Abigail Tulenko

Nov 5, 2024 | qoshe.com | Abigail Tulenko

In 1833, two years into his five-year voyage on the HMS Beagle, a 24-year-old Charles Darwin wrote a letter home to his sister Catherine, entreating her for supplies.

Apr 18, 2024 | scientificamerican.com | Abigail Tulenko

In 2022, Google engineer Blake Lemoine developed a rapport with an excellent conversationalist. She was witty, insightful, and curious; their dialogues flowed naturally, on topics ranging from philosophy to TV to dreams for the future. There was just one problem: she was an AI chatbot. In a series of conversations with Google’s LaMDA language model, Lemoine became gradually convinced the chatbot was a personlike you or me. “I know a person when I talk to it,” he told the Washington Post in 2022.

Mar 6, 2024 | ragazzo.substack.com | Joshua Hunt |Richard Fisher |Ingrid Wickelgren |Abigail Tulenko

Welcome to LINKS — my attempt to provide Rhapsody readers with five interesting stories that tell us something about what it means to be human . LINKS is published every Wednesday. Have a link you want to share? Drop it in the comments.

Feb 26, 2024 | qoshe.com | Abigail Tulenko

The Hungarian folktale Pretty Maid Ibronka terrified and tantalised me as a child. In the story, the young Ibronka must tie herself to the devil with string in order to discover important truths. These days, as a PhD student in philosophy, I sometimes worry I’ve done the same. I still believe in philosophy’s capacity to seek truth, but I’m conscious that I’ve tethered myself to an academic heritage plagued by formidable demons.

Jul 21, 2023 | scientificamerican.com | Abigail Tulenko

This is a big week for Hollywood: amid a massive writers’ and actors’ strike, two potential blockbusters are opening on the same day: Christopher’s Nolan’s Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. The former portrays a man who reshaped the world through physics. The latter portrays a woman who lives in a world that defies the laws of physics altogether. Oppenheimer’s world is ours, dictated by physical laws we have studied for centuries. But, what might the physical laws of Barbie’s world look like?