Xi'an's Og

The cover of this 19 Feb edition of Nature is made of an hand pencilled on an Indonesian cave, possibly the oldest piece of art discovered so far. By an ancient precursor of Jean-Michel Basquiat… On more current issues,

A tribune on UKRI cutting whole branches of medical, biological and physical research in the UK, to “focus and do fewer things better¨. Impacting for instance the Medical Research Council (MRC). At least until 2028, with longer range consequences.

And an entry on Epstein, whose files have now contaminated even Nature itself. (When is Andrews MW going to make an appearance there as well?!) The connection (of interest) with science is that the sex offender and financier supported research institutions, incl. the mathematical biologist Martin Nowak, whose work Epstein reviewed (despite a total absence of credentials!). Along another entry on the Chinese Government (MOST) instituting penalties on universities failing to act on scientific misconduct by some of their staff.

And a frightful graph on the exploding number of measles cases in the US, this year, related to the drop in the proportion of vaccinated children. Correlated with the next article on regulation moves by the Trump administration to make firing government scientists much easier. And with the surge in US applicants to the major European grants, namely ERC starting, consolidator and advanced grants and Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowships.

A book review of Michael Pollan’s A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, a New York Times bestseller and more importantly an exploration of the physical nature of consciousness. Followed by a long comment by N. Sanders (Harvard) and B. Schneier (Toronto) on the pernicious effect of high salaries in AI companies on academic research, in particular by negating the scientific worth of collaborating. Plus a regular one-column comment that “Statistical approximation is not general intelligence”..! Albeit with reasonable arguments about the unlikely emergence of an artificial general intelligence.

Last but not least, a Perspective article on the moral competence of large language models. which requires defining first moral competence and moral performances. Involving a long-term acquaintance of mine’s, Kristian Lum (now at DeepMind NY) as one of the authors.