• AI is rotting your brain and making you stupid

    For nearly 10 years I have written about science and technology and I’ve been an early adopter of new tech for much longer. As a teenager in the mid-1990s I annoyed the hell out of my family by jamming up the phone line for hours with a dial-up modem; connecting to bulletin board communities all over the country.When I started writing professionally about technology in 2016 I was all for our seemingly inevitable transhumanist future. When the chip is ready I want it immediately stuck in my head, I remember saying proudly in our busy office. Why not improve ourselves where we can?Since then, my general view on technology has dramatically shifted. Watching a growing class of super-billionaires erode the democratizing nature of technology by maintaining corporate controls over what we use and how we use it has fundamentally changed my personal relationship with technology. Seeing deeply disturbing philosophical stances like longtermism, effective altruism, and singulartarianism envelop the minds of those rich, powerful men controlling the world has only further entrenched inequality.A recent Black Mirror episode really rammed home the perils we face by having technology so controlled by capitalist interests. A sick woman is given a brain implant connected to a cloud server to keep her alive. The system is managed through a subscription service where the user pays for monthly access to the cognitive abilities managed by the implant. As time passes, that subscription cost gets more and more expensive - and well, it’s Black Mirror, so you can imagine where things end up.

    Titled 'Common People', the episode is from series 7 of Black MirrorNetflix

    The enshittification of our digital world has been impossible to ignore. You’re not imagining things, Google Search is getting worse.But until the emergence of AII’ve never been truly concerned about a technological innovation, in and of itself.A recent article looked at how generative AI tech such as ChatGPT is being used by university students. The piece was authored by a tech admin at New York University and it’s filled with striking insights into how AI is shaking the foundations of educational institutions.Not unsurprisingly, students are using ChatGPT for everything from summarizing complex texts to completely writing essays from scratch. But one of the reflections quoted in the article immediately jumped out at me.When a student was asked why they relied on generative AI so much when putting work together they responded, “You’re asking me to go from point A to point B, why wouldn’t I use a car to get there?”My first response was, of course, why wouldn’t you? It made complete sense.For a second.And then I thought, hang on, what is being lost by speeding from point A to point B in a car?

    What if the quickest way from point A to point B wasn't the best way to get there?Depositphotos

    Let’s further the analogy. You need to go to the grocery store. It’s a 10-minute walk away but a three-minute drive. Why wouldn’t you drive?Well, the only benefit of driving is saving time. That’s inarguable. You’ll be back home and cooking up your dinner before the person on foot even gets to the grocery store.Congratulations. You saved yourself about 20 minutes. In a world where efficiency trumps everything this is the best choice. Use that extra 20 minutes in your day wisely.But what are the benefits of not driving, taking the extra time, and walking?First, you have environmental benefits. Not using a car unnecessarily; spewing emissions into the air, either directly from combustion or indirectly for those with electric cars.Secondly, you have health benefits from the little bit of exercise you get by walking. Our stationary lives are quite literally killing us so a 20-minute walk a day is likely to be incredibly positive for your health.But there are also more abstract benefits to be gained by walking this short trip from A to B.Walking connects us to our neighborhood. It slows things down. Helps us better understand the community and environment we are living in. A recent study summarized the benefits of walking around your neighborhood, suggesting the practice leads to greater social connectedness and reduced feelings of isolation.So what are we losing when we use a car to get from point A to point B? Potentially a great deal.But let’s move out of abstraction and into the real world.An article in the Columbia Journalism Review asked nearly 20 news media professionals how they were integrating AI into their personal workflow. The responses were wildly varied. Some journalists refused to use AI for anything more than superficial interview transcription, while others use it broadly, to edit text, answer research questions, summarize large bodies of science text, or search massive troves of data for salient bits of information.In general, the line almost all those media professionals shared was they would never explicitly use AI to write their articles. But for some, almost every other stage of the creative process in developing a story was fair game for AI assistance.I found this a little horrifying. Farming out certain creative development processes to AI felt not only ethically wrong but also like key cognitive stages were being lost, skipped over, considered unimportant.I’ve never considered myself to be an extraordinarily creative person. I don’t feel like I come up with new or original ideas when I work. Instead, I see myself more as a compiler. I enjoy finding connections between seemingly disparate things. Linking ideas and using those pieces as building blocks to create my own work. As a writer and journalist I see this process as the whole point.A good example of this is a story I published in late 2023 investigating the relationship between long Covid and psychedelics. The story began earlier in the year when I read an intriguing study linking long Covid with serotonin abnormalities in the gut. Being interested in the science of psychedelics, and knowing that psychedelics very much influence serotonin receptors, I wondered if there could be some kind of link between these two seemingly disparate topics.The idea sat in the back of my mind for several months, until I came across a person who told me they had been actively treating their own long Covid symptoms with a variety of psychedelic remedies. After an expansive and fascinating interview I started diving into different studies looking to understand how certain psychedelics affect the body, and whether there could be any associations with long Covid treatments.Eventually I stumbled across a few compelling associations. It took weeks of reading different scientific studies, speaking to various researchers, and thinking about how several discordant threads could be somehow linked.Could AI have assisted me in the process of developing this story?No. Because ultimately, the story comprised an assortment of novel associations that I drew between disparate ideas all encapsulated within the frame of a person’s subjective experience.And it is this idea of novelty that is key to understanding why modern AI technology is not actually intelligence but a simulation of intelligence.

    LLMs are a sophisticated language imitator, delivering responses that resemble what they think a response would look likeDepositphotos

    ChatGPT, and all the assorted clones that have emerged over the last couple of years, are a form of technology called LLMs. At the risk of enraging those who actually work in this mind-bendingly complex field, I’m going to dangerously over-simplify how these things work.It’s important to know that when you ask a system like ChatGPT a question it doesn’t understand what you are asking it. The response these systems generate to any prompt is simply a simulation of what it computes a response would look like based on a massive dataset.So if I were to ask the system a random question like, “What color are cats?”, the system would scrape the world’s trove of information on cats and colors to create a response that mirrors the way most pre-existing text talks about cats and colors. The system builds its response word by word, creating something that reads coherently to us, by establishing a probability for what word should follow each prior word. It’s not thinking, it’s imitating.What these generative AI systems are spitting out are word salad amalgams of what it thinks the response to your prompt should look like, based on training from millions of books and webpages that have been previously published.Setting aside for a moment the accuracy of the responses these systems deliver, I am more interestedwith the cognitive stages that this technology allows us to skip past.For thousands of years we have used technology to improve our ability to manage highly complex tasks. The idea is called cognitive offloading, and it’s as simple as writing something down on a notepad or saving a contact number on your smartphone. There are pros and cons to cognitive offloading, and scientists have been digging into the phenomenon for years.As long as we have been doing it, there have been people criticizing the practice. The legendary Greek philosopher Socrates was notorious for his skepticism around the written word. He believed knowledge emerged through a dialectical process so writing itself was reductive. He even went so far as to suggestthat writing makes us dumber.

    “For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.”

    Wrote Plato, quoting Socrates

    Almost every technological advancement in human history can be seen to be accompanied by someone suggesting it will be damaging. Calculators have destroyed our ability to properly do math. GPS has corrupted our spatial memory. Typewriters killed handwriting. Computer word processors killed typewriters. Video killed the radio star.And what have we lost? Well, zooming in on writing, for example, a 2020 study claimed brain activity is greater when a note is handwritten as opposed to being typed on a keyboard. And then a 2021 study suggested memory retention is better when using a pen and paper versus a stylus and tablet. So there are certainly trade-offs whenever we choose to use a technological tool to offload a cognitive task.There’s an oft-told story about gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. It may be apocryphal but it certainly is meaningful. He once said he sat down and typed out the entirety of The Great Gatsby, word for word. According to Thompson, he wanted to know what it felt like to write a great novel.

    Thompson was infamous for writing everything on typewriters, even when computers emerged in the 1990sPublic Domain

    I don’t want to get all wishy-washy here, but these are the brass tacks we are ultimately falling on. What does it feel like to think? What does it feel like to be creative? What does it feel like to understand something?A recent interview with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, reveals how deeply AI has infiltrated his life and work. Not only does Nadella utilize nearly a dozen different custom-designed AI agents to manage every part of his workflow – from summarizing emails to managing his schedule – but he also uses AI to get through podcasts quickly on his way to work. Instead of actually listening to the podcasts he has transcripts uploaded to an AI assistant who he then chats to about the information while commuting.Why listen to the podcast when you can get the gist through a summary? Why read a book when you can listen to the audio version at X2 speed? Or better yet, watch the movie? Or just read a Wikipedia entry. Or get AI to summarize the wikipedia entry.I’m not here to judge anyone on the way they choose to use technology. Do what you want with ChatGPT. But for a moment consider what you may be skipping over by racing from point A to point B.Sure, you can give ChatGPT a set of increasingly detailed prompts; adding complexity to its summary of a scientific journal or a podcast, but at what point do the prompts get so granular that you may as well read the journal entry itself? If you get generative AI to skim and summarize something, what is it missing? If something was worth being written then surely it is worth being read?If there is a more succinct way to say something then maybe we should say it more succinctly.In a magnificent article for The New Yorker, Ted Chiang perfectly summed up the deep contradiction at the heart of modern generative AI systems. He argues language, and writing, is fundamentally about communication. If we write an email to someone we can expect the person at the other end to receive those words and consider them with some kind of thought or attention. But modern AI systemsare erasing our ability to think, consider, and write. Where does it all end? For Chiang it's pretty dystopian feedback loop of dialectical slop.

    “We are entering an era where someone might use a large language model to generate a document out of a bulleted list, and send it to a person who will use a large language model to condense that document into a bulleted list. Can anyone seriously argue that this is an improvement?”

    Ted Chiang
    #rotting #your #brain #making #you
    AI is rotting your brain and making you stupid
    For nearly 10 years I have written about science and technology and I’ve been an early adopter of new tech for much longer. As a teenager in the mid-1990s I annoyed the hell out of my family by jamming up the phone line for hours with a dial-up modem; connecting to bulletin board communities all over the country.When I started writing professionally about technology in 2016 I was all for our seemingly inevitable transhumanist future. When the chip is ready I want it immediately stuck in my head, I remember saying proudly in our busy office. Why not improve ourselves where we can?Since then, my general view on technology has dramatically shifted. Watching a growing class of super-billionaires erode the democratizing nature of technology by maintaining corporate controls over what we use and how we use it has fundamentally changed my personal relationship with technology. Seeing deeply disturbing philosophical stances like longtermism, effective altruism, and singulartarianism envelop the minds of those rich, powerful men controlling the world has only further entrenched inequality.A recent Black Mirror episode really rammed home the perils we face by having technology so controlled by capitalist interests. A sick woman is given a brain implant connected to a cloud server to keep her alive. The system is managed through a subscription service where the user pays for monthly access to the cognitive abilities managed by the implant. As time passes, that subscription cost gets more and more expensive - and well, it’s Black Mirror, so you can imagine where things end up. Titled 'Common People', the episode is from series 7 of Black MirrorNetflix The enshittification of our digital world has been impossible to ignore. You’re not imagining things, Google Search is getting worse.But until the emergence of AII’ve never been truly concerned about a technological innovation, in and of itself.A recent article looked at how generative AI tech such as ChatGPT is being used by university students. The piece was authored by a tech admin at New York University and it’s filled with striking insights into how AI is shaking the foundations of educational institutions.Not unsurprisingly, students are using ChatGPT for everything from summarizing complex texts to completely writing essays from scratch. But one of the reflections quoted in the article immediately jumped out at me.When a student was asked why they relied on generative AI so much when putting work together they responded, “You’re asking me to go from point A to point B, why wouldn’t I use a car to get there?”My first response was, of course, why wouldn’t you? It made complete sense.For a second.And then I thought, hang on, what is being lost by speeding from point A to point B in a car? What if the quickest way from point A to point B wasn't the best way to get there?Depositphotos Let’s further the analogy. You need to go to the grocery store. It’s a 10-minute walk away but a three-minute drive. Why wouldn’t you drive?Well, the only benefit of driving is saving time. That’s inarguable. You’ll be back home and cooking up your dinner before the person on foot even gets to the grocery store.Congratulations. You saved yourself about 20 minutes. In a world where efficiency trumps everything this is the best choice. Use that extra 20 minutes in your day wisely.But what are the benefits of not driving, taking the extra time, and walking?First, you have environmental benefits. Not using a car unnecessarily; spewing emissions into the air, either directly from combustion or indirectly for those with electric cars.Secondly, you have health benefits from the little bit of exercise you get by walking. Our stationary lives are quite literally killing us so a 20-minute walk a day is likely to be incredibly positive for your health.But there are also more abstract benefits to be gained by walking this short trip from A to B.Walking connects us to our neighborhood. It slows things down. Helps us better understand the community and environment we are living in. A recent study summarized the benefits of walking around your neighborhood, suggesting the practice leads to greater social connectedness and reduced feelings of isolation.So what are we losing when we use a car to get from point A to point B? Potentially a great deal.But let’s move out of abstraction and into the real world.An article in the Columbia Journalism Review asked nearly 20 news media professionals how they were integrating AI into their personal workflow. The responses were wildly varied. Some journalists refused to use AI for anything more than superficial interview transcription, while others use it broadly, to edit text, answer research questions, summarize large bodies of science text, or search massive troves of data for salient bits of information.In general, the line almost all those media professionals shared was they would never explicitly use AI to write their articles. But for some, almost every other stage of the creative process in developing a story was fair game for AI assistance.I found this a little horrifying. Farming out certain creative development processes to AI felt not only ethically wrong but also like key cognitive stages were being lost, skipped over, considered unimportant.I’ve never considered myself to be an extraordinarily creative person. I don’t feel like I come up with new or original ideas when I work. Instead, I see myself more as a compiler. I enjoy finding connections between seemingly disparate things. Linking ideas and using those pieces as building blocks to create my own work. As a writer and journalist I see this process as the whole point.A good example of this is a story I published in late 2023 investigating the relationship between long Covid and psychedelics. The story began earlier in the year when I read an intriguing study linking long Covid with serotonin abnormalities in the gut. Being interested in the science of psychedelics, and knowing that psychedelics very much influence serotonin receptors, I wondered if there could be some kind of link between these two seemingly disparate topics.The idea sat in the back of my mind for several months, until I came across a person who told me they had been actively treating their own long Covid symptoms with a variety of psychedelic remedies. After an expansive and fascinating interview I started diving into different studies looking to understand how certain psychedelics affect the body, and whether there could be any associations with long Covid treatments.Eventually I stumbled across a few compelling associations. It took weeks of reading different scientific studies, speaking to various researchers, and thinking about how several discordant threads could be somehow linked.Could AI have assisted me in the process of developing this story?No. Because ultimately, the story comprised an assortment of novel associations that I drew between disparate ideas all encapsulated within the frame of a person’s subjective experience.And it is this idea of novelty that is key to understanding why modern AI technology is not actually intelligence but a simulation of intelligence. LLMs are a sophisticated language imitator, delivering responses that resemble what they think a response would look likeDepositphotos ChatGPT, and all the assorted clones that have emerged over the last couple of years, are a form of technology called LLMs. At the risk of enraging those who actually work in this mind-bendingly complex field, I’m going to dangerously over-simplify how these things work.It’s important to know that when you ask a system like ChatGPT a question it doesn’t understand what you are asking it. The response these systems generate to any prompt is simply a simulation of what it computes a response would look like based on a massive dataset.So if I were to ask the system a random question like, “What color are cats?”, the system would scrape the world’s trove of information on cats and colors to create a response that mirrors the way most pre-existing text talks about cats and colors. The system builds its response word by word, creating something that reads coherently to us, by establishing a probability for what word should follow each prior word. It’s not thinking, it’s imitating.What these generative AI systems are spitting out are word salad amalgams of what it thinks the response to your prompt should look like, based on training from millions of books and webpages that have been previously published.Setting aside for a moment the accuracy of the responses these systems deliver, I am more interestedwith the cognitive stages that this technology allows us to skip past.For thousands of years we have used technology to improve our ability to manage highly complex tasks. The idea is called cognitive offloading, and it’s as simple as writing something down on a notepad or saving a contact number on your smartphone. There are pros and cons to cognitive offloading, and scientists have been digging into the phenomenon for years.As long as we have been doing it, there have been people criticizing the practice. The legendary Greek philosopher Socrates was notorious for his skepticism around the written word. He believed knowledge emerged through a dialectical process so writing itself was reductive. He even went so far as to suggestthat writing makes us dumber. “For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.” Wrote Plato, quoting Socrates Almost every technological advancement in human history can be seen to be accompanied by someone suggesting it will be damaging. Calculators have destroyed our ability to properly do math. GPS has corrupted our spatial memory. Typewriters killed handwriting. Computer word processors killed typewriters. Video killed the radio star.And what have we lost? Well, zooming in on writing, for example, a 2020 study claimed brain activity is greater when a note is handwritten as opposed to being typed on a keyboard. And then a 2021 study suggested memory retention is better when using a pen and paper versus a stylus and tablet. So there are certainly trade-offs whenever we choose to use a technological tool to offload a cognitive task.There’s an oft-told story about gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. It may be apocryphal but it certainly is meaningful. He once said he sat down and typed out the entirety of The Great Gatsby, word for word. According to Thompson, he wanted to know what it felt like to write a great novel. Thompson was infamous for writing everything on typewriters, even when computers emerged in the 1990sPublic Domain I don’t want to get all wishy-washy here, but these are the brass tacks we are ultimately falling on. What does it feel like to think? What does it feel like to be creative? What does it feel like to understand something?A recent interview with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, reveals how deeply AI has infiltrated his life and work. Not only does Nadella utilize nearly a dozen different custom-designed AI agents to manage every part of his workflow – from summarizing emails to managing his schedule – but he also uses AI to get through podcasts quickly on his way to work. Instead of actually listening to the podcasts he has transcripts uploaded to an AI assistant who he then chats to about the information while commuting.Why listen to the podcast when you can get the gist through a summary? Why read a book when you can listen to the audio version at X2 speed? Or better yet, watch the movie? Or just read a Wikipedia entry. Or get AI to summarize the wikipedia entry.I’m not here to judge anyone on the way they choose to use technology. Do what you want with ChatGPT. But for a moment consider what you may be skipping over by racing from point A to point B.Sure, you can give ChatGPT a set of increasingly detailed prompts; adding complexity to its summary of a scientific journal or a podcast, but at what point do the prompts get so granular that you may as well read the journal entry itself? If you get generative AI to skim and summarize something, what is it missing? If something was worth being written then surely it is worth being read?If there is a more succinct way to say something then maybe we should say it more succinctly.In a magnificent article for The New Yorker, Ted Chiang perfectly summed up the deep contradiction at the heart of modern generative AI systems. He argues language, and writing, is fundamentally about communication. If we write an email to someone we can expect the person at the other end to receive those words and consider them with some kind of thought or attention. But modern AI systemsare erasing our ability to think, consider, and write. Where does it all end? For Chiang it's pretty dystopian feedback loop of dialectical slop. “We are entering an era where someone might use a large language model to generate a document out of a bulleted list, and send it to a person who will use a large language model to condense that document into a bulleted list. Can anyone seriously argue that this is an improvement?” Ted Chiang #rotting #your #brain #making #you
    NEWATLAS.COM
    AI is rotting your brain and making you stupid
    For nearly 10 years I have written about science and technology and I’ve been an early adopter of new tech for much longer. As a teenager in the mid-1990s I annoyed the hell out of my family by jamming up the phone line for hours with a dial-up modem; connecting to bulletin board communities all over the country.When I started writing professionally about technology in 2016 I was all for our seemingly inevitable transhumanist future. When the chip is ready I want it immediately stuck in my head, I remember saying proudly in our busy office. Why not improve ourselves where we can?Since then, my general view on technology has dramatically shifted. Watching a growing class of super-billionaires erode the democratizing nature of technology by maintaining corporate controls over what we use and how we use it has fundamentally changed my personal relationship with technology. Seeing deeply disturbing philosophical stances like longtermism, effective altruism, and singulartarianism envelop the minds of those rich, powerful men controlling the world has only further entrenched inequality.A recent Black Mirror episode really rammed home the perils we face by having technology so controlled by capitalist interests. A sick woman is given a brain implant connected to a cloud server to keep her alive. The system is managed through a subscription service where the user pays for monthly access to the cognitive abilities managed by the implant. As time passes, that subscription cost gets more and more expensive - and well, it’s Black Mirror, so you can imagine where things end up. Titled 'Common People', the episode is from series 7 of Black MirrorNetflix The enshittification of our digital world has been impossible to ignore. You’re not imagining things, Google Search is getting worse.But until the emergence of AI (or, as we’ll discuss later, language learning models that pretend to look and sound like an artificial intelligence) I’ve never been truly concerned about a technological innovation, in and of itself.A recent article looked at how generative AI tech such as ChatGPT is being used by university students. The piece was authored by a tech admin at New York University and it’s filled with striking insights into how AI is shaking the foundations of educational institutions.Not unsurprisingly, students are using ChatGPT for everything from summarizing complex texts to completely writing essays from scratch. But one of the reflections quoted in the article immediately jumped out at me.When a student was asked why they relied on generative AI so much when putting work together they responded, “You’re asking me to go from point A to point B, why wouldn’t I use a car to get there?”My first response was, of course, why wouldn’t you? It made complete sense.For a second.And then I thought, hang on, what is being lost by speeding from point A to point B in a car? What if the quickest way from point A to point B wasn't the best way to get there?Depositphotos Let’s further the analogy. You need to go to the grocery store. It’s a 10-minute walk away but a three-minute drive. Why wouldn’t you drive?Well, the only benefit of driving is saving time. That’s inarguable. You’ll be back home and cooking up your dinner before the person on foot even gets to the grocery store.Congratulations. You saved yourself about 20 minutes. In a world where efficiency trumps everything this is the best choice. Use that extra 20 minutes in your day wisely.But what are the benefits of not driving, taking the extra time, and walking?First, you have environmental benefits. Not using a car unnecessarily; spewing emissions into the air, either directly from combustion or indirectly for those with electric cars.Secondly, you have health benefits from the little bit of exercise you get by walking. Our stationary lives are quite literally killing us so a 20-minute walk a day is likely to be incredibly positive for your health.But there are also more abstract benefits to be gained by walking this short trip from A to B.Walking connects us to our neighborhood. It slows things down. Helps us better understand the community and environment we are living in. A recent study summarized the benefits of walking around your neighborhood, suggesting the practice leads to greater social connectedness and reduced feelings of isolation.So what are we losing when we use a car to get from point A to point B? Potentially a great deal.But let’s move out of abstraction and into the real world.An article in the Columbia Journalism Review asked nearly 20 news media professionals how they were integrating AI into their personal workflow. The responses were wildly varied. Some journalists refused to use AI for anything more than superficial interview transcription, while others use it broadly, to edit text, answer research questions, summarize large bodies of science text, or search massive troves of data for salient bits of information.In general, the line almost all those media professionals shared was they would never explicitly use AI to write their articles. But for some, almost every other stage of the creative process in developing a story was fair game for AI assistance.I found this a little horrifying. Farming out certain creative development processes to AI felt not only ethically wrong but also like key cognitive stages were being lost, skipped over, considered unimportant.I’ve never considered myself to be an extraordinarily creative person. I don’t feel like I come up with new or original ideas when I work. Instead, I see myself more as a compiler. I enjoy finding connections between seemingly disparate things. Linking ideas and using those pieces as building blocks to create my own work. As a writer and journalist I see this process as the whole point.A good example of this is a story I published in late 2023 investigating the relationship between long Covid and psychedelics. The story began earlier in the year when I read an intriguing study linking long Covid with serotonin abnormalities in the gut. Being interested in the science of psychedelics, and knowing that psychedelics very much influence serotonin receptors, I wondered if there could be some kind of link between these two seemingly disparate topics.The idea sat in the back of my mind for several months, until I came across a person who told me they had been actively treating their own long Covid symptoms with a variety of psychedelic remedies. After an expansive and fascinating interview I started diving into different studies looking to understand how certain psychedelics affect the body, and whether there could be any associations with long Covid treatments.Eventually I stumbled across a few compelling associations. It took weeks of reading different scientific studies, speaking to various researchers, and thinking about how several discordant threads could be somehow linked.Could AI have assisted me in the process of developing this story?No. Because ultimately, the story comprised an assortment of novel associations that I drew between disparate ideas all encapsulated within the frame of a person’s subjective experience.And it is this idea of novelty that is key to understanding why modern AI technology is not actually intelligence but a simulation of intelligence. LLMs are a sophisticated language imitator, delivering responses that resemble what they think a response would look likeDepositphotos ChatGPT, and all the assorted clones that have emerged over the last couple of years, are a form of technology called LLMs (large language models). At the risk of enraging those who actually work in this mind-bendingly complex field, I’m going to dangerously over-simplify how these things work.It’s important to know that when you ask a system like ChatGPT a question it doesn’t understand what you are asking it. The response these systems generate to any prompt is simply a simulation of what it computes a response would look like based on a massive dataset.So if I were to ask the system a random question like, “What color are cats?”, the system would scrape the world’s trove of information on cats and colors to create a response that mirrors the way most pre-existing text talks about cats and colors. The system builds its response word by word, creating something that reads coherently to us, by establishing a probability for what word should follow each prior word. It’s not thinking, it’s imitating.What these generative AI systems are spitting out are word salad amalgams of what it thinks the response to your prompt should look like, based on training from millions of books and webpages that have been previously published.Setting aside for a moment the accuracy of the responses these systems deliver, I am more interested (or concerned) with the cognitive stages that this technology allows us to skip past.For thousands of years we have used technology to improve our ability to manage highly complex tasks. The idea is called cognitive offloading, and it’s as simple as writing something down on a notepad or saving a contact number on your smartphone. There are pros and cons to cognitive offloading, and scientists have been digging into the phenomenon for years.As long as we have been doing it, there have been people criticizing the practice. The legendary Greek philosopher Socrates was notorious for his skepticism around the written word. He believed knowledge emerged through a dialectical process so writing itself was reductive. He even went so far as to suggest (according to his student Plato, who did write things down) that writing makes us dumber. “For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.” Wrote Plato, quoting Socrates Almost every technological advancement in human history can be seen to be accompanied by someone suggesting it will be damaging. Calculators have destroyed our ability to properly do math. GPS has corrupted our spatial memory. Typewriters killed handwriting. Computer word processors killed typewriters. Video killed the radio star.And what have we lost? Well, zooming in on writing, for example, a 2020 study claimed brain activity is greater when a note is handwritten as opposed to being typed on a keyboard. And then a 2021 study suggested memory retention is better when using a pen and paper versus a stylus and tablet. So there are certainly trade-offs whenever we choose to use a technological tool to offload a cognitive task.There’s an oft-told story about gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. It may be apocryphal but it certainly is meaningful. He once said he sat down and typed out the entirety of The Great Gatsby, word for word. According to Thompson, he wanted to know what it felt like to write a great novel. Thompson was infamous for writing everything on typewriters, even when computers emerged in the 1990sPublic Domain I don’t want to get all wishy-washy here, but these are the brass tacks we are ultimately falling on. What does it feel like to think? What does it feel like to be creative? What does it feel like to understand something?A recent interview with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, reveals how deeply AI has infiltrated his life and work. Not only does Nadella utilize nearly a dozen different custom-designed AI agents to manage every part of his workflow – from summarizing emails to managing his schedule – but he also uses AI to get through podcasts quickly on his way to work. Instead of actually listening to the podcasts he has transcripts uploaded to an AI assistant who he then chats to about the information while commuting.Why listen to the podcast when you can get the gist through a summary? Why read a book when you can listen to the audio version at X2 speed? Or better yet, watch the movie? Or just read a Wikipedia entry. Or get AI to summarize the wikipedia entry.I’m not here to judge anyone on the way they choose to use technology. Do what you want with ChatGPT. But for a moment consider what you may be skipping over by racing from point A to point B.Sure, you can give ChatGPT a set of increasingly detailed prompts; adding complexity to its summary of a scientific journal or a podcast, but at what point do the prompts get so granular that you may as well read the journal entry itself? If you get generative AI to skim and summarize something, what is it missing? If something was worth being written then surely it is worth being read?If there is a more succinct way to say something then maybe we should say it more succinctly.In a magnificent article for The New Yorker, Ted Chiang perfectly summed up the deep contradiction at the heart of modern generative AI systems. He argues language, and writing, is fundamentally about communication. If we write an email to someone we can expect the person at the other end to receive those words and consider them with some kind of thought or attention. But modern AI systems (or these simulations of intelligence) are erasing our ability to think, consider, and write. Where does it all end? For Chiang it's pretty dystopian feedback loop of dialectical slop. “We are entering an era where someone might use a large language model to generate a document out of a bulleted list, and send it to a person who will use a large language model to condense that document into a bulleted list. Can anyone seriously argue that this is an improvement?” Ted Chiang
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  • 17 dazzling images from 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year awards

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    Earth and space mingle in stunning ways for the 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year contest. From the “geological masterpiece” of Coyote Buttes, Utah to the sandstone terrain of desolate Ennedi, Chad to a lava-spewing volcano in Guatemala, this year’s entries dazzle from all corners of the globe. We even get a view of the Milky Way from off-planet with a photograph from NASA astronaut Don Pettit taken aboard the International Space Station.
    “The Wave”Coyote Buttes, UT, USAOne of my greatest passions is visiting stunning natural wonders and paying my personal tribute to them through night photography. This image was taken at Coyote Buttes, a geological masterpiece located in Arizona, where special access permits are required to protect it for future generations.Despite the intense cold during those days, it was incredibly exciting to visit the great sandstone wave for the first time and enjoy its spectacular shapes and colors.To capture this 360° panorama, I planned for the Milky Way and focused on creating a balanced photographic composition. It’s hard to put into words the beauty of this place, but I hope my photograph manages to convey it.Credit: Luis Cajete / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    The Milky Way contains an estimated 200-400 billion stars, but we can only see a fraction of the celestial bodies with our naked eyes. Photography opens up the skies to the staggering light show floating around us.“Echiwile Arch” Ennedi, ChadWhen one first Googles information about visiting Chad, the results aren’t very encouraging from a safety perspective. Nevertheless, the intrepid astrophotographer in me decided to take the chance and visit this landlocked country, specifically the Ennedi Massif in the north.Sparsely populated and completely devoid of light pollution, the three-day drive from the capital, N’Djamena, was well worth the troubles and risks involved. The region is filled with numerous rock formations, shapes, and arches, offering an abundance of options for foreground elements to frame the dramatic night skies. Seen here is a small arch in the shape of a hoof in the Ennedi region.Credit: Vikas Chander / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “Fortress of Light”Jujuy, ArgentinaSince I started shooting the night sky, I’ve always sought out landscapes that feel like they belong to another planet — remote, untouched, and far from light pollution. That’s exactly what I found in “The Cathedral,” a surreal rock formation in Jujuy, Argentina.Photographing at over 4,000 meterspresented its challenges, but when I arrived and saw the rock formations, I was completely blown away. The landscape felt like something from a fantasy world, and the towering cliffs instantly reminded me of a giant stone fortress sculpted by nature.As twilight gave way to full darkness, the core of the Milky Way appeared high overhead, shining with incredible clarity. I patiently waited as the galactic center slowly descended toward the horizon, perfectly aligning above the cliffs.While capturing the panorama, the camera picked up bands of orange and green airglow, adding a unique glow to the horizon.This image captures everything I love about photographing the Milky Way — the silence of remote places, the peace of standing under a pristine sky, and the deep connection I feel to the moment, fully present and grateful to witness it.Credit: Mauricio Salazar / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “The Night Guardians” Easter Island, ChileEaster Island had been on my bucket list for a long time, and it once seemed almost impossible to reach. On our first night there, the weather forecast looked promising, so we decided to go ahead with the tour our group had booked 4–5 months earlier. However, Rapa Nui sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where the weather is notoriously unpredictable. When we woke up at 3 a.m. in our hotel, the sky was completely covered in clouds. Still, we decided to take the risk, knowing the forecast for the next few nights was even worse.An hour later, we were frantically photographing the statues at Rano Raraku—the quarry where nearly all of the island’s 900 statues were carved—when the sky suddenly began to clear. By 5 a.m., it was completely clear, and we had less than two hours to capture all the shots we wanted. We felt incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time.Credit: Rositsa Dimitrova / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “Blossom”Hehuan Mountain Dark Sky Park, TaiwanAfter three years of waiting, the Yushan alpine rhododendrons are finally in bloom once again on Taiwan’s 3,000-meter-high Hehuan Mountain. On this special night, distant clouds helped block city light pollution, revealing an exceptionally clear view of the Milky Way. A solar flare from active region AR3664 reached Earth that evening, intensifying the airglow and adding an otherworldly touch to the sky.Together, these rare natural events created a breathtaking scene—vivid blooms glowing softly beneath a star-filled sky.Credit: Ethan Su / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “Spines and Starlight”Kanaan, NamibiaOn our second Namibia Photography Tour, we began our journey once again at one of our favorite spots in Kanaan. Last year was an incredible experience, but this time, we decided to explore more of this vast land.During a scouting trip, I stumbled upon the perfect composition—two quiver trees standing tall with a large cactus in the foreground, all beautifully aligned with the Milky Way. I had always wanted to capture the Milky Way alongside a big cactus, so in that moment, it felt like a special gift.Getting everything in focus was a bit challenging, as I had to get extremely close to the cactus without getting poked. To achieve perfect sharpness, I used focus stacking. Additionally, I shot with an astro-modified camera and a GNB Nebula filter to enhance the details of the night sky.Credit: Burak Esenbey / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “Galaxy of the Stone Array” Moeraki Boulders, New ZealandThe Milky Way hangs over the sea. The night sky of the Southern Hemisphere condenses the poetry of Li Bai, a poet from China’s Tang Dynasty, into eternity. On a clear night, the Milky Way pours down over the sea like a waterfall from the sky, intertwining with the atmospheric glow on the water’s surface.Credit: Alvin Wu / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “One in a Billion ”ISSI float in the Cupola, looking out the seven windows composing this faceted transparent jewel. While my mind is submerged in contemplation, my eyes gorge on the dim reflections from a nighttime Earth. There are over eight billion people that call this planet home. There are seven of us that can say the same for Space Station. What a privilege it is to be here. I used an orbital star tracker to take out the star streak motion from orbit.Credit: Don Pettit / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “Winter Fairy Tale”Dobratsch Nature Park, AustriaUndoubtedly my wildest location this winter: Austria’s Dobratsch mountain! If I had to describe it in two words, it would be a “Winter Fairytale”!Despite a 5 a.m. work shift, I drove to Austria by 1 p.m., worried about my fitness and lack of sleep. After a 2-hour hike through the snow with a 22kg backpack and sled, the stunning views kept me energized.Arriving at the cabin, I was greeted by untouched snow, completely free of footprints. I spent the evening exploring compositions, and this is my favorite: a panorama of the winter Milky Way with reddish nebulae, stretching above Dobratsch Mountain.I captured the Zodiacal light and even the Gegenschein glow! The sky was magnificent, with Jupiter and Mars shining brightly. In the foreground is the cabin, where I spent 3 freezing hours, waiting for the perfect shot of the Milky Way’s core. It turned out exactly as I envisioned—a true winter fairytale.Credit: Uroš Fink / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “Valle de los Cactus” San Pedro de Atacama, ChileA panoramic shot of the Milky Way in a remote area of the Atacama Cactus Valley, known for its large concentration of cactus plants. I love this place with its countless possibilities. The panorama was taken just as the galactic center began to rise, with the spectacular Gum Nebula visible on the right.It was an especially bright night with a breathtaking sky. The valley isn’t easy to navigate, but it’s always worth trying to find new compositions in such stunning locations beneath the night sky.Credit: Pablo Ruiz / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “Cosmic Fire”Volcán Acatenango, GuatemalaOn the early morning of June 2, 2024, I summited Acatenango Volcano for the first time, hoping to witness the fiery beauty of the neighboring Volcan de Fuego against the Milky Way’s backdrop. That night, the volcano was incredibly active—each thunderous explosion reverberated in my chest, while glowing lava illuminated the dark slopes. Above, the Milky Way stretched diagonally across the sky, a mesmerizing band of stars contrasting with the chaos below. As the volcano erupted, the ash plume rose vertically, forming an acute angle of about 45 degrees with the galaxy’s diagonal path, creating a stunning visual contrast between Earth’s fury and the cosmos’ serenity.Capturing this required a fast, wide-angle lens, an ISO of 3200, and a 10-second exposure to balance the volcanic glow with the starlight. The challenge was timing the shot during a new moon and aligning the right moment for the Milky Way to cross the frame next to the volcano. I used Lightroom as the editor. This image is special for its storytelling—the raw power of Volcan de Fuego meeting the tranquil expanse of the galaxy.Credit: Sergio Montúfar / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “Lake RT5” Zanskar, HimalayasLake RT5 is a pristine alpine lake nestled at 5,700 meters above sea level. My passion has always been to capture the unseen Himalayas in their rawest form. This journey led us through rugged mountains and glaciers, where we discovered several unknown alpine lakes and named them along the way.We endured multiple nights in extremely cold, unpredictable conditions. Due to the ever-changing weather and limited time, I used a blue hour blend to achieve a cleaner foreground. Since my campsite was right beside the lake, I was able to capture the tracked sky shot from the exact same position later that night.I was in awe of the incredible airglow illuminating the Himalayan skies. The raw image had even more intense colors, but I toned them down to stay true to reality. This was undoubtedly one of the most unforgettable nights I’ve ever spent in the heart of the Himalayas.Credit: Tanay Das / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “A Stellar View From The Cave” Saint Raphael, FranceFramed by the rugged mouth of a coastal cave, this image captures the heart of the Milky Way rising over the Mediterranean Sea. Taken during the peak of the Galactic Core season last May, it blends the natural beauty of the foreground with the awe-inspiring vastness of the cosmos. A winding road, illuminated by passing cars, creates a dynamic trail of light that guides the eye toward the stars above.This photo is a reminder that magic often hides in the most unexpected places. All it takes is a little patience, planning, and passion.Credit: Anthony Lopez / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “Boot Arch Perseids” Alabama Hills, CA, USAThe Perseid Meteor Shower occurs every August, raining down hundreds of meteors over a few nights. In 2024, I had planned to photograph it from the Canadian Rockies, but wildfires forced me to change my plans at the last minute. After checking wildfire maps, I found a safe haven in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.After three full nights of capturing meteors, I created this image. Sitting on the rock is my friend Arne, who often joins me on these adventures, gazing up at the magnificent core of our galaxy. Each meteor is painstakingly aligned to its true location in the night sky. The final depiction shows all the meteors I captured, combined into one frame—as if the Earth hadn’t been rotating and all the meteors had fallen at once.Credit: Mike Abramyan / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “Starlit Ocean: A Comet, the setting Venus, the Milky Way, and McWay Falls” – California, USACapturing this image was a race against time, light, and distance. With Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLASmaking its approach, I knew I had a rare opportunity to see it with the naked eye before it faded into the cosmos. I embarked on a five-hour round trip to McWay Falls in Big Sur, one of the few Bortle 2 locations accessible along California’s coast. My window was narrow—just six precious minutes of true darkness before the Moon rose and washed out the night sky. But those six minutes were unforgettable.In that brief span, the Milky Way arched high above the Pacific, Venus shimmered as it set over the ocean, and the comet streaked quietly across the sky—a celestial visitor gracing this iconic coastal cove. The soft cascade of McWay Falls and the stillness of the starlit ocean created a surreal harmony between Earth and sky. It was one of the most vivid and humbling naked-eye comet sightings I’ve ever experienced—an alignment of cosmic elements that felt both fleeting and eternal.Credit: Xingyang Cai / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    “Diamond Beach Emerald Sky”Great Ocean Road, AustraliaWith a clear night forecast and the Milky Way core returning for 2025, I set out to explore the Great Ocean Road. After a few setbacks—such as a failed composition and getting the car stuck on a sandy track—I almost gave up. However, I pushed on and found a great spot above the beach to capture the scene.The night was full of color, with Comet C/2024 G3 Atlas and a pink aurora in the early hours, followed by the Milky Way rising amid intense green airglow near dawn. Despite the challenges, the reward of this stunning image and the memory of the view made it all worthwhile.Credit: Brent Martin / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
    #dazzling #images #milky #way #photographer
    17 dazzling images from 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year awards
    Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Earth and space mingle in stunning ways for the 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year contest. From the “geological masterpiece” of Coyote Buttes, Utah to the sandstone terrain of desolate Ennedi, Chad to a lava-spewing volcano in Guatemala, this year’s entries dazzle from all corners of the globe. We even get a view of the Milky Way from off-planet with a photograph from NASA astronaut Don Pettit taken aboard the International Space Station. “The Wave”Coyote Buttes, UT, USAOne of my greatest passions is visiting stunning natural wonders and paying my personal tribute to them through night photography. This image was taken at Coyote Buttes, a geological masterpiece located in Arizona, where special access permits are required to protect it for future generations.Despite the intense cold during those days, it was incredibly exciting to visit the great sandstone wave for the first time and enjoy its spectacular shapes and colors.To capture this 360° panorama, I planned for the Milky Way and focused on creating a balanced photographic composition. It’s hard to put into words the beauty of this place, but I hope my photograph manages to convey it.Credit: Luis Cajete / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill The Milky Way contains an estimated 200-400 billion stars, but we can only see a fraction of the celestial bodies with our naked eyes. Photography opens up the skies to the staggering light show floating around us.“Echiwile Arch” Ennedi, ChadWhen one first Googles information about visiting Chad, the results aren’t very encouraging from a safety perspective. Nevertheless, the intrepid astrophotographer in me decided to take the chance and visit this landlocked country, specifically the Ennedi Massif in the north.Sparsely populated and completely devoid of light pollution, the three-day drive from the capital, N’Djamena, was well worth the troubles and risks involved. The region is filled with numerous rock formations, shapes, and arches, offering an abundance of options for foreground elements to frame the dramatic night skies. Seen here is a small arch in the shape of a hoof in the Ennedi region.Credit: Vikas Chander / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Fortress of Light”Jujuy, ArgentinaSince I started shooting the night sky, I’ve always sought out landscapes that feel like they belong to another planet — remote, untouched, and far from light pollution. That’s exactly what I found in “The Cathedral,” a surreal rock formation in Jujuy, Argentina.Photographing at over 4,000 meterspresented its challenges, but when I arrived and saw the rock formations, I was completely blown away. The landscape felt like something from a fantasy world, and the towering cliffs instantly reminded me of a giant stone fortress sculpted by nature.As twilight gave way to full darkness, the core of the Milky Way appeared high overhead, shining with incredible clarity. I patiently waited as the galactic center slowly descended toward the horizon, perfectly aligning above the cliffs.While capturing the panorama, the camera picked up bands of orange and green airglow, adding a unique glow to the horizon.This image captures everything I love about photographing the Milky Way — the silence of remote places, the peace of standing under a pristine sky, and the deep connection I feel to the moment, fully present and grateful to witness it.Credit: Mauricio Salazar / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “The Night Guardians” Easter Island, ChileEaster Island had been on my bucket list for a long time, and it once seemed almost impossible to reach. On our first night there, the weather forecast looked promising, so we decided to go ahead with the tour our group had booked 4–5 months earlier. However, Rapa Nui sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where the weather is notoriously unpredictable. When we woke up at 3 a.m. in our hotel, the sky was completely covered in clouds. Still, we decided to take the risk, knowing the forecast for the next few nights was even worse.An hour later, we were frantically photographing the statues at Rano Raraku—the quarry where nearly all of the island’s 900 statues were carved—when the sky suddenly began to clear. By 5 a.m., it was completely clear, and we had less than two hours to capture all the shots we wanted. We felt incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time.Credit: Rositsa Dimitrova / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Blossom”Hehuan Mountain Dark Sky Park, TaiwanAfter three years of waiting, the Yushan alpine rhododendrons are finally in bloom once again on Taiwan’s 3,000-meter-high Hehuan Mountain. On this special night, distant clouds helped block city light pollution, revealing an exceptionally clear view of the Milky Way. A solar flare from active region AR3664 reached Earth that evening, intensifying the airglow and adding an otherworldly touch to the sky.Together, these rare natural events created a breathtaking scene—vivid blooms glowing softly beneath a star-filled sky.Credit: Ethan Su / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Spines and Starlight”Kanaan, NamibiaOn our second Namibia Photography Tour, we began our journey once again at one of our favorite spots in Kanaan. Last year was an incredible experience, but this time, we decided to explore more of this vast land.During a scouting trip, I stumbled upon the perfect composition—two quiver trees standing tall with a large cactus in the foreground, all beautifully aligned with the Milky Way. I had always wanted to capture the Milky Way alongside a big cactus, so in that moment, it felt like a special gift.Getting everything in focus was a bit challenging, as I had to get extremely close to the cactus without getting poked. To achieve perfect sharpness, I used focus stacking. Additionally, I shot with an astro-modified camera and a GNB Nebula filter to enhance the details of the night sky.Credit: Burak Esenbey / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Galaxy of the Stone Array” Moeraki Boulders, New ZealandThe Milky Way hangs over the sea. The night sky of the Southern Hemisphere condenses the poetry of Li Bai, a poet from China’s Tang Dynasty, into eternity. On a clear night, the Milky Way pours down over the sea like a waterfall from the sky, intertwining with the atmospheric glow on the water’s surface.Credit: Alvin Wu / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “One in a Billion ”ISSI float in the Cupola, looking out the seven windows composing this faceted transparent jewel. While my mind is submerged in contemplation, my eyes gorge on the dim reflections from a nighttime Earth. There are over eight billion people that call this planet home. There are seven of us that can say the same for Space Station. What a privilege it is to be here. I used an orbital star tracker to take out the star streak motion from orbit.Credit: Don Pettit / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Winter Fairy Tale”Dobratsch Nature Park, AustriaUndoubtedly my wildest location this winter: Austria’s Dobratsch mountain! If I had to describe it in two words, it would be a “Winter Fairytale”!Despite a 5 a.m. work shift, I drove to Austria by 1 p.m., worried about my fitness and lack of sleep. After a 2-hour hike through the snow with a 22kg backpack and sled, the stunning views kept me energized.Arriving at the cabin, I was greeted by untouched snow, completely free of footprints. I spent the evening exploring compositions, and this is my favorite: a panorama of the winter Milky Way with reddish nebulae, stretching above Dobratsch Mountain.I captured the Zodiacal light and even the Gegenschein glow! The sky was magnificent, with Jupiter and Mars shining brightly. In the foreground is the cabin, where I spent 3 freezing hours, waiting for the perfect shot of the Milky Way’s core. It turned out exactly as I envisioned—a true winter fairytale.Credit: Uroš Fink / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Valle de los Cactus” San Pedro de Atacama, ChileA panoramic shot of the Milky Way in a remote area of the Atacama Cactus Valley, known for its large concentration of cactus plants. I love this place with its countless possibilities. The panorama was taken just as the galactic center began to rise, with the spectacular Gum Nebula visible on the right.It was an especially bright night with a breathtaking sky. The valley isn’t easy to navigate, but it’s always worth trying to find new compositions in such stunning locations beneath the night sky.Credit: Pablo Ruiz / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Cosmic Fire”Volcán Acatenango, GuatemalaOn the early morning of June 2, 2024, I summited Acatenango Volcano for the first time, hoping to witness the fiery beauty of the neighboring Volcan de Fuego against the Milky Way’s backdrop. That night, the volcano was incredibly active—each thunderous explosion reverberated in my chest, while glowing lava illuminated the dark slopes. Above, the Milky Way stretched diagonally across the sky, a mesmerizing band of stars contrasting with the chaos below. As the volcano erupted, the ash plume rose vertically, forming an acute angle of about 45 degrees with the galaxy’s diagonal path, creating a stunning visual contrast between Earth’s fury and the cosmos’ serenity.Capturing this required a fast, wide-angle lens, an ISO of 3200, and a 10-second exposure to balance the volcanic glow with the starlight. The challenge was timing the shot during a new moon and aligning the right moment for the Milky Way to cross the frame next to the volcano. I used Lightroom as the editor. This image is special for its storytelling—the raw power of Volcan de Fuego meeting the tranquil expanse of the galaxy.Credit: Sergio Montúfar / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Lake RT5” Zanskar, HimalayasLake RT5 is a pristine alpine lake nestled at 5,700 meters above sea level. My passion has always been to capture the unseen Himalayas in their rawest form. This journey led us through rugged mountains and glaciers, where we discovered several unknown alpine lakes and named them along the way.We endured multiple nights in extremely cold, unpredictable conditions. Due to the ever-changing weather and limited time, I used a blue hour blend to achieve a cleaner foreground. Since my campsite was right beside the lake, I was able to capture the tracked sky shot from the exact same position later that night.I was in awe of the incredible airglow illuminating the Himalayan skies. The raw image had even more intense colors, but I toned them down to stay true to reality. This was undoubtedly one of the most unforgettable nights I’ve ever spent in the heart of the Himalayas.Credit: Tanay Das / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “A Stellar View From The Cave” Saint Raphael, FranceFramed by the rugged mouth of a coastal cave, this image captures the heart of the Milky Way rising over the Mediterranean Sea. Taken during the peak of the Galactic Core season last May, it blends the natural beauty of the foreground with the awe-inspiring vastness of the cosmos. A winding road, illuminated by passing cars, creates a dynamic trail of light that guides the eye toward the stars above.This photo is a reminder that magic often hides in the most unexpected places. All it takes is a little patience, planning, and passion.Credit: Anthony Lopez / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Boot Arch Perseids” Alabama Hills, CA, USAThe Perseid Meteor Shower occurs every August, raining down hundreds of meteors over a few nights. In 2024, I had planned to photograph it from the Canadian Rockies, but wildfires forced me to change my plans at the last minute. After checking wildfire maps, I found a safe haven in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.After three full nights of capturing meteors, I created this image. Sitting on the rock is my friend Arne, who often joins me on these adventures, gazing up at the magnificent core of our galaxy. Each meteor is painstakingly aligned to its true location in the night sky. The final depiction shows all the meteors I captured, combined into one frame—as if the Earth hadn’t been rotating and all the meteors had fallen at once.Credit: Mike Abramyan / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Starlit Ocean: A Comet, the setting Venus, the Milky Way, and McWay Falls” – California, USACapturing this image was a race against time, light, and distance. With Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLASmaking its approach, I knew I had a rare opportunity to see it with the naked eye before it faded into the cosmos. I embarked on a five-hour round trip to McWay Falls in Big Sur, one of the few Bortle 2 locations accessible along California’s coast. My window was narrow—just six precious minutes of true darkness before the Moon rose and washed out the night sky. But those six minutes were unforgettable.In that brief span, the Milky Way arched high above the Pacific, Venus shimmered as it set over the ocean, and the comet streaked quietly across the sky—a celestial visitor gracing this iconic coastal cove. The soft cascade of McWay Falls and the stillness of the starlit ocean created a surreal harmony between Earth and sky. It was one of the most vivid and humbling naked-eye comet sightings I’ve ever experienced—an alignment of cosmic elements that felt both fleeting and eternal.Credit: Xingyang Cai / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Diamond Beach Emerald Sky”Great Ocean Road, AustraliaWith a clear night forecast and the Milky Way core returning for 2025, I set out to explore the Great Ocean Road. After a few setbacks—such as a failed composition and getting the car stuck on a sandy track—I almost gave up. However, I pushed on and found a great spot above the beach to capture the scene.The night was full of color, with Comet C/2024 G3 Atlas and a pink aurora in the early hours, followed by the Milky Way rising amid intense green airglow near dawn. Despite the challenges, the reward of this stunning image and the memory of the view made it all worthwhile.Credit: Brent Martin / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill #dazzling #images #milky #way #photographer
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    17 dazzling images from 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year awards
    Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Earth and space mingle in stunning ways for the 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year contest. From the “geological masterpiece” of Coyote Buttes, Utah to the sandstone terrain of desolate Ennedi, Chad to a lava-spewing volcano in Guatemala, this year’s entries dazzle from all corners of the globe. We even get a view of the Milky Way from off-planet with a photograph from NASA astronaut Don Pettit taken aboard the International Space Station. “The Wave”Coyote Buttes, UT, USAOne of my greatest passions is visiting stunning natural wonders and paying my personal tribute to them through night photography. This image was taken at Coyote Buttes, a geological masterpiece located in Arizona, where special access permits are required to protect it for future generations.Despite the intense cold during those days, it was incredibly exciting to visit the great sandstone wave for the first time and enjoy its spectacular shapes and colors.To capture this 360° panorama, I planned for the Milky Way and focused on creating a balanced photographic composition. It’s hard to put into words the beauty of this place, but I hope my photograph manages to convey it.Credit: Luis Cajete / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill The Milky Way contains an estimated 200-400 billion stars, but we can only see a fraction of the celestial bodies with our naked eyes. Photography opens up the skies to the staggering light show floating around us. (Click to enlarge images.) “Echiwile Arch” Ennedi, ChadWhen one first Googles information about visiting Chad, the results aren’t very encouraging from a safety perspective. Nevertheless, the intrepid astrophotographer in me decided to take the chance and visit this landlocked country, specifically the Ennedi Massif in the north.Sparsely populated and completely devoid of light pollution, the three-day drive from the capital, N’Djamena, was well worth the troubles and risks involved. The region is filled with numerous rock formations, shapes, and arches, offering an abundance of options for foreground elements to frame the dramatic night skies. Seen here is a small arch in the shape of a hoof in the Ennedi region.Credit: Vikas Chander / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Fortress of Light”Jujuy, ArgentinaSince I started shooting the night sky, I’ve always sought out landscapes that feel like they belong to another planet — remote, untouched, and far from light pollution. That’s exactly what I found in “The Cathedral,” a surreal rock formation in Jujuy, Argentina.Photographing at over 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) presented its challenges, but when I arrived and saw the rock formations, I was completely blown away. The landscape felt like something from a fantasy world, and the towering cliffs instantly reminded me of a giant stone fortress sculpted by nature.As twilight gave way to full darkness, the core of the Milky Way appeared high overhead, shining with incredible clarity. I patiently waited as the galactic center slowly descended toward the horizon, perfectly aligning above the cliffs.While capturing the panorama, the camera picked up bands of orange and green airglow, adding a unique glow to the horizon.This image captures everything I love about photographing the Milky Way — the silence of remote places, the peace of standing under a pristine sky, and the deep connection I feel to the moment, fully present and grateful to witness it.Credit: Mauricio Salazar / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “The Night Guardians” Easter Island, ChileEaster Island had been on my bucket list for a long time, and it once seemed almost impossible to reach. On our first night there, the weather forecast looked promising, so we decided to go ahead with the tour our group had booked 4–5 months earlier. However, Rapa Nui sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where the weather is notoriously unpredictable. When we woke up at 3 a.m. in our hotel, the sky was completely covered in clouds. Still, we decided to take the risk, knowing the forecast for the next few nights was even worse.An hour later, we were frantically photographing the statues at Rano Raraku—the quarry where nearly all of the island’s 900 statues were carved—when the sky suddenly began to clear. By 5 a.m., it was completely clear, and we had less than two hours to capture all the shots we wanted. We felt incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time.Credit: Rositsa Dimitrova / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Blossom”Hehuan Mountain Dark Sky Park, TaiwanAfter three years of waiting, the Yushan alpine rhododendrons are finally in bloom once again on Taiwan’s 3,000-meter-high Hehuan Mountain. On this special night, distant clouds helped block city light pollution, revealing an exceptionally clear view of the Milky Way. A solar flare from active region AR3664 reached Earth that evening, intensifying the airglow and adding an otherworldly touch to the sky.Together, these rare natural events created a breathtaking scene—vivid blooms glowing softly beneath a star-filled sky.Credit: Ethan Su / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Spines and Starlight”Kanaan, NamibiaOn our second Namibia Photography Tour, we began our journey once again at one of our favorite spots in Kanaan. Last year was an incredible experience, but this time, we decided to explore more of this vast land.During a scouting trip, I stumbled upon the perfect composition—two quiver trees standing tall with a large cactus in the foreground, all beautifully aligned with the Milky Way. I had always wanted to capture the Milky Way alongside a big cactus, so in that moment, it felt like a special gift.Getting everything in focus was a bit challenging, as I had to get extremely close to the cactus without getting poked. To achieve perfect sharpness, I used focus stacking. Additionally, I shot with an astro-modified camera and a GNB Nebula filter to enhance the details of the night sky.Credit: Burak Esenbey / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Galaxy of the Stone Array” Moeraki Boulders, New ZealandThe Milky Way hangs over the sea. The night sky of the Southern Hemisphere condenses the poetry of Li Bai, a poet from China’s Tang Dynasty, into eternity. On a clear night, the Milky Way pours down over the sea like a waterfall from the sky, intertwining with the atmospheric glow on the water’s surface.Credit: Alvin Wu / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “One in a Billion ”ISS (International Space Station)I float in the Cupola, looking out the seven windows composing this faceted transparent jewel. While my mind is submerged in contemplation, my eyes gorge on the dim reflections from a nighttime Earth. There are over eight billion people that call this planet home. There are seven of us that can say the same for Space Station. What a privilege it is to be here. I used an orbital star tracker to take out the star streak motion from orbit.Credit: Don Pettit / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Winter Fairy Tale”Dobratsch Nature Park, AustriaUndoubtedly my wildest location this winter: Austria’s Dobratsch mountain! If I had to describe it in two words, it would be a “Winter Fairytale”!Despite a 5 a.m. work shift, I drove to Austria by 1 p.m., worried about my fitness and lack of sleep. After a 2-hour hike through the snow with a 22kg backpack and sled, the stunning views kept me energized.Arriving at the cabin (where I had planned my winter panorama two years ago), I was greeted by untouched snow, completely free of footprints. I spent the evening exploring compositions, and this is my favorite: a panorama of the winter Milky Way with reddish nebulae, stretching above Dobratsch Mountain.I captured the Zodiacal light and even the Gegenschein glow! The sky was magnificent, with Jupiter and Mars shining brightly. In the foreground is the cabin, where I spent 3 freezing hours (-12°C), waiting for the perfect shot of the Milky Way’s core. It turned out exactly as I envisioned—a true winter fairytale.Credit: Uroš Fink / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Valle de los Cactus” San Pedro de Atacama, ChileA panoramic shot of the Milky Way in a remote area of the Atacama Cactus Valley, known for its large concentration of cactus plants. I love this place with its countless possibilities. The panorama was taken just as the galactic center began to rise, with the spectacular Gum Nebula visible on the right.It was an especially bright night with a breathtaking sky. The valley isn’t easy to navigate, but it’s always worth trying to find new compositions in such stunning locations beneath the night sky.Credit: Pablo Ruiz / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Cosmic Fire”Volcán Acatenango, GuatemalaOn the early morning of June 2, 2024, I summited Acatenango Volcano for the first time, hoping to witness the fiery beauty of the neighboring Volcan de Fuego against the Milky Way’s backdrop. That night, the volcano was incredibly active—each thunderous explosion reverberated in my chest, while glowing lava illuminated the dark slopes. Above, the Milky Way stretched diagonally across the sky, a mesmerizing band of stars contrasting with the chaos below. As the volcano erupted, the ash plume rose vertically, forming an acute angle of about 45 degrees with the galaxy’s diagonal path, creating a stunning visual contrast between Earth’s fury and the cosmos’ serenity.Capturing this required a fast, wide-angle lens (f/2.8), an ISO of 3200, and a 10-second exposure to balance the volcanic glow with the starlight. The challenge was timing the shot during a new moon and aligning the right moment for the Milky Way to cross the frame next to the volcano. I used Lightroom as the editor. This image is special for its storytelling—the raw power of Volcan de Fuego meeting the tranquil expanse of the galaxy.Credit: Sergio Montúfar / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Lake RT5” Zanskar, HimalayasLake RT5 is a pristine alpine lake nestled at 5,700 meters above sea level. My passion has always been to capture the unseen Himalayas in their rawest form. This journey led us through rugged mountains and glaciers, where we discovered several unknown alpine lakes and named them along the way.We endured multiple nights in extremely cold, unpredictable conditions. Due to the ever-changing weather and limited time, I used a blue hour blend to achieve a cleaner foreground. Since my campsite was right beside the lake, I was able to capture the tracked sky shot from the exact same position later that night.I was in awe of the incredible airglow illuminating the Himalayan skies. The raw image had even more intense colors, but I toned them down to stay true to reality. This was undoubtedly one of the most unforgettable nights I’ve ever spent in the heart of the Himalayas.Credit: Tanay Das / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “A Stellar View From The Cave” Saint Raphael, FranceFramed by the rugged mouth of a coastal cave, this image captures the heart of the Milky Way rising over the Mediterranean Sea. Taken during the peak of the Galactic Core season last May, it blends the natural beauty of the foreground with the awe-inspiring vastness of the cosmos. A winding road, illuminated by passing cars, creates a dynamic trail of light that guides the eye toward the stars above.This photo is a reminder that magic often hides in the most unexpected places. All it takes is a little patience, planning, and passion.Credit: Anthony Lopez / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Boot Arch Perseids” Alabama Hills, CA, USAThe Perseid Meteor Shower occurs every August, raining down hundreds of meteors over a few nights. In 2024, I had planned to photograph it from the Canadian Rockies, but wildfires forced me to change my plans at the last minute. After checking wildfire maps, I found a safe haven in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.After three full nights of capturing meteors, I created this image. Sitting on the rock is my friend Arne, who often joins me on these adventures, gazing up at the magnificent core of our galaxy. Each meteor is painstakingly aligned to its true location in the night sky. The final depiction shows all the meteors I captured, combined into one frame—as if the Earth hadn’t been rotating and all the meteors had fallen at once.Credit: Mike Abramyan / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Starlit Ocean: A Comet, the setting Venus, the Milky Way, and McWay Falls” – California, USACapturing this image was a race against time, light, and distance. With Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS (C/2023 A3) making its approach, I knew I had a rare opportunity to see it with the naked eye before it faded into the cosmos. I embarked on a five-hour round trip to McWay Falls in Big Sur, one of the few Bortle 2 locations accessible along California’s coast. My window was narrow—just six precious minutes of true darkness before the Moon rose and washed out the night sky. But those six minutes were unforgettable.In that brief span, the Milky Way arched high above the Pacific, Venus shimmered as it set over the ocean, and the comet streaked quietly across the sky—a celestial visitor gracing this iconic coastal cove. The soft cascade of McWay Falls and the stillness of the starlit ocean created a surreal harmony between Earth and sky. It was one of the most vivid and humbling naked-eye comet sightings I’ve ever experienced—an alignment of cosmic elements that felt both fleeting and eternal.Credit: Xingyang Cai / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Diamond Beach Emerald Sky”Great Ocean Road, AustraliaWith a clear night forecast and the Milky Way core returning for 2025, I set out to explore the Great Ocean Road. After a few setbacks—such as a failed composition and getting the car stuck on a sandy track—I almost gave up. However, I pushed on and found a great spot above the beach to capture the scene.The night was full of color, with Comet C/2024 G3 Atlas and a pink aurora in the early hours, followed by the Milky Way rising amid intense green airglow near dawn. Despite the challenges, the reward of this stunning image and the memory of the view made it all worthwhile.Credit: Brent Martin / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill
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  • The best free AI courses and certificates in 2025 - and I've tried many

    Artur Debat/Getty ImagesGenerative AI is an astonishing technology that's not only here to stay but promises to impact all sectors of work and business. It's already made unprecedented inroads into our daily lives.We all have a lot to learn about it. Spewing out a few prompts to ChatGPT may be easy, but before you can turn all these new capabilities into productive tools, you need to grow your skills. Fortunately, there is a wide range of classes that can help. Also: I let Google's Jules AI agent into my code repo and it did four hours of work in an instantMany companies and schools will try to sell you on their AI education programs. But as I'll show in the following compendium of great resources, you can learn a ton about AI and even get some certifications -- all for free.I have taken at least one class from each of the providers below, and they've all been pretty good. Obviously, some teachers are more compelling than others, but it's been a very helpful process. When working on AI projects for ZDNET, I've also sometimes gone back and taken other classes to shore up my knowledge and understanding.So, I recommend you take a quick spin through my short reviews, possibly dig deeper into the linked articles, and bookmark all of these, because they're valuable resources. Let's get started. Course selection: Huge, more than 1,500AI coursesProgram pricing: Free trial, then /moLinkedIn Learning is one of the oldest online learning platforms, established in 1995 as Lynda.com. The company offers an enormous library of courses on a broad range of topics. There is a monthly fee, but many companies and schools have accounts for all their employees and students. Also: Want a top engineering job in 2025? Here are the skills you need, according to LinkedInLinkedIn Learning is probably the one online education site I've used more than any other -- starting back in the late 1990s. For years, I paid for a membership. Then, I got a membership as an alum of my grad school, which is how I use it now. With so many courses on so many topics, it's a great go-to learning resource.I took two classes on LinkedIn Learning. Here's my testimonial on one of them. I also took the two-hour Machine Learning with Python: Foundations course, which had a great instructor -- Prof. Frederick Nwanganga -- who was previously unknown to me. I have to hand it to LinkedIn. They choose people who know how to teach.I learned a lot in this course, especially about how to collect and prepare data for machine learning. I also was able to stretch my Python programming knowledge, specifically about how a machine learning model can be built in Python. In just two hours, I felt like I got a friendly and comprehensive brain dump.You can read more here: How LinkedIn's free AI course made me a better Python developer.Since there are so many AI courses, you're bound to find a helpful series. To get you started, I've picked three that might open some doors:ChatGPT Tips for the Help Desk: Learn to apply strategic planning, prompt engineering, and agent scripting, as well as other AI techniques, to AI operations.Machine Learning with Python: Foundations: Get step-by-step guidance on how to get started with machine learning via Python.Building Career Agility and Resilience in the Age of AI: Learn how to reimagine your career to adapt and find success in the age of AI. It's worth checking with your employer, agency, or school to see if you qualify for a free membership. Otherwise, you can pay by month or year.A company representative told ZDNET, "LinkedIn Learning has awarded nearly 500K professional certificates over the past 2.5 years. And, generative AI is one of the top topics represented."
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    View now at Linkedin Learning Course selection: 93Program pricing: Free during the Skills Fest, mostly free afterMicrosoft earned itself a Guinness World Record for its online training session called Skills Fest, which ran in April and May of 2025. This was a mixed combination of live and on-demand courses that anyone could take for free. The only cost was giving up your email account and registering with Microsoft.Also: You can get free AI skills training from Microsoft for a few more days, and I recommend you doHere are three courses I took. The Minecraft one was adorable, and I recommend it for a kids' intro to generative AI.AI Adventurers: A Minecraft Education presentation about the basics of generative AIBuilding applications with GitHub Copilot agent mode:AI for Organizational Leaders:Not all the courses are available on demand. After Skills Fest ends, you should be able to get to the course catalog by visiting this link. There's a Filters block on the left. Click On-Demand and then Apply Filters. You should see a bunch of courses still available for you to enjoy.
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    View now at Microsoft Skills Fest Course selection: Quite a lotProgram pricing: Many free, some on a paid subscriptionAmazon puts the demand in infrastructure on demand. Rather than building out their own infrastructure, many companies now rely on Amazon to provide scalable cloud infrastructure on demand. Nearly every aspect of IT technology is available for rent from Amazon's wide range of web services. This also includes a fairly large spectrum of individual AI services from computer vision to human-sounding speech to Bedrock, which "makes LLMs from Amazon and leading AI startups available through an API."Also: I spent a weekend with Amazon's free AI courses, and highly recommend you do tooAmazon also offers a wide range of training courses for all these services. Some of them are available for free, while others are available via a paid subscription. Here are three of the free courses you can try out:Foundations of Prompt Engineering: Learn about the principles, techniques, and best practices for designing effective prompts. Amazon Bedrock -- Getting Started: Learn about Amazon's service for building generative AI applications. Twitch Series: AWS Power Hour Introduction to Machine Learning for Developers: This is a recording of a Twitch-based learning chat series. It helps you learn the foundations of machine learning and get a practical perspective on what developers really need to know to get started with machine learning. In addition to classes located on Amazon's sites, the company also has quite a few classes on YouTube. I spent a fun and interesting weekend gobbling up the Generative AI Foundations series, which is an entire playlist of cool stuff to learn about AI.If you're using or even just considering AWS-based services, these courses are well worth your time.
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    View now Course selection: Fairly broad IT and career buildingProgram pricing: FreeIBM, of course, is IBM. It led the AI pack for years with its Watson offerings. Its generative AI solution is called Watsonx. It focuses on enabling businesses to deploy and manage both traditional machine learning and generative AI, tailored to their unique needs.Also: Have 10 hours? IBM will train you in AI fundamentals - for freeThe company's SkillsBuild Learning classes offer a lot, providing basic training for a few key IT job descriptions -- including cybersecurity specialist, data analyst, user experience designer, and more. Right now, there's only one free AI credential, but it's one that excited a lot of our readers. That's the AI Fundamentals learning credential, which offers six courses. You need to be logged in to follow the link. But registration is easy and free. When you're done, you get an official credential, which you can list on LinkedIn. After I took the course, I did just that -- and, of course, I documented it for you.My favorite was the AI Ethics class, which is an hour and 45 minutes. Through real-world examples you'll learn about AI ethics, how they are implemented, and why AI ethics are so important in building trustworthy AI systems.
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    View now at IBM SkillsBuild Course selection: Nearly 90 AI-focused coursesProgram pricing: FreeDeepLearning is an education-focused company specializing in AI training. The company is constantly adding new courses that provide training, mostly for developers, in many different facets of AI technology. It partnered with OpenAIto create a number of pretty great courses.I took the ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers course below, which was my first detailed introduction to the ChatGPT API. If you're interested in how coders can use LLMs like ChatGPT, this course is worth your time. Interspersing traditional code with detailed prompts that look more like comments than commands can help you understand these two very different styles of coding.: I took this free AI course for developers in one weekend and highly recommend itThree courses I recommend you check out are:ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers: Go beyond the chat box. Use API access to leverage LLMs into your own applications, and learn to build a custom chatbot.Evaluating and Debugging Generative AI Models Using Weights and Biases: Learn MLOps tools for managing, versioning, debugging, and experimenting in your ML workflow.Large Language Models with Semantic Search: Learn to use LLMs to enhance search and summarize results.With AI such a hot growth area, I am always amazed at the vast quantity of high-value courseware available for free. Definitely bookmark DeepLearning and keep checking back as it adds more courses.
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    View now at DeepLearning Google Generative AI Leader course Designed for business leaders Course selection: 5Program pricing: Free to learn, for a certificateGoogle is offering a 7-8 hour program that teaches generative AI concepts to business leaders. This is a pretty comprehensive set of courses, all of which you can watch for free. They include: Gen AI: Beyond the chatbot: Foundational overview of generative AIGen AI: Unlock foundational concepts: Core AI concepts explained Gen AI: Navigate the landscape: AI ecosystem and infrastructureGen AI Apps: Transform your work: Business-focused AI applicationsGen AI Agents: Transform your organization: Strategy and adoption of AIThere is a small catch here: If you want the actual certificate, you need to pony up and take a 90-minute exam. But if you're calling yourself a business leader and want the recognition, I figure is probably a fair price to pay for anointing yourselfas a generative AI business leader.Also: Google offers AI certification for business leaders now - free trainings includedI took the foundational learning module, which was mostly text-based with interactive quizzes and involvement devices. It provided a good overview for someone just getting into the field, and I'm sure the remainder of the classes are equally interesting.
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    Course selection: Thousands of courses on AI aloneProgram pricing: Free trial, then /mo. Courses are also sold individually.Udemy is a courseware aggregator that publishes courses produced by individual trainers. That makes course style and quality a little inconsistent, but the rating system does help the more outstanding trainers rise to the top. Udemy has a free trial, which is why it's on this list.  I spent some time in Steve Ballinger's Complete ChatGPT Course For Work 2023! and found it quite helpful. Clocking in at a little over two hours, it helps you understand how to balance ChatGPT with your work processes, while keeping in mind the ethics and issues that arise from using AI at work.Udemy offers a /month all-you-can-eat plan, and also sells individual courses. I honestly can't see why anyone would buy the courses individually, since most of them cost more for one course than the entire library does on a subscription.Also: I'm taking AI image courses for free on Udemy with this little trick - and you can tooHere are three courses you might want to check out:ChatGPT Masterclass: ChatGPT Guide for Beginners to Experts!: Gain a professional understanding of ChatGPT, and learn to produce high-quality content seamlessly and grow your earning potential.Discover, Validate & Launch New Business Ideas with ChatGPT: Learn how to generate startup ideas, evaluate their potential, and test them with customers in real life.Midjourney Mastery: Create Visually Stunning AI Art: Learn how to use Midjourney to create art.One of the more interesting aspects of Udemy is that you may find courses on very niche applications of AI, which might not suit vendors offering a more limited selection of mainstream courses. If you have a unique application need, don't hesitate to spend some extra time searching for just the right course.
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    View now at Udemy Course selection: One AI courseProgram pricing: FreeGoogle's Grow With Google program offers a fairly wide range of certificate programs, which are normally run through Coursera. Earning one of those certificates often requires paying a subscription fee. But we're specifically interested in one Grow With Google program, which is aimed at teachers, and does not involve any fees.The Generative AI for Educators class, developed in concert with MIT's Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education, is a 2-hour program designed to help teachers learn about generative AI, and how to use it in the classroom. Also: Google and MIT launch a free generative AI course for teachersGenerative AI is a big challenge in education because it can provide amazing support for students and teachers and, unfortunately, provide an easy way out for students to cheat on their assignments. So a course that can help teachers come up to speed on all the issues can be very powerful.The course provides a professional development certificate on completion, and this one is free.
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    View now at Google Why should you trust me? I've been working with AI for a very long time. I conducted one of the first-ever academic studies of AI ethics as a thesis project way back in the day. I created and launched an expert system development environment before the first link was connected on the World Wide Web. I did some of the first research of AI on RISC-based computing architectureswhen RISC processors were the size of refrigerators. I also wrote and deployed the AI Editor, a generative AI tool that built news and content dynamically. That may not seem like much today, but I did it way back in 2010, when I had to create a generative AI engine from scratch. At that point, to work, it had to be distributed across five individual servers, each running one agent of a team of clustered AI agents.Also: Six skills you need to become an AI prompt engineerI also have a master's degree in education, focusing on learning and technology. My specialty is adult online learning, so this kind of stuff is right up my alley. When it comes to the courses and programs I'm spotlighting here, there's no way I could take all of them. But I have taken at least one course from each vendor, in order to test them out and report back to you. And, given my long background in the world of AI, this is a topic that has fascinated and enthralled me for most of my academic and professional career.With all that, I will say that the absolute high point was when I could get an AI to talk like a pirate.
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    Some companies are promoting micro-degrees. They seem expensive, but fast, but are they any good? Let's be clear: A micro-degree is not a degree. It's a set of courses with a marketing name attached. Degrees are granted by accredited academic institutions, accredited by regional accrediting bodies. I'm not saying you won't learn anything in those programs. But they're not degrees and they may cost more than just-as-good courses that don't have a fancy marketing name attached.
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    So, do certificates have any value? Yes, but how much value they have depends on your prospective employer's perspective. A certificate says you completed a course of study successfully. That might be something of value to you, as well. Also: Want a job in AI? Check out these new AWS AI certificationsYou can set a goal to learn a topic, and if you get a credential, you can be fairly confident you have achieved some learning. Accredited degrees, by contrast, are an assurance that you not only learned the material but did so according to some level of standard and rigor common to other accredited institutions.My advice: If you can get a certificate, and the price for getting it doesn't overly stretch your budget, go ahead and get it. It still is a resume point. But don't fork over bucks on the scale of a college tuition for some promise that you'll get qualified for a job faster and easier than, you know, going to college.
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    Other learning resources you'll probably loveYou can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.Want more stories about AI? Sign up for Innovation, our weekly newsletter.Artificial Intelligence
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    The best free AI courses and certificates in 2025 - and I've tried many
    Artur Debat/Getty ImagesGenerative AI is an astonishing technology that's not only here to stay but promises to impact all sectors of work and business. It's already made unprecedented inroads into our daily lives.We all have a lot to learn about it. Spewing out a few prompts to ChatGPT may be easy, but before you can turn all these new capabilities into productive tools, you need to grow your skills. Fortunately, there is a wide range of classes that can help. Also: I let Google's Jules AI agent into my code repo and it did four hours of work in an instantMany companies and schools will try to sell you on their AI education programs. But as I'll show in the following compendium of great resources, you can learn a ton about AI and even get some certifications -- all for free.I have taken at least one class from each of the providers below, and they've all been pretty good. Obviously, some teachers are more compelling than others, but it's been a very helpful process. When working on AI projects for ZDNET, I've also sometimes gone back and taken other classes to shore up my knowledge and understanding.So, I recommend you take a quick spin through my short reviews, possibly dig deeper into the linked articles, and bookmark all of these, because they're valuable resources. Let's get started. Course selection: Huge, more than 1,500AI coursesProgram pricing: Free trial, then /moLinkedIn Learning is one of the oldest online learning platforms, established in 1995 as Lynda.com. The company offers an enormous library of courses on a broad range of topics. There is a monthly fee, but many companies and schools have accounts for all their employees and students. Also: Want a top engineering job in 2025? Here are the skills you need, according to LinkedInLinkedIn Learning is probably the one online education site I've used more than any other -- starting back in the late 1990s. For years, I paid for a membership. Then, I got a membership as an alum of my grad school, which is how I use it now. With so many courses on so many topics, it's a great go-to learning resource.I took two classes on LinkedIn Learning. Here's my testimonial on one of them. I also took the two-hour Machine Learning with Python: Foundations course, which had a great instructor -- Prof. Frederick Nwanganga -- who was previously unknown to me. I have to hand it to LinkedIn. They choose people who know how to teach.I learned a lot in this course, especially about how to collect and prepare data for machine learning. I also was able to stretch my Python programming knowledge, specifically about how a machine learning model can be built in Python. In just two hours, I felt like I got a friendly and comprehensive brain dump.You can read more here: How LinkedIn's free AI course made me a better Python developer.Since there are so many AI courses, you're bound to find a helpful series. To get you started, I've picked three that might open some doors:ChatGPT Tips for the Help Desk: Learn to apply strategic planning, prompt engineering, and agent scripting, as well as other AI techniques, to AI operations.Machine Learning with Python: Foundations: Get step-by-step guidance on how to get started with machine learning via Python.Building Career Agility and Resilience in the Age of AI: Learn how to reimagine your career to adapt and find success in the age of AI. It's worth checking with your employer, agency, or school to see if you qualify for a free membership. Otherwise, you can pay by month or year.A company representative told ZDNET, "LinkedIn Learning has awarded nearly 500K professional certificates over the past 2.5 years. And, generative AI is one of the top topics represented." Show more View now at Linkedin Learning Course selection: 93Program pricing: Free during the Skills Fest, mostly free afterMicrosoft earned itself a Guinness World Record for its online training session called Skills Fest, which ran in April and May of 2025. This was a mixed combination of live and on-demand courses that anyone could take for free. The only cost was giving up your email account and registering with Microsoft.Also: You can get free AI skills training from Microsoft for a few more days, and I recommend you doHere are three courses I took. The Minecraft one was adorable, and I recommend it for a kids' intro to generative AI.AI Adventurers: A Minecraft Education presentation about the basics of generative AIBuilding applications with GitHub Copilot agent mode:AI for Organizational Leaders:Not all the courses are available on demand. After Skills Fest ends, you should be able to get to the course catalog by visiting this link. There's a Filters block on the left. Click On-Demand and then Apply Filters. You should see a bunch of courses still available for you to enjoy. Show more View now at Microsoft Skills Fest Course selection: Quite a lotProgram pricing: Many free, some on a paid subscriptionAmazon puts the demand in infrastructure on demand. Rather than building out their own infrastructure, many companies now rely on Amazon to provide scalable cloud infrastructure on demand. Nearly every aspect of IT technology is available for rent from Amazon's wide range of web services. This also includes a fairly large spectrum of individual AI services from computer vision to human-sounding speech to Bedrock, which "makes LLMs from Amazon and leading AI startups available through an API."Also: I spent a weekend with Amazon's free AI courses, and highly recommend you do tooAmazon also offers a wide range of training courses for all these services. Some of them are available for free, while others are available via a paid subscription. Here are three of the free courses you can try out:Foundations of Prompt Engineering: Learn about the principles, techniques, and best practices for designing effective prompts. Amazon Bedrock -- Getting Started: Learn about Amazon's service for building generative AI applications. Twitch Series: AWS Power Hour Introduction to Machine Learning for Developers: This is a recording of a Twitch-based learning chat series. It helps you learn the foundations of machine learning and get a practical perspective on what developers really need to know to get started with machine learning. In addition to classes located on Amazon's sites, the company also has quite a few classes on YouTube. I spent a fun and interesting weekend gobbling up the Generative AI Foundations series, which is an entire playlist of cool stuff to learn about AI.If you're using or even just considering AWS-based services, these courses are well worth your time. Show more View now Course selection: Fairly broad IT and career buildingProgram pricing: FreeIBM, of course, is IBM. It led the AI pack for years with its Watson offerings. Its generative AI solution is called Watsonx. It focuses on enabling businesses to deploy and manage both traditional machine learning and generative AI, tailored to their unique needs.Also: Have 10 hours? IBM will train you in AI fundamentals - for freeThe company's SkillsBuild Learning classes offer a lot, providing basic training for a few key IT job descriptions -- including cybersecurity specialist, data analyst, user experience designer, and more. Right now, there's only one free AI credential, but it's one that excited a lot of our readers. That's the AI Fundamentals learning credential, which offers six courses. You need to be logged in to follow the link. But registration is easy and free. When you're done, you get an official credential, which you can list on LinkedIn. After I took the course, I did just that -- and, of course, I documented it for you.My favorite was the AI Ethics class, which is an hour and 45 minutes. Through real-world examples you'll learn about AI ethics, how they are implemented, and why AI ethics are so important in building trustworthy AI systems. Show more View now at IBM SkillsBuild Course selection: Nearly 90 AI-focused coursesProgram pricing: FreeDeepLearning is an education-focused company specializing in AI training. The company is constantly adding new courses that provide training, mostly for developers, in many different facets of AI technology. It partnered with OpenAIto create a number of pretty great courses.I took the ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers course below, which was my first detailed introduction to the ChatGPT API. If you're interested in how coders can use LLMs like ChatGPT, this course is worth your time. Interspersing traditional code with detailed prompts that look more like comments than commands can help you understand these two very different styles of coding.: I took this free AI course for developers in one weekend and highly recommend itThree courses I recommend you check out are:ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers: Go beyond the chat box. Use API access to leverage LLMs into your own applications, and learn to build a custom chatbot.Evaluating and Debugging Generative AI Models Using Weights and Biases: Learn MLOps tools for managing, versioning, debugging, and experimenting in your ML workflow.Large Language Models with Semantic Search: Learn to use LLMs to enhance search and summarize results.With AI such a hot growth area, I am always amazed at the vast quantity of high-value courseware available for free. Definitely bookmark DeepLearning and keep checking back as it adds more courses. Show more View now at DeepLearning Google Generative AI Leader course Designed for business leaders Course selection: 5Program pricing: Free to learn, for a certificateGoogle is offering a 7-8 hour program that teaches generative AI concepts to business leaders. This is a pretty comprehensive set of courses, all of which you can watch for free. They include: Gen AI: Beyond the chatbot: Foundational overview of generative AIGen AI: Unlock foundational concepts: Core AI concepts explained Gen AI: Navigate the landscape: AI ecosystem and infrastructureGen AI Apps: Transform your work: Business-focused AI applicationsGen AI Agents: Transform your organization: Strategy and adoption of AIThere is a small catch here: If you want the actual certificate, you need to pony up and take a 90-minute exam. But if you're calling yourself a business leader and want the recognition, I figure is probably a fair price to pay for anointing yourselfas a generative AI business leader.Also: Google offers AI certification for business leaders now - free trainings includedI took the foundational learning module, which was mostly text-based with interactive quizzes and involvement devices. It provided a good overview for someone just getting into the field, and I'm sure the remainder of the classes are equally interesting. Show more Course selection: Thousands of courses on AI aloneProgram pricing: Free trial, then /mo. Courses are also sold individually.Udemy is a courseware aggregator that publishes courses produced by individual trainers. That makes course style and quality a little inconsistent, but the rating system does help the more outstanding trainers rise to the top. Udemy has a free trial, which is why it's on this list.  I spent some time in Steve Ballinger's Complete ChatGPT Course For Work 2023! and found it quite helpful. Clocking in at a little over two hours, it helps you understand how to balance ChatGPT with your work processes, while keeping in mind the ethics and issues that arise from using AI at work.Udemy offers a /month all-you-can-eat plan, and also sells individual courses. I honestly can't see why anyone would buy the courses individually, since most of them cost more for one course than the entire library does on a subscription.Also: I'm taking AI image courses for free on Udemy with this little trick - and you can tooHere are three courses you might want to check out:ChatGPT Masterclass: ChatGPT Guide for Beginners to Experts!: Gain a professional understanding of ChatGPT, and learn to produce high-quality content seamlessly and grow your earning potential.Discover, Validate & Launch New Business Ideas with ChatGPT: Learn how to generate startup ideas, evaluate their potential, and test them with customers in real life.Midjourney Mastery: Create Visually Stunning AI Art: Learn how to use Midjourney to create art.One of the more interesting aspects of Udemy is that you may find courses on very niche applications of AI, which might not suit vendors offering a more limited selection of mainstream courses. If you have a unique application need, don't hesitate to spend some extra time searching for just the right course. Show more View now at Udemy Course selection: One AI courseProgram pricing: FreeGoogle's Grow With Google program offers a fairly wide range of certificate programs, which are normally run through Coursera. Earning one of those certificates often requires paying a subscription fee. But we're specifically interested in one Grow With Google program, which is aimed at teachers, and does not involve any fees.The Generative AI for Educators class, developed in concert with MIT's Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education, is a 2-hour program designed to help teachers learn about generative AI, and how to use it in the classroom. Also: Google and MIT launch a free generative AI course for teachersGenerative AI is a big challenge in education because it can provide amazing support for students and teachers and, unfortunately, provide an easy way out for students to cheat on their assignments. So a course that can help teachers come up to speed on all the issues can be very powerful.The course provides a professional development certificate on completion, and this one is free. Show more View now at Google Why should you trust me? I've been working with AI for a very long time. I conducted one of the first-ever academic studies of AI ethics as a thesis project way back in the day. I created and launched an expert system development environment before the first link was connected on the World Wide Web. I did some of the first research of AI on RISC-based computing architectureswhen RISC processors were the size of refrigerators. I also wrote and deployed the AI Editor, a generative AI tool that built news and content dynamically. That may not seem like much today, but I did it way back in 2010, when I had to create a generative AI engine from scratch. At that point, to work, it had to be distributed across five individual servers, each running one agent of a team of clustered AI agents.Also: Six skills you need to become an AI prompt engineerI also have a master's degree in education, focusing on learning and technology. My specialty is adult online learning, so this kind of stuff is right up my alley. When it comes to the courses and programs I'm spotlighting here, there's no way I could take all of them. But I have taken at least one course from each vendor, in order to test them out and report back to you. And, given my long background in the world of AI, this is a topic that has fascinated and enthralled me for most of my academic and professional career.With all that, I will say that the absolute high point was when I could get an AI to talk like a pirate. Show more Some companies are promoting micro-degrees. They seem expensive, but fast, but are they any good? Let's be clear: A micro-degree is not a degree. It's a set of courses with a marketing name attached. Degrees are granted by accredited academic institutions, accredited by regional accrediting bodies. I'm not saying you won't learn anything in those programs. But they're not degrees and they may cost more than just-as-good courses that don't have a fancy marketing name attached. Show more So, do certificates have any value? Yes, but how much value they have depends on your prospective employer's perspective. A certificate says you completed a course of study successfully. That might be something of value to you, as well. Also: Want a job in AI? Check out these new AWS AI certificationsYou can set a goal to learn a topic, and if you get a credential, you can be fairly confident you have achieved some learning. Accredited degrees, by contrast, are an assurance that you not only learned the material but did so according to some level of standard and rigor common to other accredited institutions.My advice: If you can get a certificate, and the price for getting it doesn't overly stretch your budget, go ahead and get it. It still is a resume point. But don't fork over bucks on the scale of a college tuition for some promise that you'll get qualified for a job faster and easier than, you know, going to college. Show more Other learning resources you'll probably loveYou can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.Want more stories about AI? Sign up for Innovation, our weekly newsletter.Artificial Intelligence #best #free #courses #certificates #i039ve
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    The best free AI courses and certificates in 2025 - and I've tried many
    Artur Debat/Getty ImagesGenerative AI is an astonishing technology that's not only here to stay but promises to impact all sectors of work and business. It's already made unprecedented inroads into our daily lives.We all have a lot to learn about it. Spewing out a few prompts to ChatGPT may be easy, but before you can turn all these new capabilities into productive tools, you need to grow your skills. Fortunately, there is a wide range of classes that can help. Also: I let Google's Jules AI agent into my code repo and it did four hours of work in an instantMany companies and schools will try to sell you on their AI education programs. But as I'll show in the following compendium of great resources, you can learn a ton about AI and even get some certifications -- all for free.I have taken at least one class from each of the providers below, and they've all been pretty good. Obviously, some teachers are more compelling than others, but it's been a very helpful process. When working on AI projects for ZDNET, I've also sometimes gone back and taken other classes to shore up my knowledge and understanding.So, I recommend you take a quick spin through my short reviews, possibly dig deeper into the linked articles, and bookmark all of these, because they're valuable resources. Let's get started. Course selection: Huge, more than 1,500(!) AI coursesProgram pricing: Free trial, then $39.99/moLinkedIn Learning is one of the oldest online learning platforms, established in 1995 as Lynda.com. The company offers an enormous library of courses on a broad range of topics. There is a monthly fee, but many companies and schools have accounts for all their employees and students. Also: Want a top engineering job in 2025? Here are the skills you need, according to LinkedInLinkedIn Learning is probably the one online education site I've used more than any other -- starting back in the late 1990s. For years, I paid for a membership. Then, I got a membership as an alum of my grad school, which is how I use it now. With so many courses on so many topics, it's a great go-to learning resource.I took two classes on LinkedIn Learning. Here's my testimonial on one of them. I also took the two-hour Machine Learning with Python: Foundations course, which had a great instructor -- Prof. Frederick Nwanganga -- who was previously unknown to me. I have to hand it to LinkedIn. They choose people who know how to teach.I learned a lot in this course, especially about how to collect and prepare data for machine learning. I also was able to stretch my Python programming knowledge, specifically about how a machine learning model can be built in Python. In just two hours, I felt like I got a friendly and comprehensive brain dump.You can read more here: How LinkedIn's free AI course made me a better Python developer.Since there are so many AI courses, you're bound to find a helpful series. To get you started, I've picked three that might open some doors:ChatGPT Tips for the Help Desk: Learn to apply strategic planning, prompt engineering, and agent scripting, as well as other AI techniques, to AI operations.Machine Learning with Python: Foundations: Get step-by-step guidance on how to get started with machine learning via Python.Building Career Agility and Resilience in the Age of AI: Learn how to reimagine your career to adapt and find success in the age of AI. It's worth checking with your employer, agency, or school to see if you qualify for a free membership. Otherwise, you can pay by month or year (the by-year option is about half price).A company representative told ZDNET, "LinkedIn Learning has awarded nearly 500K professional certificates over the past 2.5 years. And, generative AI is one of the top topics represented." Show more View now at Linkedin Learning Course selection: 93Program pricing: Free during the Skills Fest, mostly free afterMicrosoft earned itself a Guinness World Record for its online training session called Skills Fest, which ran in April and May of 2025. This was a mixed combination of live and on-demand courses that anyone could take for free. The only cost was giving up your email account and registering with Microsoft.Also: You can get free AI skills training from Microsoft for a few more days, and I recommend you doHere are three courses I took. The Minecraft one was adorable, and I recommend it for a kids' intro to generative AI.AI Adventurers: A Minecraft Education presentation about the basics of generative AIBuilding applications with GitHub Copilot agent mode:AI for Organizational Leaders:Not all the courses are available on demand. After Skills Fest ends, you should be able to get to the course catalog by visiting this link. There's a Filters block on the left. Click On-Demand and then Apply Filters. You should see a bunch of courses still available for you to enjoy. Show more View now at Microsoft Skills Fest Course selection: Quite a lotProgram pricing: Many free, some on a paid subscriptionAmazon puts the demand in infrastructure on demand. Rather than building out their own infrastructure, many companies now rely on Amazon to provide scalable cloud infrastructure on demand. Nearly every aspect of IT technology is available for rent from Amazon's wide range of web services. This also includes a fairly large spectrum of individual AI services from computer vision to human-sounding speech to Bedrock, which "makes LLMs from Amazon and leading AI startups available through an API."Also: I spent a weekend with Amazon's free AI courses, and highly recommend you do tooAmazon also offers a wide range of training courses for all these services. Some of them are available for free, while others are available via a paid subscription. Here are three of the free courses you can try out:Foundations of Prompt Engineering: Learn about the principles, techniques, and best practices for designing effective prompts. Amazon Bedrock -- Getting Started: Learn about Amazon's service for building generative AI applications. Twitch Series: AWS Power Hour Introduction to Machine Learning for Developers: This is a recording of a Twitch-based learning chat series. It helps you learn the foundations of machine learning and get a practical perspective on what developers really need to know to get started with machine learning. In addition to classes located on Amazon's sites, the company also has quite a few classes on YouTube. I spent a fun and interesting weekend gobbling up the Generative AI Foundations series, which is an entire playlist of cool stuff to learn about AI.If you're using or even just considering AWS-based services, these courses are well worth your time. Show more View now at Amazon Course selection: Fairly broad IT and career buildingProgram pricing: FreeIBM, of course, is IBM. It led the AI pack for years with its Watson offerings. Its generative AI solution is called Watsonx. It focuses on enabling businesses to deploy and manage both traditional machine learning and generative AI, tailored to their unique needs.Also: Have 10 hours? IBM will train you in AI fundamentals - for freeThe company's SkillsBuild Learning classes offer a lot, providing basic training for a few key IT job descriptions -- including cybersecurity specialist, data analyst, user experience designer, and more. Right now, there's only one free AI credential, but it's one that excited a lot of our readers. That's the AI Fundamentals learning credential, which offers six courses. You need to be logged in to follow the link. But registration is easy and free. When you're done, you get an official credential, which you can list on LinkedIn. After I took the course, I did just that -- and, of course, I documented it for you.My favorite was the AI Ethics class, which is an hour and 45 minutes. Through real-world examples you'll learn about AI ethics, how they are implemented, and why AI ethics are so important in building trustworthy AI systems. Show more View now at IBM SkillsBuild Course selection: Nearly 90 AI-focused coursesProgram pricing: FreeDeepLearning is an education-focused company specializing in AI training. The company is constantly adding new courses that provide training, mostly for developers, in many different facets of AI technology. It partnered with OpenAI (the makers of ChatGPT) to create a number of pretty great courses.I took the ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers course below, which was my first detailed introduction to the ChatGPT API. If you're interested in how coders can use LLMs like ChatGPT, this course is worth your time. Interspersing traditional code with detailed prompts that look more like comments than commands can help you understand these two very different styles of coding.Read more: I took this free AI course for developers in one weekend and highly recommend itThree courses I recommend you check out are:ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers: Go beyond the chat box. Use API access to leverage LLMs into your own applications, and learn to build a custom chatbot.Evaluating and Debugging Generative AI Models Using Weights and Biases: Learn MLOps tools for managing, versioning, debugging, and experimenting in your ML workflow.Large Language Models with Semantic Search: Learn to use LLMs to enhance search and summarize results.With AI such a hot growth area, I am always amazed at the vast quantity of high-value courseware available for free. Definitely bookmark DeepLearning and keep checking back as it adds more courses. Show more View now at DeepLearning Google Generative AI Leader course Designed for business leaders Course selection: 5Program pricing: Free to learn, $99 for a certificateGoogle is offering a 7-8 hour program that teaches generative AI concepts to business leaders. This is a pretty comprehensive set of courses, all of which you can watch for free. They include: Gen AI: Beyond the chatbot: Foundational overview of generative AIGen AI: Unlock foundational concepts: Core AI concepts explained Gen AI: Navigate the landscape: AI ecosystem and infrastructureGen AI Apps: Transform your work: Business-focused AI applicationsGen AI Agents: Transform your organization: Strategy and adoption of AIThere is a small catch here: If you want the actual certificate, you need to pony up $99 and take a 90-minute exam. But if you're calling yourself a business leader and want the recognition, I figure $99 is probably a fair price to pay for anointing yourself (with a Google seal of approval) as a generative AI business leader.Also: Google offers AI certification for business leaders now - free trainings includedI took the foundational learning module, which was mostly text-based with interactive quizzes and involvement devices. It provided a good overview for someone just getting into the field, and I'm sure the remainder of the classes are equally interesting. Show more Course selection: Thousands of courses on AI aloneProgram pricing: Free trial, then $20/mo. Courses are also sold individually.Udemy is a courseware aggregator that publishes courses produced by individual trainers. That makes course style and quality a little inconsistent, but the rating system does help the more outstanding trainers rise to the top. Udemy has a free trial, which is why it's on this list.  I spent some time in Steve Ballinger's Complete ChatGPT Course For Work 2023 (Ethically)! and found it quite helpful. Clocking in at a little over two hours, it helps you understand how to balance ChatGPT with your work processes, while keeping in mind the ethics and issues that arise from using AI at work.Udemy offers a $20/month all-you-can-eat plan, and also sells individual courses. I honestly can't see why anyone would buy the courses individually, since most of them cost more for one course than the entire library does on a subscription.Also: I'm taking AI image courses for free on Udemy with this little trick - and you can tooHere are three courses you might want to check out:ChatGPT Masterclass: ChatGPT Guide for Beginners to Experts!: Gain a professional understanding of ChatGPT, and learn to produce high-quality content seamlessly and grow your earning potential.Discover, Validate & Launch New Business Ideas with ChatGPT: Learn how to generate startup ideas, evaluate their potential, and test them with customers in real life.Midjourney Mastery: Create Visually Stunning AI Art: Learn how to use Midjourney to create art.One of the more interesting aspects of Udemy is that you may find courses on very niche applications of AI, which might not suit vendors offering a more limited selection of mainstream courses. If you have a unique application need, don't hesitate to spend some extra time searching for just the right course. Show more View now at Udemy Course selection: One AI courseProgram pricing: FreeGoogle's Grow With Google program offers a fairly wide range of certificate programs, which are normally run through Coursera. Earning one of those certificates often requires paying a subscription fee. But we're specifically interested in one Grow With Google program, which is aimed at teachers, and does not involve any fees.The Generative AI for Educators class, developed in concert with MIT's Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education, is a 2-hour program designed to help teachers learn about generative AI, and how to use it in the classroom. Also: Google and MIT launch a free generative AI course for teachersGenerative AI is a big challenge in education because it can provide amazing support for students and teachers and, unfortunately, provide an easy way out for students to cheat on their assignments. So a course that can help teachers come up to speed on all the issues can be very powerful.The course provides a professional development certificate on completion, and this one is free. Show more View now at Google Why should you trust me? I've been working with AI for a very long time. I conducted one of the first-ever academic studies of AI ethics as a thesis project way back in the day. I created and launched an expert system development environment before the first link was connected on the World Wide Web. I did some of the first research of AI on RISC-based computing architectures (the chips in your phone) when RISC processors were the size of refrigerators. I also wrote and deployed the AI Editor, a generative AI tool that built news and content dynamically. That may not seem like much today, but I did it way back in 2010, when I had to create a generative AI engine from scratch. At that point, to work, it had to be distributed across five individual servers, each running one agent of a team of clustered AI agents.Also: Six skills you need to become an AI prompt engineerI also have a master's degree in education, focusing on learning and technology. My specialty is adult online learning, so this kind of stuff is right up my alley. When it comes to the courses and programs I'm spotlighting here, there's no way I could take all of them. But I have taken at least one course from each vendor, in order to test them out and report back to you. And, given my long background in the world of AI, this is a topic that has fascinated and enthralled me for most of my academic and professional career.With all that, I will say that the absolute high point was when I could get an AI to talk like a pirate. Show more Some companies are promoting micro-degrees. They seem expensive, but fast, but are they any good? Let's be clear: A micro-degree is not a degree. It's a set of courses with a marketing name attached. Degrees are granted by accredited academic institutions, accredited by regional accrediting bodies. I'm not saying you won't learn anything in those programs. But they're not degrees and they may cost more than just-as-good courses that don't have a fancy marketing name attached. Show more So, do certificates have any value? Yes, but how much value they have depends on your prospective employer's perspective. A certificate says you completed a course of study successfully. That might be something of value to you, as well. Also: Want a job in AI? Check out these new AWS AI certificationsYou can set a goal to learn a topic, and if you get a credential, you can be fairly confident you have achieved some learning. Accredited degrees, by contrast, are an assurance that you not only learned the material but did so according to some level of standard and rigor common to other accredited institutions.My advice: If you can get a certificate, and the price for getting it doesn't overly stretch your budget, go ahead and get it. It still is a resume point. But don't fork over bucks on the scale of a college tuition for some promise that you'll get qualified for a job faster and easier than, you know, going to college. Show more Other learning resources you'll probably loveYou can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.Want more stories about AI? Sign up for Innovation, our weekly newsletter.Artificial Intelligence
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  • xAI’s Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure

    Microsoft on Monday became one of the first hyperscalers to provide managed access to Grok, the AI model developed by billionaire Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI.
    Available through Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry platform, Grok — specifically Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini — will “have all the service-level agreements Azure customers expect from any Microsoft product,” says Microsoft. They’ll also be billed directly by Microsoft, as is the case with the other models hosted in Azure AI Foundry.
    When Musk announced Grok several years ago, he pitched the AI model as edgy, unfiltered, and anti-“woke” — in general, willing to answer controversial questions other AI systems simply won’t. He delivered on some of that promise. Told to be vulgar, for example, Grok will happily oblige, spewing colorful language you likely wouldn’t hear from ChatGPT.
    According to SpeechMap, a benchmark comparing how different models treat sensitive subjects, Grok 3 is among the more permissive models.
    Grok, which powers a number of features on X, Musk’s social network, has been the subject of much controversy lately. A recent report found that Grok would undress photos of women when asked. In February, Grok briefly censored unflattering mentions of Donald Trump and Musk. And just last week, an “unauthorized modification” caused Grok to repeatedly refer to white genocide in South Africa when invoked in certain contexts.
    The Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models in Azure AI Foundry are decidedly more locked down than the Grok models on X. They also come with additional data integration, customization, and governance capabilities not necessarily offered by xAI through its API.
    #xais #grok #comes #microsoft #azure
    xAI’s Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure
    Microsoft on Monday became one of the first hyperscalers to provide managed access to Grok, the AI model developed by billionaire Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI. Available through Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry platform, Grok — specifically Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini — will “have all the service-level agreements Azure customers expect from any Microsoft product,” says Microsoft. They’ll also be billed directly by Microsoft, as is the case with the other models hosted in Azure AI Foundry. When Musk announced Grok several years ago, he pitched the AI model as edgy, unfiltered, and anti-“woke” — in general, willing to answer controversial questions other AI systems simply won’t. He delivered on some of that promise. Told to be vulgar, for example, Grok will happily oblige, spewing colorful language you likely wouldn’t hear from ChatGPT. According to SpeechMap, a benchmark comparing how different models treat sensitive subjects, Grok 3 is among the more permissive models. Grok, which powers a number of features on X, Musk’s social network, has been the subject of much controversy lately. A recent report found that Grok would undress photos of women when asked. In February, Grok briefly censored unflattering mentions of Donald Trump and Musk. And just last week, an “unauthorized modification” caused Grok to repeatedly refer to white genocide in South Africa when invoked in certain contexts. The Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models in Azure AI Foundry are decidedly more locked down than the Grok models on X. They also come with additional data integration, customization, and governance capabilities not necessarily offered by xAI through its API. #xais #grok #comes #microsoft #azure
    TECHCRUNCH.COM
    xAI’s Grok 3 comes to Microsoft Azure
    Microsoft on Monday became one of the first hyperscalers to provide managed access to Grok, the AI model developed by billionaire Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI. Available through Microsoft’s Azure AI Foundry platform, Grok — specifically Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini — will “have all the service-level agreements Azure customers expect from any Microsoft product,” says Microsoft. They’ll also be billed directly by Microsoft, as is the case with the other models hosted in Azure AI Foundry. When Musk announced Grok several years ago, he pitched the AI model as edgy, unfiltered, and anti-“woke” — in general, willing to answer controversial questions other AI systems simply won’t. He delivered on some of that promise. Told to be vulgar, for example, Grok will happily oblige, spewing colorful language you likely wouldn’t hear from ChatGPT. According to SpeechMap, a benchmark comparing how different models treat sensitive subjects, Grok 3 is among the more permissive models. Grok, which powers a number of features on X, Musk’s social network, has been the subject of much controversy lately. A recent report found that Grok would undress photos of women when asked. In February, Grok briefly censored unflattering mentions of Donald Trump and Musk. And just last week, an “unauthorized modification” caused Grok to repeatedly refer to white genocide in South Africa when invoked in certain contexts. The Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models in Azure AI Foundry are decidedly more locked down than the Grok models on X. They also come with additional data integration, customization, and governance capabilities not necessarily offered by xAI through its API.
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  • You're probably not going to speak to a glitching AI bot on your next job interview

    AI-powered video interviews are likely to become more common as companies seek to streamline and automate early hiring stages.

    amperespy/Getty Images

    2025-05-17T00:00:01Z

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    TikTokers are posting clips of interviews with glitching AI bots.
    These cases are rare and likely staged, professors told Business Insider.
    AI interviews are on the rise, and glitches can erode trust in the hiring process.

    TikTok videos of glitchy AI interviews have gone viral in recent weeks,One user, who goes by Freddie, posted a video on May 3 of an AI assistant named "Catherine Appleton" glitching and spewing gibberish during his job interview. As of Thursday, his video had 8.8 million views."Should I email them? I was expecting a real human," he wrote in the caption.Another TikTok user named Ken shared a clip of her interview, in which the AI assistant repeated the phrase "vertical bar pilates" on loop.Neither responded to requests for comment from Business Insider. @its_ken04 It was genuinely so creepy and weird. Please stop trying to be lazy and have AI try to do YOUR JOB!!! It gave me the creeps so bad #fyp ♬ original sound - Its Ken
    Your next job interview probably won't involve a glitching AI botYes, the viral TikToks are creepy. But they're probably not your future."The TikTok videos showcasing glitches or malfunctions are likely either doctored or represent rare, isolated incidents," said Sriram Iyer, an adjunct senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore Business School.They "should not be considered a common phenomenon," he added.Tan Hong Ming, the deputy head and senior lecturer in the department of analytics and operations at NUS Business School, said social media "tends to amplify things.""It can make something appear far more common than it actually is through repetition and viral sharing," he said.Tan, who also serves as lead advisor to a Singapore-based AI recruitment firm, said the looping audio is "likely dramatized or re-enacted to drive engagement and shares." He said he has not come across this specific glitch in AI interviews, but occasional breakdowns aren't surprising.Many companies are using AI-powered recruitment tools which are often "wrappers around the same core models or APIs."Some of them may not use the latest or most stable versions, which could explain why similar glitches show up across platforms, he said.Unaizah Obaidellah, a senior lecturer specializing in AI at Malaysia's University of Malaya, said insufficient or irrelevant data could also be a culprit. If the bots are not trained with enough relevant examples, their quality suffers.She added that the incidents portrayed on the videos could reflect the larger race to deploy AI faster than we're ready for, which is "quite worrying."AI interviews on the riseEmily DeJeu, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business who specializes in AI communication and etiquette, told BI earlier this week that AI-powered video interviews are likely to become more common as companies seek to streamline and automate early hiring stages.
    Any time technology promises to save time and money and make everything faster, "we by default pursue it — there's a kind of inevitability to it," she said.Despite what the TikToks might suggest, candidates aren't necessarily turned off by bots, said Iyer, who has worked in HR tech for 20 years.What to do if your interview bot glitchesGlitches during AI interviews aren't just awkward."Glitches chip away at trust and can make the hiring process feel impersonal or even unfair," said Tan, especially if companies are not upfront about conducting an AI interview."They undermine the candidate's experience," he said, adding that employers need to "build in strong fallback options" and monitor these tools closely in real-world settings."Otherwise, what feels like a time-saving solution could quietly become a systemic problem," he added.For candidates, the key is not to panic.If an AI bot malfunctions mid-interview, Tan recommends emailing the hiring manager with a screenshot or recording of what happened."Most should offer a redo assuming the candidate isn't already put off by the idea of being interviewed by a bot in the first place," he said.Unaizah, from the University of Malaya, said candidates can also request feedback from the HR team on their interview performance.If there's clear evidence the interview wasn't properly assessed — or wasn't reviewed by a human — ask for an in-person interview, if possible, she said."If all fails or your gut feeling says otherwise, perhaps it's best to look for other companies," said Unaizah. "Target companies that prioritize human-centered hiring."

    Recommended video
    #you039re #probably #not #going #speak
    You're probably not going to speak to a glitching AI bot on your next job interview
    AI-powered video interviews are likely to become more common as companies seek to streamline and automate early hiring stages. amperespy/Getty Images 2025-05-17T00:00:01Z d Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? TikTokers are posting clips of interviews with glitching AI bots. These cases are rare and likely staged, professors told Business Insider. AI interviews are on the rise, and glitches can erode trust in the hiring process. TikTok videos of glitchy AI interviews have gone viral in recent weeks,One user, who goes by Freddie, posted a video on May 3 of an AI assistant named "Catherine Appleton" glitching and spewing gibberish during his job interview. As of Thursday, his video had 8.8 million views."Should I email them? I was expecting a real human," he wrote in the caption.Another TikTok user named Ken shared a clip of her interview, in which the AI assistant repeated the phrase "vertical bar pilates" on loop.Neither responded to requests for comment from Business Insider. @its_ken04 It was genuinely so creepy and weird. Please stop trying to be lazy and have AI try to do YOUR JOB!!! It gave me the creeps so bad #fyp ♬ original sound - Its Ken 🤍 Your next job interview probably won't involve a glitching AI botYes, the viral TikToks are creepy. But they're probably not your future."The TikTok videos showcasing glitches or malfunctions are likely either doctored or represent rare, isolated incidents," said Sriram Iyer, an adjunct senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore Business School.They "should not be considered a common phenomenon," he added.Tan Hong Ming, the deputy head and senior lecturer in the department of analytics and operations at NUS Business School, said social media "tends to amplify things.""It can make something appear far more common than it actually is through repetition and viral sharing," he said.Tan, who also serves as lead advisor to a Singapore-based AI recruitment firm, said the looping audio is "likely dramatized or re-enacted to drive engagement and shares." He said he has not come across this specific glitch in AI interviews, but occasional breakdowns aren't surprising.Many companies are using AI-powered recruitment tools which are often "wrappers around the same core models or APIs."Some of them may not use the latest or most stable versions, which could explain why similar glitches show up across platforms, he said.Unaizah Obaidellah, a senior lecturer specializing in AI at Malaysia's University of Malaya, said insufficient or irrelevant data could also be a culprit. If the bots are not trained with enough relevant examples, their quality suffers.She added that the incidents portrayed on the videos could reflect the larger race to deploy AI faster than we're ready for, which is "quite worrying."AI interviews on the riseEmily DeJeu, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business who specializes in AI communication and etiquette, told BI earlier this week that AI-powered video interviews are likely to become more common as companies seek to streamline and automate early hiring stages. Any time technology promises to save time and money and make everything faster, "we by default pursue it — there's a kind of inevitability to it," she said.Despite what the TikToks might suggest, candidates aren't necessarily turned off by bots, said Iyer, who has worked in HR tech for 20 years.What to do if your interview bot glitchesGlitches during AI interviews aren't just awkward."Glitches chip away at trust and can make the hiring process feel impersonal or even unfair," said Tan, especially if companies are not upfront about conducting an AI interview."They undermine the candidate's experience," he said, adding that employers need to "build in strong fallback options" and monitor these tools closely in real-world settings."Otherwise, what feels like a time-saving solution could quietly become a systemic problem," he added.For candidates, the key is not to panic.If an AI bot malfunctions mid-interview, Tan recommends emailing the hiring manager with a screenshot or recording of what happened."Most should offer a redo assuming the candidate isn't already put off by the idea of being interviewed by a bot in the first place," he said.Unaizah, from the University of Malaya, said candidates can also request feedback from the HR team on their interview performance.If there's clear evidence the interview wasn't properly assessed — or wasn't reviewed by a human — ask for an in-person interview, if possible, she said."If all fails or your gut feeling says otherwise, perhaps it's best to look for other companies," said Unaizah. "Target companies that prioritize human-centered hiring." Recommended video #you039re #probably #not #going #speak
    WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM
    You're probably not going to speak to a glitching AI bot on your next job interview
    AI-powered video interviews are likely to become more common as companies seek to streamline and automate early hiring stages. amperespy/Getty Images 2025-05-17T00:00:01Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? TikTokers are posting clips of interviews with glitching AI bots. These cases are rare and likely staged, professors told Business Insider. AI interviews are on the rise, and glitches can erode trust in the hiring process. TikTok videos of glitchy AI interviews have gone viral in recent weeks,One user, who goes by Freddie, posted a video on May 3 of an AI assistant named "Catherine Appleton" glitching and spewing gibberish during his job interview. As of Thursday, his video had 8.8 million views."Should I email them? I was expecting a real human," he wrote in the caption.Another TikTok user named Ken shared a clip of her interview, in which the AI assistant repeated the phrase "vertical bar pilates" on loop.Neither responded to requests for comment from Business Insider. @its_ken04 It was genuinely so creepy and weird. Please stop trying to be lazy and have AI try to do YOUR JOB!!! It gave me the creeps so bad #fyp ♬ original sound - Its Ken 🤍 Your next job interview probably won't involve a glitching AI botYes, the viral TikToks are creepy. But they're probably not your future."The TikTok videos showcasing glitches or malfunctions are likely either doctored or represent rare, isolated incidents," said Sriram Iyer, an adjunct senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore Business School.They "should not be considered a common phenomenon," he added.Tan Hong Ming, the deputy head and senior lecturer in the department of analytics and operations at NUS Business School, said social media "tends to amplify things.""It can make something appear far more common than it actually is through repetition and viral sharing," he said.Tan, who also serves as lead advisor to a Singapore-based AI recruitment firm, said the looping audio is "likely dramatized or re-enacted to drive engagement and shares." He said he has not come across this specific glitch in AI interviews, but occasional breakdowns aren't surprising.Many companies are using AI-powered recruitment tools which are often "wrappers around the same core models or APIs."Some of them may not use the latest or most stable versions, which could explain why similar glitches show up across platforms, he said.Unaizah Obaidellah, a senior lecturer specializing in AI at Malaysia's University of Malaya, said insufficient or irrelevant data could also be a culprit. If the bots are not trained with enough relevant examples, their quality suffers.She added that the incidents portrayed on the videos could reflect the larger race to deploy AI faster than we're ready for, which is "quite worrying."AI interviews on the riseEmily DeJeu, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business who specializes in AI communication and etiquette, told BI earlier this week that AI-powered video interviews are likely to become more common as companies seek to streamline and automate early hiring stages. Any time technology promises to save time and money and make everything faster, "we by default pursue it — there's a kind of inevitability to it," she said.Despite what the TikToks might suggest, candidates aren't necessarily turned off by bots, said Iyer, who has worked in HR tech for 20 years.What to do if your interview bot glitchesGlitches during AI interviews aren't just awkward."Glitches chip away at trust and can make the hiring process feel impersonal or even unfair," said Tan, especially if companies are not upfront about conducting an AI interview."They undermine the candidate's experience," he said, adding that employers need to "build in strong fallback options" and monitor these tools closely in real-world settings."Otherwise, what feels like a time-saving solution could quietly become a systemic problem," he added.For candidates, the key is not to panic.If an AI bot malfunctions mid-interview, Tan recommends emailing the hiring manager with a screenshot or recording of what happened."Most should offer a redo assuming the candidate isn't already put off by the idea of being interviewed by a bot in the first place," he said.Unaizah, from the University of Malaya, said candidates can also request feedback from the HR team on their interview performance.If there's clear evidence the interview wasn't properly assessed — or wasn't reviewed by a human — ask for an in-person interview, if possible, she said."If all fails or your gut feeling says otherwise, perhaps it's best to look for other companies," said Unaizah. "Target companies that prioritize human-centered hiring." Recommended video
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  • New Law Would Ban All AI Regulation for a Decade
    This is insane.Fresh HellRepublican lawmakers slipped language into the Budget Reconciliation Bill this week that would ban AI regulation, on the federal and state levels, for a decade, as 404 Media reports.An updated version of the bill introduced last night by Congressman Brett Guthrie (R-KY), who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, includes a new and sweeping clause about AI advancement declaring that "no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the ten year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act."It's a remarkably expansive provision that, as 404 notes, likely reflects the engraining of Silicon Valley figures and influences into Washington and the White House.
    Tech CEOs have vied for president Donald Trump's attention since he was inaugurated, and the American tech industry writ large has become a fierce and powerful lobbying force.
    The Trump administration is also stacked with AI-invested tech moguls like David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, and Elon Musk.Meanwhile, the impacts of a regulation-free AI landscape are already being felt.
    Emotive, addictive AI companions have been rolled out explicitly to teenagers without evidence of safety, AI companies are missing their climate targets and spewing unchecked emissions into American neighborhoods, and nonconsensual deepfakes of women and girls are flooding social media.No regulation will likely mean a lot more fresh hell where that came from — and little chance of stemming the tide.Blank ChecksThe update in the proposed law also seeks to appropriate a staggering $500 million over ten years to fund efforts to infuse the federal government's IT systems with "commercial" AI tech and unnamed "automation technologies."In other words, not only does the government want to completely stifle efforts to regulate a fast-developing technology, it also wants to integrate those unregulated technologies into the beating digital heart of the federal government.The bill also comes after states including New York and California have worked to pass some limited AI regulations, as 404 notes.
    Were the bill to be signed into law, it would seemingly render those laws — which, for instance, ensure that employers review AI hiring tools for bias — unenforceable.As it stands, the bill is in limbo.
    The proposal is massive, and includes drastic spending cuts to services like Medicaid and climate funds, slashes that Democrats largely oppose; Republican budget hawks, meanwhile, have raised concerns over the bill's hefty price tag.Whether it survives in its current form — its controversial AI provisions included — remains to be seen.More on AI and regulation: Signs Grow That AI Is Starting to Seriously Bite Into the Job MarketShare This Article
    Source: https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-law-ban-ai-regulation" style="color: #0066cc;">https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-law-ban-ai-regulation
    #new #law #would #ban #all #regulation #for #decade
    New Law Would Ban All AI Regulation for a Decade
    This is insane.Fresh HellRepublican lawmakers slipped language into the Budget Reconciliation Bill this week that would ban AI regulation, on the federal and state levels, for a decade, as 404 Media reports.An updated version of the bill introduced last night by Congressman Brett Guthrie (R-KY), who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, includes a new and sweeping clause about AI advancement declaring that "no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the ten year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act."It's a remarkably expansive provision that, as 404 notes, likely reflects the engraining of Silicon Valley figures and influences into Washington and the White House. Tech CEOs have vied for president Donald Trump's attention since he was inaugurated, and the American tech industry writ large has become a fierce and powerful lobbying force. The Trump administration is also stacked with AI-invested tech moguls like David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, and Elon Musk.Meanwhile, the impacts of a regulation-free AI landscape are already being felt. Emotive, addictive AI companions have been rolled out explicitly to teenagers without evidence of safety, AI companies are missing their climate targets and spewing unchecked emissions into American neighborhoods, and nonconsensual deepfakes of women and girls are flooding social media.No regulation will likely mean a lot more fresh hell where that came from — and little chance of stemming the tide.Blank ChecksThe update in the proposed law also seeks to appropriate a staggering $500 million over ten years to fund efforts to infuse the federal government's IT systems with "commercial" AI tech and unnamed "automation technologies."In other words, not only does the government want to completely stifle efforts to regulate a fast-developing technology, it also wants to integrate those unregulated technologies into the beating digital heart of the federal government.The bill also comes after states including New York and California have worked to pass some limited AI regulations, as 404 notes. Were the bill to be signed into law, it would seemingly render those laws — which, for instance, ensure that employers review AI hiring tools for bias — unenforceable.As it stands, the bill is in limbo. The proposal is massive, and includes drastic spending cuts to services like Medicaid and climate funds, slashes that Democrats largely oppose; Republican budget hawks, meanwhile, have raised concerns over the bill's hefty price tag.Whether it survives in its current form — its controversial AI provisions included — remains to be seen.More on AI and regulation: Signs Grow That AI Is Starting to Seriously Bite Into the Job MarketShare This Article Source: https://futurism.com/the-byte/new-law-ban-ai-regulation #new #law #would #ban #all #regulation #for #decade
    FUTURISM.COM
    New Law Would Ban All AI Regulation for a Decade
    This is insane.Fresh HellRepublican lawmakers slipped language into the Budget Reconciliation Bill this week that would ban AI regulation, on the federal and state levels, for a decade, as 404 Media reports.An updated version of the bill introduced last night by Congressman Brett Guthrie (R-KY), who chairs the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, includes a new and sweeping clause about AI advancement declaring that "no State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the ten year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act."It's a remarkably expansive provision that, as 404 notes, likely reflects the engraining of Silicon Valley figures and influences into Washington and the White House. Tech CEOs have vied for president Donald Trump's attention since he was inaugurated, and the American tech industry writ large has become a fierce and powerful lobbying force. The Trump administration is also stacked with AI-invested tech moguls like David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, and Elon Musk.Meanwhile, the impacts of a regulation-free AI landscape are already being felt. Emotive, addictive AI companions have been rolled out explicitly to teenagers without evidence of safety, AI companies are missing their climate targets and spewing unchecked emissions into American neighborhoods, and nonconsensual deepfakes of women and girls are flooding social media.No regulation will likely mean a lot more fresh hell where that came from — and little chance of stemming the tide.Blank ChecksThe update in the proposed law also seeks to appropriate a staggering $500 million over ten years to fund efforts to infuse the federal government's IT systems with "commercial" AI tech and unnamed "automation technologies."In other words, not only does the government want to completely stifle efforts to regulate a fast-developing technology, it also wants to integrate those unregulated technologies into the beating digital heart of the federal government.The bill also comes after states including New York and California have worked to pass some limited AI regulations, as 404 notes. Were the bill to be signed into law, it would seemingly render those laws — which, for instance, ensure that employers review AI hiring tools for bias — unenforceable.As it stands, the bill is in limbo. The proposal is massive, and includes drastic spending cuts to services like Medicaid and climate funds, slashes that Democrats largely oppose; Republican budget hawks, meanwhile, have raised concerns over the bill's hefty price tag.Whether it survives in its current form — its controversial AI provisions included — remains to be seen.More on AI and regulation: Signs Grow That AI Is Starting to Seriously Bite Into the Job MarketShare This Article
    0 Commentarii 0 Distribuiri 0 previzualizare
  • #333;">By Shoving a Bed Frame Against the Door, This Pompeii Family Tried to Survive Mount Vesuvius' Eruption

    New Research
    By Shoving a Bed Frame Against the Door, This Pompeii Family Tried to Survive Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption
    Archaeologists are learning new details about the four individuals’ futile attempt to hide inside an ancient residence called the House of Helle and Phrixus

    A bed frame shoved against the door served as a makeshift barricade.
    Pompeii Archaeological Park
    In 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius erupted, spewing ash and small volcanic pellets known as lapilli over the city of Pompeii.
    Nearly 1,950 years later, archaeologists are still sifting through the layers of debris and making remarkable discoveries about life—and death—in the ancient city.
    Researchers recently discovered four members of a family, including a child, who attempted to escape the eruption by barricading themselves inside a bedroom, according to a statement from the Pompeii Archaeological Park.
    Though their efforts were futile, their remains provide remarkable insight into the doomed city’s final moments.
    When the eruption began, most residents of Pompeii “had no clue what was happening,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the park and co-author of a new study published in the journal Scavi di Pompei, tells the New York Times’ Sara Novak.
    “Many thought the end of the world had come.”
    A majority of the 15,000 to 20,000 residents of Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum fled and survived the eruption.
    The four family members were among the roughly 2,000 Pompeians who remained when the city was destroyed.

    As Helle struggles in the sea, Phrixus reaches out to his sister from atop a flying ram.


    Pompeii Archaeological Park
    Archaeologists found the family’s remains in a small but stately residence known as the House of Helle and Phrixus, named after a fresco of the mythological siblings discovered on the dining room wall.
    In Greek myth, the siblings survive their stepmother’s attempt to sacrifice them to the gods by flying away on a ram with a golden fleece.
    While Phrixus escapes, Helle falls off the ram into the sea.
    The fresco captures the siblings reaching out to each other—Helle in the sea, Phrixus on the ram—in a fittingly futile attempt at rescue.
    The architectural features of the house may have accelerated the family’s demise.
    Like many Roman houses, the House of Helle and Phrixus featured an open-roofed atrium, intended to aid rainwater collection.
    But as lapilli fell from the sky during the first phase of the eruption, the rock debris, which reached up to nine feet in some locations, quickly flooded the house through the atrium.
    At first, the archaeological evidence shows, the four individuals tried to protect themselves by packing into a small room.
    They even pushed a wooden bed frame against the door, hoping that it would prevent the lapilli from entering.When that failed, the researchers think they pulled back the barricade and attempted to escape.
    Based on the location of the remains, they only got as far as the triclinium, or dining room.
    “This house, with its decorations and its objects, shows us people who tried to save themselves,” says Zuchtriegel in the statement, per a translation by La Brújula Verde’s Guillermo Carvajal.
    “They didn’t succeed, but their story is still here, beneath the ashes.”
    Over the centuries, the ash preserved the remains of the family, the wooden bed frame and other items, including a bronze amulet known as a bulla and a stash of amphorae filled with garum, a popular Roman fish sauce.

    Ash and lapilli flooded into through the open-roofed atrium, burying the house in up to nine feet of debris.


    Pompeii Archaeological Park
    Researchers don’t know that this particular family owned the House of Helle and Phrixus.
    The group may have taken refuge there after the owners fled, as Marcello Mogetta, an archaeologist and Roman art historian at the University of Missouri who wasn’t involved in the study, tells the Times.
    Still, the recovered objects offer a glimpse into Pompeian family life.
    For instance, the child was likely the one wearing the bronze bulla, as tradition dictated that boys wear such amulets for protection until adulthood.
    Additionally, traces of masonry materials suggest that the house was under renovation.
    As Zuchtriegel says in the statement, “Excavating Pompeii means confronting the beauty of art, but also the fragility of life.”
    Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.
    #0066cc;">#shoving #bed #frame #against #the #door #this #pompeii #family #tried #survive #mount #vesuvius039 #eruption #new #researchby #vesuvius #eruptionarchaeologists #are #learning #details #about #four #individuals #futile #attempt #hide #inside #ancient #residence #called #house #helle #and #phrixus #shoved #served #makeshift #barricade #archaeological #parkin #vesuviuserupted #spewing #ash #small #volcanic #pellets #known #aslapilli #over #city #ofpompeiinearly #years #later #archaeologists #still #sifting #through #layers #debris #making #remarkable #discoveries #lifeand #deathin #cityresearchers #recently #discovered #members #including #child #who #attempted #escape #barricading #themselves #bedroom #according #astatement #from #thepompeii #parkthough #their #efforts #were #remains #provide #insight #into #doomed #citys #final #momentswhen #began #most #residents #had #clue #what #was #happeninggabriel #zuchtriegel #director #park #coauthor #study #published #journalscavi #pompei #tells #thenew #york #times #sara #novakmany #thought #end #world #comea #majority #nearby #herculaneumfled #survived #eruptionthe #among #roughly #pompeians #remained #when #destroyed #struggles #seaphrixus #reaches #out #his #sister #atop #flying #ram #parkarchaeologists #found #familys #but #stately #named #after #afresco #mythological #siblings #dining #room #wallin #greek #myth #stepmothers #sacrifice #them #gods #away #with #golden #fleecewhile #escapes #falls #off #seathe #fresco #captures #reaching #each #otherhelle #sea #ramin #fittingly #rescuethe #architectural #features #may #have #accelerated #demiselike #many #roman #houses #featured #openroofed #atrium #intended #aid #rainwater #collectionbut #lapilli #fell #sky #during #first #phase #rock #which #reached #nine #feet #some #locations #quickly #flooded #atriumat #evidence #shows #protect #packing #roomthey #even #pushed #wooden #hoping #that #would #prevent #enteringwhen #failed #researchers #think #they #pulled #back #escapebased #location #only #got #far #triclinium #roomthis #its #decorations #objects #people #save #says #statement #per #translation #byla #brújula #verdes #guillermo #carvajalthey #didnt #succeed #story #here #beneath #ashesover #centuries #preserved #other #items #bronze #amulet #abulla #stash #amphorae #filled #garum #apopular #fish #sauce #burying #parkresearchers #dont #know #particular #owned #phrixusthe #group #taken #refuge #there #owners #fled #marcello #mogetta #archaeologist #art #historian #university #missouri #wasnt #involved #timesstill #recovered #offer #glimpse #pompeian #lifefor #instance #likely #one #wearing #bulla #tradition #dictated #boys #wear #such #amulets #for #protection #until #adulthoodadditionally #traces #masonry #materials #suggest #under #renovationas #excavating #means #confronting #beauty #also #fragility #lifeget #latest #stories #your #inbox #every #weekday
    By Shoving a Bed Frame Against the Door, This Pompeii Family Tried to Survive Mount Vesuvius' Eruption
    New Research By Shoving a Bed Frame Against the Door, This Pompeii Family Tried to Survive Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption Archaeologists are learning new details about the four individuals’ futile attempt to hide inside an ancient residence called the House of Helle and Phrixus A bed frame shoved against the door served as a makeshift barricade. Pompeii Archaeological Park In 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius erupted, spewing ash and small volcanic pellets known as lapilli over the city of Pompeii. Nearly 1,950 years later, archaeologists are still sifting through the layers of debris and making remarkable discoveries about life—and death—in the ancient city. Researchers recently discovered four members of a family, including a child, who attempted to escape the eruption by barricading themselves inside a bedroom, according to a statement from the Pompeii Archaeological Park. Though their efforts were futile, their remains provide remarkable insight into the doomed city’s final moments. When the eruption began, most residents of Pompeii “had no clue what was happening,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the park and co-author of a new study published in the journal Scavi di Pompei, tells the New York Times’ Sara Novak. “Many thought the end of the world had come.” A majority of the 15,000 to 20,000 residents of Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum fled and survived the eruption. The four family members were among the roughly 2,000 Pompeians who remained when the city was destroyed. As Helle struggles in the sea, Phrixus reaches out to his sister from atop a flying ram. Pompeii Archaeological Park Archaeologists found the family’s remains in a small but stately residence known as the House of Helle and Phrixus, named after a fresco of the mythological siblings discovered on the dining room wall. In Greek myth, the siblings survive their stepmother’s attempt to sacrifice them to the gods by flying away on a ram with a golden fleece. While Phrixus escapes, Helle falls off the ram into the sea. The fresco captures the siblings reaching out to each other—Helle in the sea, Phrixus on the ram—in a fittingly futile attempt at rescue. The architectural features of the house may have accelerated the family’s demise. Like many Roman houses, the House of Helle and Phrixus featured an open-roofed atrium, intended to aid rainwater collection. But as lapilli fell from the sky during the first phase of the eruption, the rock debris, which reached up to nine feet in some locations, quickly flooded the house through the atrium. At first, the archaeological evidence shows, the four individuals tried to protect themselves by packing into a small room. They even pushed a wooden bed frame against the door, hoping that it would prevent the lapilli from entering.When that failed, the researchers think they pulled back the barricade and attempted to escape. Based on the location of the remains, they only got as far as the triclinium, or dining room. “This house, with its decorations and its objects, shows us people who tried to save themselves,” says Zuchtriegel in the statement, per a translation by La Brújula Verde’s Guillermo Carvajal. “They didn’t succeed, but their story is still here, beneath the ashes.” Over the centuries, the ash preserved the remains of the family, the wooden bed frame and other items, including a bronze amulet known as a bulla and a stash of amphorae filled with garum, a popular Roman fish sauce. Ash and lapilli flooded into through the open-roofed atrium, burying the house in up to nine feet of debris. Pompeii Archaeological Park Researchers don’t know that this particular family owned the House of Helle and Phrixus. The group may have taken refuge there after the owners fled, as Marcello Mogetta, an archaeologist and Roman art historian at the University of Missouri who wasn’t involved in the study, tells the Times. Still, the recovered objects offer a glimpse into Pompeian family life. For instance, the child was likely the one wearing the bronze bulla, as tradition dictated that boys wear such amulets for protection until adulthood. Additionally, traces of masonry materials suggest that the house was under renovation. As Zuchtriegel says in the statement, “Excavating Pompeii means confronting the beauty of art, but also the fragility of life.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.
    #shoving #bed #frame #against #the #door #this #pompeii #family #tried #survive #mount #vesuvius039 #eruption #new #researchby #vesuvius #eruptionarchaeologists #are #learning #details #about #four #individuals #futile #attempt #hide #inside #ancient #residence #called #house #helle #and #phrixus #shoved #served #makeshift #barricade #archaeological #parkin #vesuviuserupted #spewing #ash #small #volcanic #pellets #known #aslapilli #over #city #ofpompeiinearly #years #later #archaeologists #still #sifting #through #layers #debris #making #remarkable #discoveries #lifeand #deathin #cityresearchers #recently #discovered #members #including #child #who #attempted #escape #barricading #themselves #bedroom #according #astatement #from #thepompeii #parkthough #their #efforts #were #remains #provide #insight #into #doomed #citys #final #momentswhen #began #most #residents #had #clue #what #was #happeninggabriel #zuchtriegel #director #park #coauthor #study #published #journalscavi #pompei #tells #thenew #york #times #sara #novakmany #thought #end #world #comea #majority #nearby #herculaneumfled #survived #eruptionthe #among #roughly #pompeians #remained #when #destroyed #struggles #seaphrixus #reaches #out #his #sister #atop #flying #ram #parkarchaeologists #found #familys #but #stately #named #after #afresco #mythological #siblings #dining #room #wallin #greek #myth #stepmothers #sacrifice #them #gods #away #with #golden #fleecewhile #escapes #falls #off #seathe #fresco #captures #reaching #each #otherhelle #sea #ramin #fittingly #rescuethe #architectural #features #may #have #accelerated #demiselike #many #roman #houses #featured #openroofed #atrium #intended #aid #rainwater #collectionbut #lapilli #fell #sky #during #first #phase #rock #which #reached #nine #feet #some #locations #quickly #flooded #atriumat #evidence #shows #protect #packing #roomthey #even #pushed #wooden #hoping #that #would #prevent #enteringwhen #failed #researchers #think #they #pulled #back #escapebased #location #only #got #far #triclinium #roomthis #its #decorations #objects #people #save #says #statement #per #translation #byla #brújula #verdes #guillermo #carvajalthey #didnt #succeed #story #here #beneath #ashesover #centuries #preserved #other #items #bronze #amulet #abulla #stash #amphorae #filled #garum #apopular #fish #sauce #burying #parkresearchers #dont #know #particular #owned #phrixusthe #group #taken #refuge #there #owners #fled #marcello #mogetta #archaeologist #art #historian #university #missouri #wasnt #involved #timesstill #recovered #offer #glimpse #pompeian #lifefor #instance #likely #one #wearing #bulla #tradition #dictated #boys #wear #such #amulets #for #protection #until #adulthoodadditionally #traces #masonry #materials #suggest #under #renovationas #excavating #means #confronting #beauty #also #fragility #lifeget #latest #stories #your #inbox #every #weekday
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    By Shoving a Bed Frame Against the Door, This Pompeii Family Tried to Survive Mount Vesuvius' Eruption
    New Research By Shoving a Bed Frame Against the Door, This Pompeii Family Tried to Survive Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption Archaeologists are learning new details about the four individuals’ futile attempt to hide inside an ancient residence called the House of Helle and Phrixus A bed frame shoved against the door served as a makeshift barricade. Pompeii Archaeological Park In 79 C.E., Mount Vesuvius erupted, spewing ash and small volcanic pellets known as lapilli over the city of Pompeii. Nearly 1,950 years later, archaeologists are still sifting through the layers of debris and making remarkable discoveries about life—and death—in the ancient city. Researchers recently discovered four members of a family, including a child, who attempted to escape the eruption by barricading themselves inside a bedroom, according to a statement from the Pompeii Archaeological Park. Though their efforts were futile, their remains provide remarkable insight into the doomed city’s final moments. When the eruption began, most residents of Pompeii “had no clue what was happening,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the park and co-author of a new study published in the journal Scavi di Pompei, tells the New York Times’ Sara Novak. “Many thought the end of the world had come.” A majority of the 15,000 to 20,000 residents of Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum fled and survived the eruption. The four family members were among the roughly 2,000 Pompeians who remained when the city was destroyed. As Helle struggles in the sea, Phrixus reaches out to his sister from atop a flying ram. Pompeii Archaeological Park Archaeologists found the family’s remains in a small but stately residence known as the House of Helle and Phrixus, named after a fresco of the mythological siblings discovered on the dining room wall. In Greek myth, the siblings survive their stepmother’s attempt to sacrifice them to the gods by flying away on a ram with a golden fleece. While Phrixus escapes, Helle falls off the ram into the sea. The fresco captures the siblings reaching out to each other—Helle in the sea, Phrixus on the ram—in a fittingly futile attempt at rescue. The architectural features of the house may have accelerated the family’s demise. Like many Roman houses, the House of Helle and Phrixus featured an open-roofed atrium, intended to aid rainwater collection. But as lapilli fell from the sky during the first phase of the eruption, the rock debris, which reached up to nine feet in some locations, quickly flooded the house through the atrium. At first, the archaeological evidence shows, the four individuals tried to protect themselves by packing into a small room. They even pushed a wooden bed frame against the door, hoping that it would prevent the lapilli from entering.When that failed, the researchers think they pulled back the barricade and attempted to escape. Based on the location of the remains, they only got as far as the triclinium, or dining room. “This house, with its decorations and its objects, shows us people who tried to save themselves,” says Zuchtriegel in the statement, per a translation by La Brújula Verde’s Guillermo Carvajal. “They didn’t succeed, but their story is still here, beneath the ashes.” Over the centuries, the ash preserved the remains of the family, the wooden bed frame and other items, including a bronze amulet known as a bulla and a stash of amphorae filled with garum, a popular Roman fish sauce. Ash and lapilli flooded into through the open-roofed atrium, burying the house in up to nine feet of debris. Pompeii Archaeological Park Researchers don’t know that this particular family owned the House of Helle and Phrixus. The group may have taken refuge there after the owners fled, as Marcello Mogetta, an archaeologist and Roman art historian at the University of Missouri who wasn’t involved in the study, tells the Times. Still, the recovered objects offer a glimpse into Pompeian family life. For instance, the child was likely the one wearing the bronze bulla, as tradition dictated that boys wear such amulets for protection until adulthood. Additionally, traces of masonry materials suggest that the house was under renovation. As Zuchtriegel says in the statement, “Excavating Pompeii means confronting the beauty of art, but also the fragility of life.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.
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