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The digitally connected world has become a large, swirling sea of information stripped of context.
We help our readers make sense of it, find meaning in it, learn what to trust, and prepare for the future that may show up. "Ubiquity and Your Future
Peter J. Denning,
Editor-in-Chief
Ubiquity Upgrades!
The death by suicide of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III, who fell in love with an AI companion, raises additional questions for people already alarmed about the harmful effects of social media on the mental health of children and adolescents. Spending time with AI companions can be problematic, even for adults. They should be off-limits to minors until more is known about their long-term effects on individuals and society. ...
Shortly after ChatGPT burst into the public spotlight in late 2022, Brian Coghlan, Brian Randell, and Noel O'Boyle were intrigued by the repeated claim that ChatGPT would excel at supporting historical research. They had done extensive research on Percy Ludgate, a little-known computer pioneer who designed an analytical engine in 1909. Coghlan et al. put ChatGPT 3.5 to the test. They were astonished at its alacrity in producing authoritative-sounding but false answers to questions about Ludgate—questions whose answers they already knew through their own research. They concluded that the hallucination problem was much deeper than suspected. As part of our Symposium on AI, the editors of Ubiquity are pleased to publish this full technical report (lightly edited and reformatted) so that you can see for yourself. And as a bonus, you can learn a little about this amazing pioneer of computing. ...
