Video conferencing is making us dumber and less creative — and that’s according to science. A laboratory study by Columbia Business School’s Melanie S. Brucks and Stanford’s Jonathan Levav found that “video conferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas.” How’s that for a great excuse to keep your video turned off on your next Zoom call? The study found that “video conferencing hampers idea generation because it focuses communicators on a screen, which prompts a narrower cognitive focus.
Meta’s next VR headset is expected to be one of the company’s biggest launches — perhaps its most important hardware launch to date. We’ve known about the headset, dubbed Project Cambria, since the company changed its name to Meta last year. But since then, several leaks have provided a better picture of what to expect from the headset, and one thing has become clear: this isn’t just another VR headset aimed at gamers. What’s different about Project Cambria? The most important description we’ve
A team of researchers recently developed an algorithm that generates original reviews for wines and beers. Considering that computers can’t taste booze, this makes for a curious use-case for machine learning. The AI sommelier was trained on a database containing hundreds of thousands of beer and wine reviews. In essence, it aggregates those reviews and picks out keywords. When the researchers ask it to generate its own review for a specific wine or beer, it generates something similar to previou
In 1996, Joseph W. Ashy, former U.S. commander-in-chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, famously said: “We’re going to fight in space. We’re going to fight from space and we’re going to fight into space.” In less than three decades since then, we’ve seen the establishment of the U.S. Space Force, anti-satellite weapons testing by major spacefaring nations and the rapid development of weapons that can interfere with, disrupt or destroy space assets. No wonder there are many conce
The UK’s roads are some of the main culprits of its greenhouse gas emissions. And in 2020, 92% of passenger kilometers travelled in the UK was made by cars, vans, and taxis. That means getting around by private vehicle has a disproportionately large negative impact on the environment. What’s more, only 5.8% of vehicles on UK roads are ultra-low emission. Even electric vehicles, though they create less pollution when driven, have a substantial environmental impact thanks to the materials used to
If you ever wanted to buy an NFT based on Ethereum, you would have to pay a transaction fee to register it on the blockchain. Last week, that fee skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. So you might have had to pay thousands of dollars as fees to get an NFT that might be worth a few bucks. Strap in for another weird web3 story. Yuga Labs, the creator of the infamous Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs, opened up its mint to its Otherside metaverse over the weekend. With many anticipatory participants,
Ever watched a YouTube or TikTok video and thought, “I could create something like that”? Well, that’s easier said than done when you haven’t created a video before. While our unlimited access to content makes video creation appear simple (if there are so many videos out there, it can’t be that hard, right?), there are a few common pitfalls first-time video makers often run into. We spoke with video editing expert, Kwangsub Kim, to get the pro tips you need to create an amazing first video. Afte
If a person is lost in the wilderness, they have two options. They can search for civilization, or they could make themselves easy to spot by building a fire or writing HELP in big letters. For scientists interested in the question of whether intelligent aliens exist, the options are much the same. For over 70 years, astronomers have been scanning for radio or optical signals from other civilizations in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, called SETI. Most scientists are confident that
Brands are beginning to see the need to incorporate emotional intelligence into the customer experience. It is crucial to implement automation in the sales, marketing and customer service industry while also finding ways to personalize an experience for a customer using empathy. Studies show human empathy is on the decline – a deficit costing the average brand $300 million in lost revenue every year. Developments in artificial intelligence (AI) to help brands recognize opportunities to respond i
During the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, and the early decades of the 20th century, U.S. captains of industry such as William Randolph Hearst and Jay Gould used their massive wealth to dominate facets of the economy, including the news media. They were, in many ways, prototype oligarchs – by the dictionary definition, “very rich business leaders with a great deal of political influence.” Some have argued that the U.S. is in the midst of a Second Gilded Age defined – like the first – by va