MISSISSAUGA, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 20, 2023--

US students give their schools an overall B- grade on average, according to a new report released Wednesday that asked fifth through twelfth graders to assess their school's quality of teaching, effectiveness in preparing them for the future and mental health support.

Forget AI that can draw pictures, Google’s latest AI model can control a robot. On

Bots such as ChatGPT may be able to outperform humans at certain creative thinking tasks, scientists believe. Researchers have found that artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are capable of a skill known as divergent thinking – a spontaneous thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. When assessed with a type of divergent thinking exercise known as alternate uses tasks, which asks a person to think of as many uses as possible for a simple object, chatbots, on average, performed better than humans. However, the researchers also found that the best human ideas still matched or exceeded those that came from AI. Simone Grassini, associate professor in the department of psychosocial science at the University of Bergen, and Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience Lab at the University of Stavanger, in Norway, told the PA news agency: “Indeed, this is a remarkable type of ability that AI chatbots display. “The findings show that AI is better than most humans in creative thinking. The findings show that AI is better than most humans in creative thinking Prof Simone Grassini “But we should also remember that we used the divergent thinking task to measure creative thinking, that is, measuring a particular type of creative thinking and not creativity in general. “Our results show that, at least for now, the best humans still outperform the AI.” For the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, Prof Grassini and her colleague Mika Koivisto, of the department of psychology at the University of Turku, in Turku, Finland, assigned alternate uses tasks for four objects – a rope, a box, a pencil and a candle – to 256 human volunteers and three AI chatbots – ChatGPT3, ChatGPT4, and Copy.Ai. The responses were rated on semantic distance – looking at how closely related the response was to the object’s original use – and creativity. The team said that on average, chatbot-generated responses scored significantly higher than the human responses for both semantic distance and creativity. The best human response outperformed each chatbot’s best response in seven out of eight scoring categories – however responses from people had a higher proportion of poor-quality ideas, the researchers added. Prof Grassini said: “Playing around with ChatGPT, I noticed that some of the answers given by the chatbot displayed a good level of creativity. “I knew that the chatbot would have performed well, but I think it performed even better than what I expected.” The researchers said that while their work highlights the potential of AI as a tool to enhance creativity, it also underscores the unique and complex nature of human creativity that may be difficult to fully replicate or surpass with AI technology. Prof Grassini said: “It is still to be established whether these capabilities of AI will translate directly on AI systems, replacing human jobs that require creative thinking. “I prefer to think that AI will be helping humans to improve their capacity.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Information Commissioner urges people to share data to protect at-risk children Long-form video content is here to stay, says YouTube UK boss Robotic dog brought into survey historic Cold War weapons testing facilities

With the increasing number of self-service checkout machines popping up in stores for convenience, there is one simple feature that is used to put off potential shoplifters - mirrors. There's a good chance that you've looked at your reflection in the screens fitted to these machines, and the purpose of it is for potential shoplifters to catch themselves in the mirror in the hopes of making them feel guilty. This pang of a guilty conscience is hoped to prevent them from committing any crime (it's not just there for vanity purposes like most of us use it for). Research also backs up the theory that people who see themselves in a mirror are less likely to do something bad. A 1976 study from Letters of Evolutionary Behavioural Science found that when people are around mirrors, they "behave in accordance with social desirability". "Mirrors influence impulsivity, a feature that is closely related to decision-making in both social and non-social situations." When participants in the experiment were looking at mirrors, their "private self-awareness was activated" by them and as a result influenced "decision-making as a non-social cues". Similarly, Psychology Today notes how a mirror allows "people to literally watch over themselves" and this "dramatically boosts our self-awareness". Meanwhile, the issue of self-service checkouts and shoplifting was highlighted in a report by Mashed last year which it appeared to confirm that Walmart's attempt at combatting this problem was a psychological method with the addition of mirrors (though Walmart, alongside other supermarkets, has never confirmed the purpose of their mirrors at their self-service checkout services). Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

By Foo Yun Chee LUXEMBOURG EU competition regulators appealed to the bloc's highest court on Tuesday to override

Best Prime Day Apple deals When it comes to AirPods, Apple is clearly in no

Apple might be releasing a Mac mini with an M3 chip early next year. In

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 10, 2023--

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 14, 2023--

A scientist claims to have discovered a “gravitational anomaly” that calls into question our fundamental understanding of the universe. Astronomer Kyu-Hyun Chae from the university of Sejong University in South Korea made the discovery while studying binary star systems, which refer to two stars that orbit each other. His observations appear to go against the standard gravitational models established by Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and instead offer evidence that an alternative theory first proposed in the 1980s may explain the anomaly. Analysis of data collected by the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope revealed accelerations of stars in binaries that did not fit the standard gravitational models. At accelerations of lower than 0.1 nanometres per second squared, the orbit of the two stars deviated from Newton’s universal law of gravitation and Einstein’s general relativity. Instead, Professor Chae theorised that a model known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) could explain why these previous theoretical frameworks were unable to explain the stars’ movements. “The deviation represents a direct evidence for the breakdown of standard gravity at weak acceleration,” Professor Chae wrote in a paper, titled ‘Breakdown of the Newton-Einstein standard gravity at low acceleration in internal dynamics of wide binary stars’, that was published in The Astrophysics Journal.. His research calls into question the existence of dark matter and other peculiar space phenomena that are typically used to justify irregularities with Newton-Einstein standards. “The data reveal an unambiguous and extremely strong signature of the breakdown of the standard Newton-Einstein gravity at weak acceleration,” the study concluded. “What is even more surprising is that the trend and magnitude of the gravitational anomaly agree with what the AQUAL [MOND] theory predicts.” Professor Chae predicts that his results will be confirmed and refined with larger data sets in the future, which could lead to a new revolution in physics. “Chae’s finding is a result of a very involved analysis of cutting-edge data, which, as far as I can judge, he has performed very meticulously and carefully,” said theoretical physicist Mordehai Milgrom at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, who first proposed the MOND model 40 years ago. “But for such a far-reaching finding – and it is indeed very far-reaching – we require confirmation by independent analyses, preferably with better future data. “If this anomaly is confirmed as a breakdown of Newtonian dynamics, and especially if it indeed agrees with the most straightforward predictions of MOND, it will have enormous implications for astrophysics, cosmology, and for fundamental physics at large.” Pavel Kroupa, professor at Charles University in Prague, added: “The implications for all of astrophysics are immense.” Read More Perseids 2023: Meteor beacon offers unique way to observe spectacular shower over UK Slack announces its biggest ever update Why you might never have to remember your password again AI can predict Parkinson’s subtype with up to 95% accuracy, study suggests

K-pop powerhouse BTS didn't get one, star footballer Son Heung-min did: South Korea grants limited exemptions from military service and for the first time...