News Updates

US intelligence officials are warning that foreign adversaries are gearing up to deploy artificial intelligence and other communication technologies to spread disinformation aimed at swaying the upcoming presidential election. In Issues, Braden R. Allenby examines how use of such “weaponized narratives” has evolved—and what makes the United States especially vulnerable. To help guide a national response, he outlines some operational steps to ward off immediate threats and, most critically, calls for deeper and longer-term actions to reinforce public belief in the nation’s fundamental cultural practices and government institutions.

A new study of whether providing people with a guaranteed cash income helps their long-term prospects suggests the answer is yes—with caveats, NPR reports. This promising but uncertain finding aligns with what Jiaying Zhao, Yuen Pau Woo, and Lorne Whitehead observe in Issues. They see providing a basic income as one of several approaches that can help people overcome economic hardship, but note that policymakers lack firm evidence for making choices. To help, the authors call on the federal government to mount an “Apollo-scale research investment that combines basic and applied studies of large-scale interventions to establish better paths forward.”

Artificial intelligence can make an individual person more creative, but may decrease creativity in society overall, NPR reports, citing new research. This perhaps comes as no surprise to Frederick R. Chang. In Issues, he observes that AI tools are proving “extremely popular and demonstrably effective,” but also are “far from perfect, with many problems identified.” Just as society copes with other tools, such as cars and the internet, AI users must be fully informed about potential risks, Chang writes. “It is also critical that policymakers—with public input—work to ensure that AI safety and user protection are given the utmost priority.”

Researchers have produced the first three-dimensional structure of the woolly mammoth’s genome, potentially aiding efforts to re-create a living version of the extinct animal, NPR reports. This possibility is imaginatively explored in The Last Animal, which Mark Schaefer reviews in Issues. The novel builds on the science and technology likely to be employed “to take readers on an action-packed, globetrotting quest,” Schaefer writes. Recounting the struggles of the paleobiology graduate student centrally involved in the work, he adds, also provides “a vivid portrayal of the challenges women face in pursuing careers in the research environment.”

A defunct Russian satellite recently broke apart, adding to the debris already in low-Earth orbit and forcing astronauts on the International Space Station to take precautionary shelter. In Issues, Marilyn Harbert and Asha Balakrishnan maintain that with commercial activities in space expected to increase, the United States lacks adequate policies to mitigate problems posed by space debris. “Most of the tension is not from technical disagreements, but rather hinges on who has the authority to act,” they write, calling on Congress and the National Space Council to formulate a regulatory framework that will protect humans and their technological operations.