AI Is Good But Far From Perfect - Learning From Neanderthals

This is an AI generated image created with DALL-E 3 that was included in this research study. Its prompt described typical activities, setting, attire and tools but did not request scientific accuracy.

New study uses Neanderthals to demonstrate gap in generative AI, scholarly knowledge - UMaine News - The University of Maine

I have been using AI now for a couple of years to do research quickly to summarise scientific papers and press releases and to edit drafts to correct typos, spelling and grammatical errors and especially to generate images and illustrations. And I have to say, I think it's worth every penny of the subscription fee. However, it does get things wrong sometimes and I've frequently corrected some information or asked it to look again at an image.

Now researchers, Assistant Professor Matthew Magnani of the University of Maine, USA and Professor Jon Clindaniel of the University of Chicago, USA, have used what we know of Neanderthals to demonstrate the gap between AI-generated images and scholarly knowledge of them. The gap can widen or narrow depending on the prompt AI is given. For example, requesting scientific accuracy will produce better results than not asking for it. One of the problems the study highlights is that a great deal of scientific research is inaccessible due to copyright restrictions, before open access began to be widely used in about 2000.

Generative artificial intelligence is often marketed as a kind of universal expert — a machine that can instantly reconstruct the past, summarise scholarship, and conjure convincing images of worlds long gone. But a new study from the University of Maine demonstrates that, when it comes to archaeology and human evolution, the reality is rather less impressive. Far from reflecting the current scientific understanding of our extinct relatives, today’s most popular AI systems often reproduce something closer to the stereotypes and misconceptions of decades ago.

The researchers tested widely used generative tools, including ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E, by asking them to describe and depict Neanderthals. What they found was striking: even when explicitly prompted for scientifically accurate, expert-level reconstructions, the outputs frequently resembled outdated mid-twentieth-century portrayals — apelike brutes, crude caricatures, and simplistic narratives that modern archaeology has long since abandoned. In effect, the AI was not drawing on the cutting edge of scholarship, but on the cultural sediment of older popular ideas.

The accompanying paper, published in Advances in Archaeological Practice, makes the deeper point that generative AI does not “know” the past in any meaningful sense. It assembles plausible-sounding and plausible-looking content from patterns in its training data — and much of that data reflects what is easily available online, not what is most accurate in the academic literature. The result is a sobering reminder that AI can be a powerful tool, but without careful expert guidance it is just as capable of reinforcing obsolete narratives as it is of illuminating the truth.

Unintelligent Design - Why Humans Are Not Intelligently Designed for Modern life

"Now look what you've done! The place is not fit to live in anymore!"

Humanity's Real Problem: Accelerating Evolutionary Mismatch | Psychology Today

A sure sign of unintelligent design is one that completely fails to anticipate the future. Biologically speaking, poor design occurs when an organism is adapted to an environment at a specific moment but becomes increasingly maladapted as the environment evolves. This happens either because the organism fails to adapt quickly enough or because it was never designed with future changes in mind in the first place.

A good, intelligent designer, especially one equipped with the power of foresight, would not just design for today but for tomorrow, next year and for the foreseeable future. Failure to do so is incompetence, indolence or sheer malevolence in putting its design on course for ultimate disaster.

In my book, The Body of Evidence: How the Human Body Refutes Creationism, I highlight numerous examples where the human body evolved for past environments — previous diets, predators, and social pressures — leaving us today with various vulnerabilities and compromises.

Human evolution moves at a glacial pace, barely noticeable even over many generations, while our environment has dramatically transformed within just a few decades.

Consider the technology available to our parents and grandparents compared to what we now take for granted—steam trains, landline telephones, no internet or colour TV, no central heating or air conditioning beyond an open fire or window, no satellite navigation, and no instant global communication. Further back, major societal shifts arose from mechanised farming, factory work, innovations in textile manufacturing, and even improvements in wheat milling for bread. Later still came automobiles and mass transit.

Yet, genetically speaking, our recent ancestors who navigated these revolutionary changes remain nearly identical to us today.

Now, we stand on the threshold of another seismic shift: artificial intelligence. Just a decade ago, writing this introduction would have involved considerable time researching, fact-checking, and carefully drafting paragraphs that still might not have fully conveyed my intended message. Today, I can draft my thoughts, then leverage the vast processing power of AI (like ChatGPT-4.5) to refine and clarify my ideas effortlessly. These introductory paragraphs are precisely the outcome of such a collaboration.

The core issue, however, remains that human culture is evolving at a rate several orders of magnitude faster than our biological capacity to adapt, creating an ever-widening gap between how we need to respond to new challenges and how we're inherently equipped to do so.

The consequences of this accelerating mismatch are thoughtfully explored in an article by Mike Brooks, Ph.D., in Psychology Today, Humanity's Real Problem: Accelerating Evolutionary Mismatch.

Covidiot News - How ChatGPT is Dispelling Anti-Vaxx Disinformation

ChatGPT is Debunking Myths on Social Media Around Vaccine Safety, Say Experts - Taylor & Francis Newsroom

According to a very recent report in the peer-reviewed journal, Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, the artificial intelligence chat bot, ChatGPT, is helping to dispel some of the myths surrounding vaccines, by providing the factual information that debunks the myths.

Having had all our COVID-19 vaccinations, including any seasonal boosters, and having just recovered from a mild, but unpleasant bout of it which my partner and I probably caught in France or during the flight back, I thought I would put this to the test with a little research of my own:

Artificial Intelligence - How Appearances can be Deceptive if we Think Like Creationists

Artificial Intelligence

How Appearances can be Deceptive if we Think Like Creationists>

According to a McKinsey report, depending on the adoption scenario, automation will displace between 400 and 800 million jobs by 2030, requiring up to 375 million people to change job categories entirely.

Evolution is making us treat AI like a human, and we need to kick the habit

Readers may have noticed how I've been using the AI chatGPT3 engine recently. I find it incredibly useful for quickly generating information about a topic. The one drawback seems to be that its references don't always check out and it's sometimes impossible to find the paper of book referenced, even. This seems to be a major deficit in its training.

I found it invaluable in developing the coding needed to run the slideshows I'm now frequently including in these posts, although I often needed to remind it of the objective because its solutions were overly complex and sometimes didn't work as I wanted. It also tends to misunderstand the specification and solve a problem that doesn't exist.

But, as the following article by Neil Saunders, Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at the University of Greenwich, points out, there is a natural tendency to treat it like a real human being. I have to admit, I often say please and thank you, and sometimes hesitate before asking it yet again for help, half expecting it to become impatient. This is, of course, a mistake as an algorithm doesn't have emotions and isn't even conscious of its own existence, let alone being 'human' in its interactions with us. It simply responds to our input by pattern-matching and generating output in intelligible English.

And this is what makes it so human; it talks to us like a very polite and infinitely patient human being would. This tendency to assume agency is deeply embedded in our evolved psychology in the form of teleological thinking and explain why credulous creationists assume whatever they don't understand or what isn't immediately obvious, must be the work of an agency of some sort. I have even had creationists argue that atoms can't combine with other atoms, or photons don't know where to go, unless directed to do so by a sentient being - which of course assumes that atoms and elementary particles are sentient and can obey instructions too. Teleological thinking is the basic notion behind 'intelligent design' and arguments from design, such as the refuted Palley's Watch analogy.

It is a simple step then to assume that the 'designer' or directing agent must be the locally popular god, despite the fact that there is no definitive evidence that any god(s) exists or mechanism that could explain the origins of any. The argument is childishly circular - there must be a designer because things look designed; the designer must be God because only God can design things; the 'fact' of design proves the existence of a designer - And of course mummy and daddy believe in the only true god.
But there are dangers in using AI combined with teleological thinking and ignorant credulity because people who think teleologically can be manipulated and those who believe absurdities can be persuaded to commit atrocities.

Here then is what Neil Saunders has to say on the subject. His article is reprinted from The Conversation under a Creative Commons Licence, reformatted for stylistics consistency:

Creationism in Crisis - Evolution Explains Why Humans, Chimpanzees and Bonobos Have So Much in Common

Creationism in Crisis

Evolution Explains Why Humans, Chimpanzees and Bonobos Have Much in Common

Bonobo, Pan paniscus

Creationism in Crisis

Evolution Explains Why Humans, Chimpanzees and Bonobos Have Much in Common

Bonobo, Pan paniscus

Creationism in Crisis

Evolution Explains Why Humans, Chimpanzees and Bonobos Have Much in Common

Bonobo, Pan paniscus

Creationism in Crisis

Evolution Explains Why Humans, Chimpanzees and Bonobos Have Much in Common

Bonobo, Pan paniscus

Creationism in Crisis

Evolution Explains Why Humans, Chimpanzees and Bonobos Have Much in Common

Bonobo, Pan paniscus

Creationism in Crisis

Evolution Explains Why Humans, Chimpanzees and Bonobos Have Much in Common

Bonobo, Pan paniscus

Creationism in Crisis

Evolution Explains Why Humans, Chimpanzees and Bonobos Have Much in Common

Bonobo, Pan paniscus

Creationism in Crisis

Evolution Explains Why Humans, Chimpanzees and Bonobos Have Much in Common

Bonobo, Pan paniscus

Creationism in Crisis

Evolution Explains Why Humans, Chimpanzees and Bonobos Have Much in Common

Bonobo, Pan paniscus

Bonobos and chimps: what our closest relatives tell us about humans

Common chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes

Evolution not only explains why humans share 98.7% of our DNA with chimpanzees and bonobos, it also explains why so much of our basic culture has its counterpart in those two species, and why so much of what we once wrongly thought was unique to our species is to be found in those species too.

For example, we were once believed to be the only species able to construct and use tools, or devise solutions to problems, but chimpanzees, as well as many other unrelated species) are capable of those things too; we once thought we were the only ape that routinely gathered food then shared it with others, but bonobos do that too. Bonobos even offer food to strangers in a form of hospitality that has its counterpart in the way we offer food and drink to visitors in our homes. Captive bonobos have been shown to prefer to share their food with another bonobo who has none, than to eat alone.

The Evolution of Religions - More AI Output

Continuing my exploration of the artificial intelligence app, Ask AI, here is the latest example if its ability to produces professional-looking essays to order.

Me:
Write a 1000 word essay on how religions evolve in human culture. With references

Ask Al Chat App:
Religions have been an integral part of human culture since the dawn of civilization. They have played a significant role in shaping human societies, providing a sense of meaning and purpose to people's lives, and offering guidance on how to live a good life. However, religions are not static entities, and they evolve over time in response to changes in society, culture, and human understanding of the world.

The evolution of religions can be observed in many ways. One way is through the study of religious texts, which can reveal changes in beliefs, practices, and values over time. For example, the Bible, the foundational text of Christianity, has undergone numerous translations, revisions, and interpretations throughout history, reflecting changes in the social, cultural, and political contexts of the communities that produced and consumed it.

Another way to understand the evolution of religions is to examine the historical context in which they emerge and develop. For example, the emergence of Buddhism in ancient India can be understood as a response to the social and religious conditions of the time, including the caste system, the dominance of Brahmanism, and the search for spiritual liberation.

Similarly, the rise of Islam in the 7th century can be understood as a response to the political and cultural context of Arabia, including the tribal conflicts, the decline of the Byzantine and Sassanid empires, and the need for a unifying ideology.