Science
Could a Large Language Model Be Conscious?
Within the next decade, we may well have systems that are serious candidates for consciousness.
How Misreading Adam Smith Helped Spawn Deaths of Despair
A Nobel Prize–winning economist reflects on the dire consequences of libertarian economics.
Can Innovation Serve the Public Good?
Not as it’s traditionally done, but there are more equitable models.
On Justice for Animals
Martha Nussbaum on her new book—and why a full development of our humanity requires developing our capacities to care for animals.
Does Our Sustainable Future Start in the Mine?
Rare earth mining will disrupt local climate resilience. Who should pay the price?
How Can We Trust Science?
Despite debates about scientific certainty, we do not need 100 percent consensus on a scientific claim to accept it as true.
Dreams of Green Hydrogen
In place of public-private partnerships, we should revive the Pan-African ambitions of the green developmental state.
The New Workplace Surveillance
Both regulators and employers have embraced new technologies for on-the-job monitoring, turning a blind eye to unjust working conditions.
How to Fight Digital Colonialism
As Big Tech’s data and profit extraction extends the world over, activists in the Global South are pointing the way to a more just digital future.
The Inflated Promise of Science Education
Building public trust requires far more than the conveyance of facts and instruction in scientific thinking.
Science Fiction as Poetry
In her new book, Danish poet Olga Ravn writes with open love, pity, and compassion for her strange yet familiar creations.
How Capitalism—Not a Few Bad Actors—Destroyed the Internet
Twenty-five years of neoliberal political economy are to blame for today’s regime of surveillance advertising, and only public policy can undo it.
Endless Ice
Inspired by the rediscovery of Shackleton’s HMS Endurance, we revisit two centuries of lessons in leadership from getting trapped in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea.
How a New Generation Is Combatting Digital Surveillance
Younger voices are using technology to respond to the needs of marginalized communities and nurture Black healing and liberation.
Mental Illness Is Not in Your Head
Decades of biological research haven’t improved diagnosis or treatment. We should look to society, not to the brain.
The New Old Geography
Pioneering Afro-Brazilian geographer Milton Santos sought to redeem the field from its methodological fragmentation and colonial legacies.
How the Other Half Dies
Until COVID-19, tuberculosis killed more people each year than any other infectious disease. Its rising toll is increasingly fueled by mass incarceration.
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