ChatGPT And The Future Of AI, Turkey Earthquakes. February 10, 2023, Part 1
Science Friday
Science Friday and WNYC Studios
4.4 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2023
⏱️ 46 minutes
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Summary
The pair of earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria this week left the region grappling with death and destruction. Despite the region being seismically active, this particular area hadn’t seen an earthquake of this size for decades. There are ways of knowing where the next big earthquakes will happen—but not when. Scientists use knowledge of fault lines and historical data to make their predictions, but saving areas from mass casualties often relies on infrastructure policies. Building codes that prioritize strong buildings can save lives, but older structures remain vulnerable.
Across the globe, in California, the health impacts of electric vehicles are beginning to be seen. A study published this month finds that for every 20 EVs in a zip code, asthma-related visits to the emergency room drop by 3.2%. This is a striking number for a technology that’s just now becoming more commonplace. Joining Ira to talk about these stories and more is Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, based in Washington, D.C.
ChatGPT And Beyond: What’s Behind The AI Boom?
The past few months have seen a flurry of new, easy-to-use tools driven by artificial intelligence. It’s getting harder to tell what’s been created by a human: Programs like ChatGPT can construct believable written text, apps like Lensa can generate stylized avatars, while other developments can make pretty believable audio and video deep fakes.
Just this week, Google unveiled a new AI-driven chatbot called Bard, and Microsoft announced plans to incorporate ChatGPT within their search engine Bing. What is this new generation of AI good at, and where does it fall short?
Ira talks about the state of generative AI and takes listener calls with Dr. Melanie Mitchell, professor at the Santa Fe Institute and author of the book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. They are joined by Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, founder and CEO of Parity Consulting and responsible AI fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Science Friday. I'm Iroflado. A bit later in the hour, we're going to be talking about |
| 0:05.2 | the artificial intelligence boom, you know, tools like chat GPT that can create believable human |
| 0:12.7 | language in seconds. We'll be answering your questions about it. Our number 844-724-8255-844-Sytalk, |
| 0:22.3 | or you can tweet us at Sci-Fi. But first, that pair of earthquakes that hit Turkey in Syria this |
| 0:28.8 | week left the region devastated. And despite being seismically active, these are the largest earthquakes |
| 0:36.0 | the region has experienced in decades. There are ways to know where the next big earthquake might |
| 0:42.3 | happen, but not when. Joining me today to talk about the science of this story and others from |
| 0:48.7 | the week is Umar Irfan, science writer Ed Vox, based in Washington. Welcome back to the show. |
| 0:54.0 | Thanks for having me back. Nice to have you. Okay, let's let's talk about these earthquakes. |
| 0:58.8 | Was there any warning that they were going to happen? In the short term, no. There wasn't really any |
| 1:05.2 | sign people in the region didn't get any kinds of alerts when this happened. And the earthquake |
| 1:10.2 | struck very early in the morning. So a lot of people were asleep at home when this happened. And |
| 1:14.6 | that's part of why the devastating toll has been so high. But this is a region that's known for |
| 1:19.9 | being seismically active. There's actually two major fault lines that run through Turkey. And |
| 1:25.1 | this is an area that historically has had major earthquakes. But as you noted, it hasn't had a |
| 1:29.9 | major earthquake in this specific region for decades. And so the challenge here is trying to come |
| 1:35.0 | up with a probability and actually telling people how to respond and prepare for this. And that's |
| 1:40.4 | a problem that we face all over the world when it comes to earthquake risks. Because we know where |
| 1:43.8 | the fault lines are. We just don't know when the fault lines are going to break or move. |
| 1:47.2 | Right. I mean, there are some very early signs in that you can get over very short term. Like, |
| 1:53.6 | for instance, we know that earthquake waves travel over a period of time. And sometimes you can |
| 1:58.0 | send in some parts of the world text message alerts to people hundreds of miles away. But that |
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