A new tool helps teachers detect if AI wrote an assignment
Heard on All Things Considered | NPR
Several big school districts such as New York and Los Angeles have blocked access to a new chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to produce essays. One student has a new tool to help.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: ChatGPT is a buzzy new AI technology that can write research papers or poems that come out sounding like a real person did the work. You can even train this bot to write the way you do. Some teachers are understandably concerned, but one graduate student has an idea of how to help. Janet Woojeong Lee, from NPR's Education Desk, has this report.
JANET WOOJEONG LEE, BYLINE: Teachers around the country don't know what to do. Since ChatGPT launched in November, many say they're worried this powerful technology could do their students' homework. Some school districts, including New York City and Los Angeles, have blocked access. But Edward Tian thinks that's the wrong way to go.
EDWARD TIAN: I'm not for these blanket bans on ChatGPT usage because that does really nothing. Students can get around it, just like you can use ChatGPT on your Wi-Fi at home.
Researchers have created a new and potentially dangerous encryption-breaking quantum algorithm
By Jimmy Pezzone | Techspot
In a nutshell: Researchers at China's Tsinghua University believe they have discovered a quantum-based algorithm capable of breaking today's most complex encryption standards. The team claims that the algorithm can be run using currently available quantum technologies, too. If true, the lifespan of today's encryption could be drastically reduced to nothing in a handful of years.
Tsinghua University professor Long Guili and his team claim to have developed a new, qubit-saving factorization algorithm that could spell trouble for cryptographic security standards in the not-so-distant future. The algorithm, called sublinear-resource quantum integer factorization (SQIF), claims to optimize the quantum calculation process by reducing the number of qubits required to conduct the code-breaking calculations. The work is based on an algorithm developed in 2013 by German researcher Claus Schnorr.
What does that mean to someone who isn't overly familiar with quantum computing? If successful, the algorithm would increase the chances of breaking today's strongest encryption using currently available quantum technologies, and sooner than originally expected.
Geothermal Energy & Love In The Mouth Of The Dragon
By Tina Casey | CleanTechnica
Mount St. Helens erupted in rural Washington State 42 years ago with the force of 25,000 atomic bombs, killing 57 people and reminding everyone in that the geothermal energy pinned below the Earth’s surface is capable of infinite savagery. Loving the beast is the topic of the new Oscar-submitted documentary Fire of Love, which you can watch on Disney+. Meanwhile, geothermal researchers are coming up with some new ways to tame it.
Loving The Geothermal Energy Beast
Fire of Love follows the 20th-century scientists Katia and Maurice Krafft from youth to their careers as a volcano-chasing married couple who amassed a treasure trove of photographs, films, and scientific recordings as they traveled the world in search of answers to one of Earth’s greatest and most difficult-to-document mysteries.
🌙 NASA - Best Photo from Last Week
Snowy Celestial Mountains
Snow and ice cover mountains of the Tien Shan range in this photograph taken from the International Space Station (ISS) on Feb. 9, 2022. The Tien Shan—which means heavenly mountains in Chinese—is one of the largest mountain ranges in the world, extending approximately 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) across Central Asia, mostly along the border between Kyrgyzstan and China. The glaciers covering these slopes are a crucial source of water for nearby farmers and residents.
See more wintery photos from the ISS.
Image Credit: NASA
Last Updated: Jan 18, 2023
Editor: Monika Luabeya
Barbara Bickham
Barbara Bickham
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