From Poet Warrior, by Joy Harjo, a Top 10 Memoirs title. Artwork: She Comes with Fire and Weaves the World, beadwork © Rainy Dawn Ortiz. Photograph: © Melissa Lukenbaugh. Used by Permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Spotlight on Biography & Memoir
Jun 9th 2022ShareGive
Picture a computer that could finish your sentences, using a better turn of phrase; or use a snatch of melody to compose music that sounds as if you wrote it (though you never would have); or solve a problem by creating hundreds of lines of computer code—leaving you to focus on something even harder. In a sense, that computer is merely the descendant of the power looms and steam engines that hastened the Industrial Revolution. But it also belongs to a new class of machine, because it grasps the symbols in language, music and programming and uses them in ways that seem creative. A bit like a human.
The “foundation models” that can do these things represent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, or ai. They, too, promise a revolution, but this one will affect the high-status brainwork that the Industrial Revolution never touched. There are no guarantees about what lies ahead—after all, ai has stumbled in the past. But it is time to look at the promise and perils of the next big thing in machine intelligence.
The panel investigating the January 6 attack shares its findings in a televised primetime hearing. The US seeks private funds for immigration issues.
And a fraught Supreme Court readies the most high-profile rulings of its term. NPR is doing its annual survey to better understand how listeners like you spend time with podcasts.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said this week that the U.S. was involved in “extremely active” talks with European allies about efforts to form a buyers’ cartel and set a cap on the price of Russian oil.
The Casarabe people lived in southwest Amazonia around AD 500–1400, but understanding of this culture has been limited because the archaeological remains are covered in dense forest. In this week’s issue, Heiko Prümers and his colleagues reveal the discovery of new Casarabe settlements in the Bolivian Amazon. The researchers used lidar to scan the forest, revealing 2 large settlements (each covering more than 100 hectares) and 24 smaller sites, 15 of which had previously been known to exist.
The cover image shows Cotoca, one of the two large settlements, in which earthen mounds (one more than 20 metres high) and long causeways can clearly be seen. The team suggests that these results are the first evidence of agrarian-based, low-density urbanism in western Amazonia. They conclude that the region was not as sparsely populated in pre-Hispanic times as was previously thought.
Cover image: Heiko Prümers/DAI.
Times Literary Supplement (TLS), June 10, 2022 – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring @ianground on Wittgenstein’s notebooks; @CaroDuttlinger on Kafka’s drawings; @wander2wonder on Budapest; Emily Barton on Mieko Kawakami; @sophieolive on fabric; @TobyLichtig on Jarvis Cocker – and more.
Pakistan’s government faces an unpleasant choice between doing what’s popular and what is economically necessary, as Imran Khan, the former prime minister, exploits widespread discontent for his own ends.
Russia’s invasion is threatening Ukraine’s unique seed bank. And why so many languages have such a rich variety of words to describe family members and relationships.
A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, a new nuclear era, what America’s next recession will look like (10:15), and why you shouldn’t bring your whole self to work (31:40).
Boomers Daily 