Letters archive

I don't understand why people are worried about artificial intelligences taking over. The dinosaurs lasted 165 million years. The first "upright apes" evolved only 5 million years ago and Homo sapiens didn't arrive on the scene until about 300,000 years ago ( Letters, 20 May ). We have only a few thousand years of recorded …

The number of pieces on AI seems to be on the increase, especially those that warn of possible dangers. But all these appear to treat AI as though it were a sentient entity already, busy plotting and planning the downfall of humanity. The truth is that AI, even in its most advanced form, is merely …

Peter Cundall thinks that there is no puzzle that can't be solved by human intelligence. However, there is one that has defeated it: human nature ( Letters, 13 May ). If intelligence could solve human nature, we would have begun reducing greenhouse gas emissions 30 years ago and might now be at net zero. We …

My hypothesis is that ChatGPT's output is a form of statistical plagiarism, using the words most probably occurring in its training texts. The only reasonable conclusion is that commercial exploitation of such technologies could be akin to theft of intellectual property, and that such systems should only be made available via not-for-profit firms ( 13 …

You correctly point out that the biggest determinant of outcomes in therapy isn't the type used, but the relationship between the therapist and the individual. This raises an interesting point about the relative effectiveness of face-to-face and online therapy ( 15 April, p 38 ). With growing demand and not enough therapists, the need for …

Colin Barras believes that the reason why some children in England fail to learn to read adequately is too much phonics. My article "Current Debates over the teaching of phonics" , published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education in 2022, provides copious evidence for two main conclusions: systematic phonics teaching is effective for teaching …

I enjoyed your recent guide to the quantum realm. However, I continue to doubt the existence of dark energy and dark matter ( 8 April, p 36 ). That we have been unsuccessfully searching for these for many decades and haven't found something that supposedly accounts for 95 per cent of the stuff in the …

Thomas Hertog likens theevolution of physical laws to Darwinian evolution, with "quantum observation" playing the role of selection. He allows such observation to include interactions between particles, though how it causes a collapse of the wave function instead of an entanglement isn't explained. But the key missing argument is how such selection favours a set …

The crucial thing to note is that the import of vaping products is now banned in Australia, which will stop vapes containing nicotine from being sold to children by other children, rather than retailers. Some kids are addicted to nicotine because of the vapes they get from other kids via social media, without needing to …

John Cherian suggests regulators should limit access to AI to those trained and appointed to use it. This would create a class of people with control over communication between us and our information overlords, and who might demand money and obedience in return for access to it. There are enough historical precedents to show where …