All posts tagged: Trap

Debates over AI consciousness are a trap

Published by Miika Tikkanen

Philosophical musings on the consciousness of AI systems are intellectually interesting but legally ungrounded. For beliefs about consciousness to have any bearing, AI would need to be granted legal personhood. But a legal personhood framework for AI would likely look nothing like the constructs protecting sentient animals from harm. We already possess a legal framework for granting personhood to non-natural, human-built entities: corporate personhood. This concept was established primarily to ease transactions by empowering a corporation to execute agreements, enter contracts, conduct transactions, and serve as the accountable party in adverse outcomes. It’s the kind of construct you might imagine for an AI agent acting on behalf of an individual or organization. Granting an AI personhood would have a devastating effect on society: It would derail current legal precedents and legal arguments that could potentially be made against these companies for the real-world harms that their models cause. There are currently dozens of cases around the world in which AI companies have been sued for a wide range of abuses. Grieving loved ones, aggrieved creators, …

Young humpback whale freed from a death trap in Alaska

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. A juvenile humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) entangled in the opening to Alaska’s Endicott Arm was successfully freed after a multi-agency rescue mission. Endicott Arm is a narrow fjord located about 50 miles southeast of Juneau. While remote, it’s a major destination for cruise ships and commercial fishing vessels that can be a risk to whales and other marine wildlife. According to a statement from NOAA on June 24, several mariners noticed the entangled juvenile whale on the evening of May 10 and reported the sighting to the NOAA Fisheries Alaska Marine Mammal Stranding Network 24-hour hotline. The whale was caught in lines from two commercial Tanner crab pots. Since each pot weighs around 800 pounds, they essentially acted as anchors on the animal, …

Álvaro Díaz dares Latin trap fans to expand their palates in ‘Omakase’

Published by Sam Flores

When you first press play on Álvaro Díaz’s “Omakase,” you are immediately transported into the kitchen. A stove flickers on. A knife hits the cutting board. Chants of “¡Sí, chef!” ring out like a dubbed episode of “The Bear.” Then, before the listener can fully settle in, the Puerto Rican rapper and singer fires off bars claiming that Grammys were stolen from him and details his many nights spent sleeping on the floor to his new normal of earning $500,000 per show. It is a boastful, theatrical and deeply specific opener — but after the double whammy of past album releases “Felicilandia” (2021) and “Sayonara” (2024), which helped Díaz ascend well beyond the Puerto Rican trap scene he called home, his swagger feels earned. Across the next 16 tracks, Díaz invites listeners into what he describes as his own kitchen. The title comes from the Japanese tradition of trusting the chef to serve whatever they choose. For Díaz, that idea became the album’s creative language. “I was like, exactly, I want to be the chef,” …

“Beef” grills capitalism’s trap for women

Published by Sam Flores

At Monte Vista Point, the country club setting for the second season of “Beef,” every familiarity is an illusion, a game of appearances that its general manager, Josh Martín (Oscar Isaac) and his wife, Lindsay Crane-Martín (Carey Mulligan), are experts at playing. Josh pals around with the club’s impossibly wealthy members, serves them rare brown liquors and flies off with them to exotic locales at a moment’s notice. He and Lindsay pretend to be a happily married couple. In private, Josh shows more passion toward cam girls he patronizes online while Lindsay pines for the status she once enjoyed among Britain’s upper crust. Meanwhile, low-level staffers like Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton) carry out their plebeian tasks with grins on their faces and a bounce in their step, pleased as punch to be a part of such an exquisite slice of Montecito luxury. The club’s regulars would never guess or care how precarious the engaged couple’s lives are, with Ashley carrying the financial burden of their household while Austin, who works part-time as …

Intricate loops of silk help net-casting spiders trap prey in webs

Published by Miika Tikkanen

core: Something — usually round-shaped — in the center of an object. fiber: Something whose shape resembles a thread or filament. gland: A cell, a group of cells or an organ that produces and discharges a substance (or “secretion”) for use elsewhere in the body or in a body cavity, or for elimination from the body. insect: A type of arthropod that as an adult will have six segmented legs and three body parts: a head, thorax and abdomen. There are hundreds of thousands of insects, which include bees, beetles, flies and moths. microscope: An instrument used to view objects — such as bacteria or the single cells of plants or animals — that are too small to be visible to the unaided eye. prey: (n.) An organism hunted by another, often for food. (v.) To attack and eat another organism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: A prestigious journal publishing original scientific research, begun in 1914. The journal’s content spans the biological, physical and social sciences. Each of the more than 3,000 papers …

Focusing on yourself is a trap

Published by Daniella Wilson

Add Comic Relief: Funny For Money to your watchlist I get an insight into people’s lives hosting Radio 1’s breakfast show. In a dangerous, divided and digital world, many listeners can feel isolated. For some, the solitary life enforced during the pandemic became a habit. What’s more, you can easily live on your phone – you can stay home, order every meal online and get nearly every-thing done without physically talking to anyone. We need connections. This isn’t necessarily romantic relationships; it’s neighbours, local shopkeepers, colleagues and friends. So I try to create shared moments on my show, a feeling of togetherness and community – everyone mucking in to make something fun and joyful. My Comic Relief challenge – a 1,000km cycle ride across the UK on a tandem – feels like an extension of this endeavour. Listeners, locals, famous faces and people whose lives have been supported by Comic Relief-funded projects will, at various points, join me on my gruelling eight-day journey through cities, towns and villages. I’m the daft ringleader, conducting the circus …

The “If-Then” Trap: Why Happiness Is Not a Destination

Published by Jenni Sidey

We spend our lives waiting for the perfect moment to be happy. But ancient wisdom teaches us that true joy isn’t found “out there”—it’s found within. Have you ever had a moment in your life where everything was just perfect? Perhaps you were on vacation, sitting on a comfortable lounge chair, looking out over the vast, beautiful ocean. The wind was gently blowing, the sun was warm on your skin, and for those few brief moments, the world felt complete. You weren’t thinking about what happens when you go back home. You weren’t thinking about your rent, your mortgage, or your job. The infinite number of worries that usually cloud our minds had vanished. It was a perfect moment. It may have been a perfect hour, or even a perfect day. But it takes so little to push us off that edge. You have reservations for dinner that night, and you arrive right on time, only to be told there is a half-hour wait. Suddenly, the peace cracks. You pull out your phone, check social …

The Post-Ambition Trap

Published by Daniella Wilson

Millennials love to talk—and gripe—about ambition. What was once a virtue has become a generational bugbear. Millennial women, raised on Girl Power and rom-coms in which the heroine gets the job and the man, joined the workforce just in time for the girlboss culture of the 2010s, which promised that hard work would lead not only to personal success but also to feminist victory. For many American women, no piece of that promise has come true. And, gender aside, anyone who’s gone through two recessions, a pandemic, and the growing precarity of all kinds of careers has reason to side-eye grand dreams of achievement; it’s hard enough to just get by. No wonder that cries of protest such as the Canadian writer Amil Niazi’s 2022 lament, “Losing My Ambition,” in which Niazi declares that she’s “abandoned the notion of ambition to chase the absolute middle of the road: mediocrity,” have gone viral. Niazi has not given up completely on achievement: She parlayed her hit essay into a new book called Life After Ambition: A “Good …

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