests that by blocking everyday sounds such as cars beeping, there is a possibility the brain can “forget” to filter out the noise.
“You have almost created this false environment by wearing those headphones of only listening to what you want to listen to. You are not having to work at it,” she said.
“Those more complex, high-level listening skills in your brain only really finish developing towards your late teens. So, if you have only been wearing noise-cancelling headphones and been in this false world for your late teens then you are slightly delaying your ability to process speech and noise,” Benton suggests.
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Meta’s awful ‘Horizon Worlds’ ad helps explain $70bn metaverse loss • Forbes
Paul Tassi:
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This is supposed to be a “pivotal” year for the metaverse, according to the company that spearheaded the concept, Meta, even renaming the entire company after the idea. But if you want to check in on its flagship product, Horizon Worlds, you will quickly understand why this division of the company has lost nearly $70 billion over the last few years.
There is a new ad for Horizon Worlds, where the characters have at least grown legs now compared to its original iteration, but it is still exceptionally far off from the large-scale overhauls Mark Zuckerberg previously promised, and is about as awkward as a virtual world can get. The idea here is about a “Valentine-less support group”.
Looking at something like this, which is apparently the current state of Meta’s VR universe, it is absolutely impossible to imagine a world where this kind of thing is ever going to succeed. And it almost seems like Meta might even know that at this point. Here’s what Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said last month as the year began:
“We have the best portfolio of products we’ve ever had in market and are pushing our advantage by launching half a dozen more AI powered wearables. We need to drive sales, retention, and engagement across the board but especially in MR. And Horizon Worlds on mobile absolutely has to break out for our long term plans to have a chance.”
How on earth could this break out in any meaningful way on any device? Who is something like this actually for? Even VR enthusiasts are likely to want to play actual video games rather than…whatever this is, and VR remains a relatively niche market as a whole. This is Meta’s grand vision of a shared universe, PS2-era characters flailing their arms around in unfunny ads.
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Hard to know what Meta expects to come out of this – especially given the return-to-work drive going on now. This feels like a division that ought to be bracing itself for some big cuts.
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Vance’s real warning to Europe • Financial Times
Gideon Rachman:
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Trump clearly intends to cut a deal on Ukraine with Putin over the heads of Zelenskyy and the Europeans. That could have tragic consequences for Ukraine, which may soon be asked to accept loss of territory without security guarantees for the future. The alternative would be to try to fight on without American help.
The implications for the rest of Europe are also alarming. Putin wants Nato troops removed from the whole of the former Soviet empire. European officials believe Trump is likely to agree to withdraw US troops from the Baltics and perhaps further west, leaving the EU vulnerable to a Russian army that Nato governments warn is preparing for a larger conflict beyond Ukraine.
It is clear that the US can no longer be regarded as a reliable ally for the Europeans. But the Trump administration’s political ambitions for Europe mean that, for now, America is also an adversary — threatening democracy in Europe and even European territory, in the case of Greenland.
So what to do? Europeans need to start preparing fast for the day when the US security guarantee to Europe is definitively removed. That must involve building up autonomous defence industries. It should also mean a European mutual defence pact, outside Nato, that extends beyond the EU — to include Britain, Norway and others.
Trump will use any leverage he has to force America’s European allies into compliance on issues from trade and security to their domestic politics. That means that Europe must now start the painful process of “de-risking” its relationship with the US, looking for areas of dangerous dependence on America and stripping them out of the system.
Entrusting critical infrastructure to Musk would create a huge new vulnerability. The Trump administration will also put enormous pressure on Europeans to buy more American weaponry. Under current circumstances that would be folly.
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As Lenin said, there are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen. We’re in the latter. This is a colossal, tectonic shift which won’t be fixed by whoever succeeds Trump, and anyway that change is four years away. More spending on defence; new geopolitical tensions.
On the same topic, there’s this: “The US changes sides?“
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Chinese scientists develop ‘injection’ to make smartphone and EV batteries last longer • South China Morning Post
Zhang Tong:
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The battery is considered to have expired when the supply of lithium ions runs low – for example some electric car batteries have a lifespan of around 1,500 charge cycles – but other components in the battery still remain in good working order after this happens.
This insight prompted the two lead researchers, Gao Yue and Peng Huisheng from Fudan University’s macromolecular science department, to see if they could revive a battery by replenishing the supply of active lithium ions.
To do so they had to break away from traditional battery design principles and create a lithium carrier molecule, which could be injected into the battery to manage and control the lithium ions.
But the carrier molecule would need to meet a complex set of requirements, including the ability to dissolve well in the electrolyte and participate in reactions without damaging the battery’s original environment, as well as having a high degree of compatibility with various active materials and electrolytes.
There was no record of such a molecule and it took the research team four years to identify the ideal candidate: a substance known as trifluoromethylsulfonate lithium.
It also proved to be both cost-effective and easy to synthesise as well as being compatible with different battery types.
“A commercially used lithium iron phosphate battery, after undergoing the treatment, retained its initial health after 12,000 charge cycles, compared with the usual lifespan of 2,000 cycles,” Gao told state broadcaster CCTV on Thursday.
“The battery only lost 4% of its performance after 11,818 cycles. For an EV that charges twice a day, this means the battery could last up to 18 years. In comparison, current EV batteries usually lose 30% of their performance in just 2.7 years with the same charging routine.”
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Published in Nature. Seems ripe for rapid commercialisation, which is good news all round.
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New junior developers can’t actually code • N’s Blog
Namanyay Goel:
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Something’s been bugging me about new devs [software developers] and I need to talk about it.
We’re at this weird inflection point in software development. Every junior dev I talk to has Copilot or Claude or GPT running 24/7. They’re shipping code faster than ever. But when I dig deeper into their understanding of what they’re shipping? That’s where things get concerning.
Sure, the code works, but ask why it works that way instead of another way? Crickets. Ask about edge cases? Blank stares.
The foundational knowledge that used to come from struggling through problems is just… missing.
We’re trading deep understanding for quick fixes, and while it feels great in the moment, we’re going to pay for this later.
I recently realized that there’s a whole generation of new programmers who don’t even know what StackOverflow is.
Back when “Claude” was not a chatbot but the man who invented the field of information entropy, there was a different way to debug programming problems.
First, search on Google. Then, hope some desperate soul had posed a similar question as you had. If they did, you’d find a detailed, thoughtful, (and often patronizing) answer from a wise greybeard on this site called “Stack Overflow”.
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This is very funny – an internet generation ago the complaint was “these new devs don’t know anything about programming, they just search on Stack Overflow.” And the generation before that? “These new devs don’t know anything about programming, they just use Google.” Everyone copes with the challenge in the way appropriate to their generation.
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This solar-powered reactor sucks CO2 from the air and turns it into fuel • Gizmodo
Margherita Bassi:
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Researchers at the University of Cambridge have built a solar-powered reactor that converts atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) into a gas that could one day fuel vehicles, power off-the-grid dwellings, and even produce pharmaceutical products.
The researchers say were inspired by photosynthesis and claim that their technology can be scaled up more easily than earlier solar-powered devices. The team’s research was published in the journal Nature Energy.
Carbon capture and storage (which is exactly what it sounds like) is a possible means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The problem is that most carbon capture technologies are themselves powered by burning fossil fuels—not to mention the fact that the CO2 captured in the process needs to be stored somewhere, such as deep underground. But a new reactor could solve all of that.
“What if instead of pumping the carbon dioxide underground, we made something useful from it?” Sayan Kar, a chemist at the University of Cambridge and first author on the study, said in a university statement. “CO2 is a harmful greenhouse gas, but it can also be turned into useful chemicals without contributing to global warming.”
Kar and his colleagues’ new reactor is completely solar-powered, meaning it requires no cables or batteries. At night, it filters CO2 from the air—similar to how a sponge soaks up water, according to the researchers. During the day, sunlight heats up the collected CO2, which absorbs the Sun’s infrared radiation while a semiconductor powder absorbs the ultraviolet radiation.
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Nice, but: does it scale?
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Pakistan’s electric rickshaws are accelerating the country’s EV revolution • Rest of World
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid:
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There are currently an estimated 45,000 two- and three-wheeler EVs in the country, constituting only 0.16% of the total vehicles in Pakistan.
But the industry is on the cusp of an explosion. Pakistan’s recent EV policy aims to transition 90% of all new vehicles to electric by 2040. By 2030, EVs would constitute 50% of all auto sales in the country, Kamran Kamal, a spokesperson for BYD Pakistan, told Reuters. Last week, the government reportedly granted EV production licenses to 57 manufacturers — 55 of which were for two- and three-wheelers.
“Rickshaws are the common man’s mode of transportation and EVs are the future,” Rana Arsalan Sarwar, national marketing manager of Siwa Industries, a rickshaw manufacturing company, told Rest of World. Siwa launched its own e-rickshaw last year.
Pakistan’s neighbors bear testament to the success of e-rickshaws. Last year, Bangladesh’s former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, reversed an earlier ban on e-rickshaws and announced laws to regulate the 2–4 million e-rickshaws that operate in the country. In India, little-known e-rickshaw companies are driving the EV revolution with sales that far exceed those of electric cars.
…Priced at over 1 million Pakistani rupees ($3,600), Sazgar’s e-rickshaws cost more than twice as much as conventional ones. Rickshaw drivers in Pakistan interviewed by Rest of World said they are nonetheless keen to make the switch. One such driver, Sami Ullah, travelled over 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) from Pakistan’s Hyderabad city to Sazgar’s factory in Lahore to purchase an e-rickshaw with his savings.
“I tried it in 2022, and loved how smooth the ride was,” Ullah said. “There is no smoke, it doesn’t cause pollution.” His family was relieved when he bought the e-rickshaw because “engine rickshaws damage our clothes, our bodies, and our health,” he said. The investment has paid off: Ullah now saves money on fuel.
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The untold story of a crypto crimefighter’s descent into Nigerian prison • WIRED
Andy Greenberg:
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At 8 AM on March 23 of 2024, Tigran Gambaryan woke up on a couch in Abuja, Nigeria, where he’d been dozing since the predawn call to prayer. The house around him, which often buzzed with the nearby sound of generators, was eerily quiet. In that silence, the harsh reality of Gambaryan’s situation flooded back into his mind the way it had every morning for nearly a month: That he and his colleague at the cryptocurrency firm Binance, Nadeem Anjarwalla, were being held hostage in a Nigerian government-owned compound—detained without access to their own passports under military guard in a building circled by barbed-wire walls.
Gambaryan got up from the couch. The 39-year-old Armenian-American wore a white T-shirt over his compact, muscular build, his right arm covered with an Eastern Orthodox tattoo. His usually shaved head and trimmed black beard were now stubbled and scraggly from a month of growth. Gambaryan found the compound’s cook, and asked if she would buy him some cigarettes. Then he walked out into the house’s internal courtyard, and began to restlessly pace and make phone calls to his lawyers and other contacts at Binance—the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange—restarting his daily efforts to “unfuck the situation,” as he put it.
Just the day before, the pair of Binance staffers and their crypto giant employer were told they were about to be charged with tax evasion. The two men seemed to be wedged into the middle of a bureaucratic conflict between an unaccountable foreign government and one of the most controversial players in the crypto economy. Now they were not only being confined against their will, with no end in sight, but also charged as criminals.
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It’s a fun story – not for them, but to read. Gambaryan had a remarkable career up to then in crypto, working on some of the biggest crypto cases around. Then he got a job with Binance.
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New York Times goes all-in on internal AI tools • Semafor
Max Tani:
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The New York Times is greenlighting the use of AI for its product and editorial staff, saying that internal tools could eventually write social copy, SEO headlines, and some code.
In messages to newsroom staff, the company announced that it’s opening up AI training to the newsroom, and debuting a new internal AI tool called Echo to staff, Semafor has learned. The Times also shared documents and videos laying out editorial do’s and don’t for using AI, and shared a suite of AI products that staff could now use to develop web products and editorial ideas.
“Generative AI can assist our journalists in uncovering the truth and helping more people understand the world. Machine learning already helps us report stories we couldn’t otherwise, and generative AI has the potential to bolster our journalistic capabilities even more,” the company’s editorial guidelines said.
…The paper encouraged editorial staff to use these AI tools to generate SEO headlines, summaries, and audience promos; suggest edits; brainstorm questions and ideas and ask questions about reporters’ own documents; engage in research; and analyze the Times’ own documents and images. In a training video shared with staff, the Times suggested using AI to come up with questions to ask the CEO of a startup during an interview.
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Truly stunning. I hope the training video was made by people who don’t know journalists, because if the NYT is hiring journalists who need their questions written by AI, they’re in worse trouble than they know.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 