davidberreby.com - What Makes An Alien Intelligent?

What Makes An Alien Intelligent?

How understanding other species on Earth can expand our expectations for intelligence off-planet. Read it at NewYorker.com

Writing

Human, AI and In-Between

Mourning Becomes Electric

Would you chat with an AI version of a deceased loved one? I did. I explain why, and look at the risks -- and possible benefits of this tech. Read it here.

ChatGPT + Robot Body = ?

Putting bodiless AI into brainless robots isn't as simple as it sounds.

AI's Environmental Cost

AI demands huge amounts of electricity and clean, potable water. Companies aren't telling us enough about those impacts. Read it here at Undark.

ChatGPT Makes the High-End White Collar Workday Easier (Except for the Mistakes and the Existential Dread)

ChatGPT is already shaking up white-collar work, as a recent study shows.

No More Mr. Nice Robot

Why some near-future robots will probably need to be brusk, impatient or even downright rude.

The Robot Revolution Is Here. For Real This Time

My cover story for the September, 2020 issue of National Geographic.

When the Algorithm Says Your Dog is an Umbrella

In 2015, I wrote one of the first popular-science articles about algorithmic opacity

Will Intelligent Machines Leave Us Liberated? Or Bored to Death?

If your sexts are coming from an algorithm, you've outsourced too much to machines

Essay

The Biggest Lie on the Internet

You clicked "Agree" but you didn't really read the contract, did you? Nobody does, and that matters.

Math, Weather and War

Cloudy, With a Chance of War

My profile of the remarkable Lewis Fry Richardson, pioneer of both meteorology and the study of conflict

Xenobiology

What Makes An Alien Intelligent?

When we find intelligent aliens, how will we recognize them?

Obesity

The Obesity Era

How Not to Think About Obesity

Fiction

Eating With Integrity

Ghastly gastronomy, as published in Nature

The Punishment Fits the Crime

A genomic nightmare

Us and Them 2008 Edition

A sample of Us and Them from Google Books

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Other Species

A piece about migrating birds, New York City, and the scientists who study them both --

Links

Buy US AND THEM

Robots for the Rest of Us Blog and Podcast

My Substack newsletter and podcast about how human beings are coping with AI and robots in everyday life.

Who Cares? A Newsletter about Indifference

A more-or-less frozen-in-time Substack. Why don't other people care about the things that are life-and-death important to us? An eccentric and irregular blog in which I kick around my obsession with this question. Alas, I don't have time to maintain two Substacks, so this one is mostly archival.