harms

A group of well-known AI ethicists have written a counterpoint to this week’s controversial letter asking for a six-month “pause” on AI development, criticizing it for a focus on hypothetical future threats when real harms are attributable to misuse of the tech today. Thousands of people, including such familiar names as Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk, signed the open letter from the Future of Life institute earlier this week, proposing that development of AI models like GPT-4 should be put on hold in order to avoid…

A BYU study found that pornography use by men or women at any level negatively impacted romantic relationships, with a pronounced negative impact on relationship stability. Credit: Jaren Wilkey/BYU Photo Avoiding pornography is vital to developing a healthy and long-term romantic relationship, says a new study from BYU. The…

Are you on any kind of daily medication? Do you take those drugs in the morning or the evening? According to an emerging body of research, the time of day you take a medication may influence how well it works, or how much it harms.Tobias Eckle, from the University of Colorado School of Medicine, has been studying the relationship between circadian rhythms and drug efficacy for several years. Referred to as chronotherapy, this field of study looks to home in on how a human body responds to drugs at different times in our…

As soccer fans around the world celebrate the “beautiful game” at this year’s World Cup in Qatar, one big part of the sport is being conspicuously overlooked: female players. It’s no secret that women’s soccer has not received anywhere near the level of attention or funding the men’s game has. Female professional players are paid far less than male ones—a discrepancy the U.S. women’s team hoped to help remedy when it reached an equal pay settlement with the U.S. Soccer Federation earlier this year. Yet in many areas…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain A grim and familiar pattern has followed the parade of mass shootings across America. In their aftermath, the nation's attention focuses on the direct victims of the attacks, the dead and injured, their families and friends, and the witnesses. But a growing body of research reveals that the negative…

In November 2021, when the psychedelics company Compass Pathways released the top-line results of its trial looking at psilocybin in patients with treatment-resistant depression, the stock of the company plunged almost 30 percent. The dive was reportedly prompted by the somewhat-middling results of the research—but also because of the scattering of serious adverse events that occurred during the trial.Amid the psychedelic renaissance, bringing up their potential harms has been somewhat of a taboo. The field, vilified for…

Whistleblower Frances Haugen - a former Facebook engineer who leaked documents suggesting the firm put profits before safety - on Thursday launched an organisation devoted to fighting harm caused by social media.The new Beyond the Screen nonprofit said that its first project will be to document ways big tech is failing in its "legal and ethical obligations to society" and help come up with ways to solve those problems."We can have social media that brings out the best in us, and that's what Beyond the Screen is working…

Meta’s “Responsible Innovation Team,” a group meant to address “potential harms to society” caused by Facebook's products, is no more. The Wall Street Journal reports that the team was recently “disbanded” though “most” members will stay on with other teams at the company. A Meta spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal the company was “committed to the team’s goals,” but didn’t provide a reason for the change in strategy. The Responsible Innovation team was first formed “several years ago,” according to a 2021 written…

In the summer of 1996 a small group of people met in northern California to share their experiences with intersex variations. One participant, Heidi Walcutt, said that doctors surgically reduced her clitoris as a young child “to more closely approximate a normal female appearance.”  This resulted in nerve damage that would blunt sexual sensation later in life, as well as stigma that made Walcutt feel at times like hiding in the closet and at other times intensely angry. Others in the group similarly reported shame,…

Exposing yourself to the bright screens of smartphones, laptops, and TVs, has been known for putting strain on eyes and have an adverse impact on the users' health in the long run. Now, researchers from the Oregon State University have revealed that the damaging effects of the blue light emanating from these bright displays worsen as one gets older. To reach the conclusion, the team conducted an experiment on Drosophila melanogaster or the common fruit fly. The fly was chosen for the experiment as it serves as an…