When researching my book Brainjacking on the science of human use of story to inform, influence and manipulate, I came across an intriguing article in The Times . 'AI will read your mind sooner than you think' blared the headline on Rhys Blakely's piece. He describes the interpretation of signals from electrodes in the brain, processed by AI to help a disabled person be more independent, which is fascinating. But we are then told 'But what about the rest of us? Would you allow a computer direct access to your thoughts? The question isn't as far fetched as it once was.' Hype or accurate observation? Blakely describes an experiment at UC Berkeley where subjects were played music - with the help of AI it was possible for listeners to identify the music from processed brain signals, and even pick out some of the words. I looked into the detail of this experiment for the book. Firstly, given that introduction, you might think this involved detecting your brain activ...

REVISIT SERIES -  An updated post from August 2015 Recently I was berated on Facebook for appealing to authority. As it may not be obvious to everyone why this was a put down (as the picture makes clear it was), I thought it might be worth looking at the problem with authority in science - and why I wasn't actually falling for this failing. Arguably the biggest issue with Ancient Greek science, an approach that spread its way through most of the medieval period, was the dependence on authority. Just as we still do in law cases, most classical natural philosophy was decided by argument rather than by experiment or analysis. If someone repeatedly won the argument on a topic they were regarded as an authority and in some cases - Aristotle is the most obvious example - considered a source of wisdom on pretty well everything as a result. Hence the infamous suggestion that women had fewer teeth than men because Aristotle said it was so, and no one bothered to check. (Actually I am sure p...

No, not the Magic Roundabout that was a teatime treat on TV many years ago. And not Nikola Tesla either. We are taking about the US electric car company and one of the best-known features of my home town Swindon - our Magic Roundabout. The reason for this post is that Tesla has been doing some testing of fully self-driving cars in the UK, and a test site they have publicised is getting across the Magic Roundabout. We inhabitants of Swindon are rather proud of our ability to fearlessly cross the Magic Roundabout, but it certainly puts an aspect of nervousness into many who encounter it for the first time. What can be scary about a roundabout? Because it isn't really that at all - it is five mini-roundabouts joined together by very short sections of roadway. The diagram alongside shows the layout of the roundabout, and two possible routes for getting from the bottom left road to the right hand one. This is what makes it so much fun. You can go whichever way you like around the whole...

I am somewhat amazed that, despite having read all 10 main novels in the series, this is the first of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series that I've reviewed. It might seem odd that a book in a series with that title is set in and around Aberdeen, but you need to realise that the 'rivers' in question are genii loci - spirits of a river, one of whom is present. What I love about the series is that it combines police procedural (Aaronovitch delights in details like airwave radios and stab vests) with magic. In the early books, the central character, DS Peter Grant, is a newbie to the whole magic world, but ends up posted with a specialist unit dealing with magical threats (and trying to drag them into the twenty-first century). This time round, the oddities include dangerous magical beasts, kelpies and mermaids. This is, unfortunately, probably the weakest in the series. In part this is because Aaronovitch splits the first person narrative between Grant and his niec...

REVISIT SERIES -  An updated post from July 2015 I've recently had a very mild case of being trolled when someone moaned about a review I wrote of a book called  Chilled .  Before anyone thinks I got too horrible in my opinion, I ought to point out that I gave the book four stars, was very positive about it and the publisher gave every evidence of being highly pleased with the review. But someone wasn't (and certainly wasn't chilled), as I received this tweet: If this sounds rather confusing, I had said in my review: There are comments on both the front and back covers by Tony Hawks. Now, my first inclination was to wonder what a pro skateboarder had to do with the science of cooling. But it turns out that this is Tony Hawks the comedian and raconteur. Ah, well, it's obvious what his connection is. Well, no, it isn't. Apparently he did a TV show and/or book where he went round Ireland with a fridge, and this is the only reason for having him along to give the book a...

One of the interesting things about moving from an ancient car to a recent model is the availability of mechanisms to help the driver. At the extreme level, such as claimed by Tesla, this goes all the way to driving for you (occasionally into things you don't want to drive into). My car doesn't go that far, but for me provides three levels that give me what feels, for the moment, to provide the Goldilocks ideal of not too intrusive, not too feeble, but just right. At the highest level, which I use on motorways and fast dual carriageways, it keeps me at my desired speed, slowing down if there's an obstacle in front, keeps me in lane and (when it's in the mood) will change lane when I indicate. The fascinating thing about this is that because the steering movements are very gentle it is almost impossible to detect that it is steering unless you take your hands off the wheel (at which point, the car fairly rapidly starts to complain). Steering is such an automatic thing fo...

The question of whether a tree makes a sound if it falls in a forest with no one there to hear it is usually ascribed to the philosopher cleric Bishop George Berkeley, better known in mathematical circles for his attack on fluxions as 'the ghosts of departed quantities'. Apparently he never said it.  But I was reminded of it on seeing one of BBC News' entertainingly bad headlines. It read:  'It felt personal': Si King on avoiding Sycamore Gap tree felling site until now For those not familiar with his work, King was one half of The Hairy Bikers, a likeable pair of TV chefs. We are told of King's visit to the site as if it were the location of a massacre: 'He takes several deep breaths, steeling himself, then walks slowly up to the stump.' In case you have somehow missed the story, in 2023 a pair of idiots cut down an attractive tree that nestled in a wide ditch alongside Hadrian's Wall near Haltwhistle. It had endless news coverage, first of the vand...

REVISIT SERIES -  An updated post from July 2015 No, it's not a new, rather disgusting sounding cocktail. I was amused to see headlines on Facebook saying that drinking tequila could help you lose weight. Can it? TL;DR version: No. Move on. Longer answer follows. If I had £1 for every new story where [insert your favourite alcoholic drink] is shown to have some positive effect, I could retire immediately. And, surprise, surprise - this is yet another such story that has no basis whatsoever as far as the headline goes. But it does have one interesting possibility for an alternative to sugar and existing sweeteners. All the press coverage comes up with statements like 'You won't believe why drinking tequila might actually help you lose weight,' or 'You won't feel so guilty after that extra shot.' To be clear. Tequila will definitely not help you lose weight, and even if the implied benefit were true, which it isn't, the dangerous impact of alcohol would f...

REVISIT SERIES -  An updated post from July 2015 One of the themes I return to with regularity is the way that the media rarely concerns itself with the quality of scientific sources. There is a huge difference between a Cochrane survey of all available research, or a large scale properly controlled trial, and the type of 'study' where you choose 12 people who only ever buy Volkswagen Golfs and ask them what's the best family car. Yet the media just churn it all out with equal weight, telling us that 'a study has found...' or 'research shows...' They may give us a hint of a source, but that rarely gives enough information to be sure of the quality. As a demonstration of this, I did a bit of a butterfly-on-a-wheel analysis of a story in today's papers. It tells us what the top ten things are that parents do to embarrass their children - things like dancing and trying to use yoof-speak. And according to my favourite newspaper (the i ), this is the result o...

I have to admit, I was initially drawn to this box set of 13 murder mystery novels because it was just £1.99 ($2.99) on Kindle, but it has proved largely enjoyable. The series features a Scotland Yard murder squad, sent out to help struggling provincial police forces, headed up by the urbane Superintendent Masters and the rough and ready (chief) inspector Green (he was promoted part way through the series), who initially seriously dislike each other, adding to the fun. It's important to realise that these books were written in the 60s and 70s - the earlier books in particular feature a decidedly dated approach to women from the male police. (To be fair, this was also true of, for example, the earlier Morse novels.) What I really liked about the first seven books though, was both the period feel and the old fashioned approach of portraying the entire story from the viewpoint of the investigator (just as was the case, say, with Sherlock Holmes). Once the books reach the 70s, there is...

As someone who earns most of my living from writing books it is genuinely painful to be negative about whole classes of books, but for me, there are definitely three circles of bookish hell. The worst, without doubt, are adult colouring books. I once upset Alex Bellos by being snarky about a mathematical adult colouring book he wrote the words for, both because it missed the opportunity to give far more text to accompany the pictures and also because... well, it was an adult colouring book. But that was arguably one of the better examples of the species. In the next circle come the coffee table books. These seem now to be something of an endangered species. You don't see them as much, perhaps because fewer people have coffee tables these days (or perhaps because there's less pretentiousness in home decor - we have less of the Changing Rooms vibe). The idea of a coffee table book is that it should be large format and picture driven. No one is intended to read it from end to en...

Technically, this 1985 Gene Wolfe novel could be classed as science fiction, but the reality is far closer to fantasy. I particularly love the cover image from my UK edition, because it's the worst example of a cover artist not knowing anything about the book I've ever seen. It portrays a hi-tech future city complete with a spaceship, where the actual novel is set in a seedy, run-down US city with a 1970s feel - and even when surprising technology does arrive, it's decades old. It feels like Wolfe is still finding his feet with real-world fantasy, and the book has a number of flaws, but it's still interesting. Four individuals down on their luck end up staying for a few nights free at the condemned house of Ben Free. The majority of the book simply features these four going about their lives, often in near-farce. This is particularly the case in a section involving a mental hospital where the staff assume everyone they meet is mentally ill. The two female characters - s...

As I've mentioned elsewhere I have recently moved to a plug-in hybrid car. The other day, when fiddling with the information system I accidentally got to a screen that showed miles per gallon (MPG) and the number - 174 made me think. Firstly, isn't a bit weird we still refer to miles per gallon when we buy petrol or diesel in litres? The only justification I can come up with is that I have better mental reference of what's a good MPG - maybe more than 40 - than I do MPL - I would have to do the conversion, rather than thinking in semi-metric. However, the main thing is whether or not this is meaningful. Traditionally MPG would tell you (roughly) how much petrol you would use for a specific journey. I can divide the distance by the MPG and get a feel for the fuel needed. But I will never do a journey where this is the case with an MPG of 174. What is really happening is that all my local journeys are done on electric with a nominally infinite MPG, while my longer journeys a...

I'm interested in why people believe odd things (and ignore the science), so I thought I'd give the podcast  Marianna in ConspiracyLand a try. This is the work of Marianna Spring, the BBC's 'disinformation and social media correspondent', who has the cringe-making habit of referring to herself as 'A.K.A. Miss Information.' The first series follows the rise in support for conspiracy theories in the West Country town of Totnes, boosted by a conspiracy-spreading newspaper called The Light . Despite a certain naivety in the interviewing, I found the series interesting for two reasons. The obvious one is the nature and danger of conspiracy theories, particularly around subjects like vaccination and climate change. I'm always looking for ways to get scientific views across and (as demonstrated so well in the book I recently reviewed, Science with Impact ) , it can be really hard to get past conspiracy viewpoints. When someone can claim, as they do in one of Ma...

One of Wolfe’s specialities is to keep the reader unsure of what’s happening - and this 1988 novel is probably his greatest example of this particular fantasy mode. The central character (we don’t even discover his name until well through the book) has fallen deeply in love with a woman he has only known for a few days - but she has disappeared leaving behind a mysterious note about doors he should avoid (or back out of if he accidentally goes through one). Inevitably he goes through such a door, into what appears to be an alternate USA, where there are references to people and even dolls who resemble the missing Lara, who he is obsessive to find. But is any of this real or is he mentally ill? This is an idea that isn’t pursued enough in real world fantasies (though done beautifully in Buffy ). It has been a long time since I last read this book, but I’ve always remembered it as one of Wolfe’s best. I was disappointed when I’d got well past halfway through and nothing was becoming clea...

I've already mentioned my own experience with artificial intelligence hallucinations when Google's AI got the facts wrong about the BICEP2 telescope , and when ChatGPT made up an entire industrial accident when asked to provide details of one at the BBC. But if an article by Amanda Guinzburg is true, the ability of AI to mislead and directly lie is even worse that many of us thought. I use that 'if an article... is true' format because I don't know Guinzberg and have no way of verifying the truth of the experience she describes - but if it is real it surely should put a significant nail in the coffin of using generative AI for many text-based purposes where an accurate response is essential. In the article, Dialbolus ex Machina , Guinzberg describes asking ChatGPT to select from a number of online articles she has written to include as examples in a query letter. ChatGPT makes suggestions with explanations as to why it has chosen these articles. So far, apparently s...

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Authors have mixed relationships with book covers. Some publishers give us full right of veto on what a cover looks like, others simply show us what it's going to be. Some covers are great - others are, frankly, dull. There have been covers I treasure (for example, when I was still writing business books, the Spanish translation of my book Capturing Customers Hearts took the title literally, featuring a scarred chest with the heart removed), while others I'd rather ignore. It is also possible to be misled by the appearance of covers on well-known online bookshops. I've recently had published a book called Navigating Artificial Intelligence - a highly-illustrated overview book that gives you (I hope) a good introduction to the topic and its significance: and let's face it, there isn't much that is as significant as AI at the moment. To go along with some fun illustrations inside (who wouldn't want to see a dog dressed as Henry VIII?), the cover is impressively ...

This is a real oddity - in my quest to re-read my Gene Wolfe collection and review the books I hadn't covered so far, I'd mentally pigeonholed this 1990 book as urban fantasy, but it's actually a murder mystery. Being Wolfe, things aren't as straightforward as you might imagine, though. The book is allegedly written by the seventeen-year-old Holly, just edited and smartened up by Wolfe. It's set in the 1980s, but the feel of the place (and this teen's viewpoint) is very much not post-punk - it's more like something from the Mad Men era. Trivial example: Holly and her friends never cuss (as she would probably put it). Like Castleview this is a slice of small town American life, but here seen through the eyes of a young would-be author. The Pandora reference is to a mysterious box, to be opened at the town fair, with a prize if anyone guesses what's in it. At this point there's a sudden transition to murder mystery, with Holly both injured and acting...