A Dangerous New Home for Online Extremism
Can you imagine what a digital white ethnostate or a cyber caliphate might look like? Having spent most of my career on the inside of online extremist movements, I certainly …
the wired world in 2024
Social Media Is Getting Smaller—and More Treacherous
In 2024, social media will get small. Not small in influence, of course. As the US weathers an election likely to be both divisive and often divorced from reality, social …
A New Way to See Your Climate Anxiety
A recent global study, which surveyed 10,000 young people from 10 countries, showed that nearly 60 percent of them were extremely worried about the future state of the planet. The …
AI-Generated Fake News Is Coming to an Election Near You
Many years before ChatGPT was released, my research group, the University of Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory, wondered whether it was possible to have neural networks generate misinformation. To achieve this, …
Global Emissions Could Peak Sooner Than You Think
Every November, the Global Carbon Project publishes the year’s global CO2 emissions. It’s never good news. At a time when the world needs to be reducing emissions, the numbers continue …
Big Tech Won’t Let You Leave. Here’s a Way Out
The platform is the canonical form of internet business: a two-sided market that facilitates connections between end-users and business customers. Uber connects drivers with riders; Amazon and eBay connect sellers …
A Key to Detecting Brain Disease Earlier Than Ever
Earlier this year, Parkinson’s disease (PD) research entered a new era when the Michael J. Fox Foundation announced a momentous scientific breakthrough—the discovery of a biomarker for PD. It meant …
The New Digital Dark Age
For researchers, social media has always represented greater access to data, more democratic involvement in knowledge production, and great transparency about social behavior. Getting a sense of what was happening—especially …
It’s No Wonder People Are Getting Emotionally Attached to Chatbots
Replika, an AI chatbot companion, has millions of users worldwide, many of whom woke up earlier last year to discover their virtual lover had friend-zoned them overnight. The company had …
The Battle for Biometric Privacy
In 2024, increased adoption of biometric surveillance systems, such as the use of AI-powered facial recognition in public places and access to government services, will spur biometric identity theft and …