Research

Scientists in China are working on an AI tool that they hope will be able to translate animal noises into human language. Much like the technology used in Disney’s movie Up, the goal is to translate animal communication into human communication to facilitate cross-species dialogue.

While research is unclear whether or not this is possible, some work is currently being done with dogs to see if they are able to use a tactile mats to communicate with their owners.

The desire to talk with our pets and other animals is a common one. Dating back to Ancient Greece and the myth of Melampus and more recently the book and movie series Dr. Doolittle, humans have been fascinated with the idea of being able to speak with our furry counterparts.

Even the Bible includes a story of a miraculous event where a Donkey is given the ability to warn his rider in Numbers 22.

Our desire and inability to talk to animals points to a valuable Biblical truth: We have things in common with animals, but we are necessarily distinct. In the Creation narrative of Genesis 1 and 2 we see God creating animals and humans on the same day, and yet with very different processes. And ultimately, only humans are made in His own divine image.

In a piece for Wired magazine, Claire Evans explores the surprising inability of scientists to create a computer simulation of a creature as seemingly basic and simple as a microscopic nematode (roundworm). The goal is "nothing less than a digital twin of the real worm, accurate down to the molecule."

Evans and others are asking: "Why, in the face of everything our precarious green world endures, of all the problems out there to solve, would anyone spend 13 years trying to code a microscopic worm into existence?"

The most basic answer is that "For much of its history, biology has been driven by the principle that the best way to understand the mind-boggling complexity of living things is to dissect them into their constituent parts—organs, cells, proteins, molecules. But life isn’t a clockwork; it’s a dynamic system. To truly understand life, you can’t just break it down. You have to be able to put it back together, too."

With less than a thousand cells in its body this worm can “reproduce, it can eat, it can forage, it can escape. It’s born and it develops, and it ages and it dies—all in a millimeter…. We know the wiring; we don’t know the dynamics. You would think that’s an ideal problem for a physicist or a computer scientist or a mathematician to solve.'

For an accurate computer simulation to be created, neuroscientist Gal Haspel estimates that pulling it off may take up to 10 years, cost tens of millions of dollars, and require something in the neighborhood of 100,000 to 200,000 real-life worms.

And what, in the end, will the reverse engineers have to show for it? Haspel said, 'All these people and all these computers. And we’ll end up doing what one little animal can do right now.'”

Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School, a leader in the field of behavioral science, and co-author of dozens of papers in peer-reviewed journals, has been charged with falsifying data.

In a 2012 paper Gino and her collaborators reported that "asking people who fill out tax or insurance documents to attest to the truth of their responses at the top of the document, rather than at the bottom, significantly increased the accuracy of the information they provided." The paper has been cited hundreds of times by other scholars.

But recently, three behavioral scientists, analyzing data that Dr. Gino and her co-authors had posted online, cited a digital record contained within an Excel file to demonstrate that some of the data points had been tampered with, and that the tampering helped drive the result.

Harvard has placed Gino on administrative leave.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Employees; Students - We must all be careful of claiming another’s work as our own (especially in the age of AI) or of modifying the facts to prove our point. 2) Pastor; Preacher - The preacher must also beware of dishonesty when preaching. Using someone else’s sermon or personal illustration as your own is a temptation many fall into.

University of Oxford professor of astrophysics Pedro Ferreira is puzzled, as most physicists are, about the origins and basic elements of the universe.

In fact, we’re at a complete loss at how to explain some of the most fundamental but baffling observations of how our Universe behaves. There is a tremendous, even cosmic, chasm between the physics we know and love, and some of the phenomena that we observe, but simply can’t make head nor tail of. We have no idea how to bridge this chasm – yet we are proceeding, to construct ever more expensive experiments and observatories in the hope that we will.

I’ve spent most of my adult life staring at the cosmic chasm – the abyss between what we know and what we don’t. And while our knowledge of the Universe has improved dramatically in that time, our ignorance has become only more focused. We’re no closer to answering the big questions about dark matter, dark energy and the origins of the Universe than when I started out. This isn’t for lack of trying, and a titanic effort is now underway to try and figure out all these mysterious aspects of the Universe. But there’s no guarantee we’ll succeed, and we might end up never really grasping how the Universe works.

When Portland police contacted a woman named Amanda to tell her that they found her previously stolen ID, Amanda wasn’t entirely convinced. According to police sources, an officer first tried to contact her via phone, then sent a text when the call was unsuccessful. Her response? “There is no way a cop has my cell phone number. Nice try you creep.”

But Officer Fullington, while impressed with her incredulity, was undeterred. He sent a selfie standing in full uniform in front of his official police vehicle, holding the ID card in question. She responded with a laughing/crying emoji, saying she would call after she gets off work. Police say people in Amanda’s situation are right to be skeptical, because scammers have been known to impersonate officers, even sometimes with actual officer names inside a spoofed caller-ID system.

Potential Preaching Angles: Skepticism is only helpful if it leads us to follow through and find the truth. God can handle our doubts; our challenge is to open up to receive the truth where we find it.