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  1. F.E. Guerra-Pujol's avatar

    Apropos of Sagar’s wish to foist the A.I. industry by its own petard, this article appeared in print in yesterday’s…

  2. Claudio's avatar

    I teach both large courses, like Jurisprudence and Critical Legal Thinking (a.k.a Legal Argumentation), and small seminar-based courses at Edinburgh…

  3. Charles Pigden's avatar

    Surely there is an answer to the problem of AI cheating which averts the existential threat. . It’s not great,…

  4. Mark's avatar

    I’d like to pose a question. Let’s be pessimistic for the moment, and assume AI *does* destroy the university, at…

  5. A in the UK's avatar
  6. Jonathan Turner's avatar

    I agree with all of this. The threat is really that stark. The only solution is indeed in-class essay exams,…

  7. Craig Duncan's avatar

Some good news for a change (Wilson)

Not in the U.S., of course.  But a recent Lancet study shows that HIV infections in south India are down by 1/3, thanks to condom and education programs.  From the study abstract:

A reduction of more than a third in HIV-1 prevalence in 2000–04 in
young women in south India seems realistic, and is not easily
attributable to bias or to mortality. This fall is probably due to
rising condom use by men and female sex workers in south India, and
thus reduced transmission to wives. Expansion of peer-based condom and
education programmes for sex workers remains a top priority to control
HIV-1 in India.

Now back to the bad news.  What about countries that, thanks to draconian U.S. aid policies whereby condom distribution has been cancelled (if abortion counseling is mentioned as one of a women’s reproductive options) or greatly reduced (as part of requirements that recipients of aid emphasize abstinence and "fidelity" over condoms), are now facing a condom shortageHIV infections are decreasing in those countries, too:

Abstinence and sexual fidelity have played virtually no role
in the much-heralded decline of AIDS rates in the most closely studied
region of Uganda, two researchers told a gathering of AIDS scientists
here.

It is the deaths of previously infected people, not
dramatic change in human behavior, that is the main engine behind the
ebbing of the overall rate, or prevalence, of AIDS in southern Uganda
over the last decade, they reported.

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