Developed over the course of five studies, the relationship sabotage scale is designed to give analytical rigour to a term more common in pop cultureDo you feel constantly criticised by your partner? Do you sometimes check their social media profiles? Will you admit to them if you know you’re wrong about something?If you strongly agree or disagree with some of these statements, you might find...
From fast food to farming, Covid-19 has accelerated the rise of the worker robots. This in turn will put more jobs at risk and makes the need to reframe society ever more urgentAs the coronavirus pandemic enveloped the world last year, businesses increasingly turned to automation in order to address rapidly changing conditions. Floor-cleaning and microbe-zapping disinfecting robots were introduced...
There should be no guilt with cake, only romance – in the making, the display, the history… and, of course, the eatingThe Great British Bake Off is back! Sales of baking utensils skyrocket when the amateur baking show is on. It appears we’re all cake mad. But I’ve always been mad as a box of doughnuts for cake, long before the GBBO started. In fact, it’s one of my loves – not one of my...
Fears of mass exodus as abuse by patients skyrockets over blood tests, jabs and face-to-face consultationsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageSenior doctors have warned that practice staff and GPs are quitting after an unprecedented and escalating wave of abuse from patients that has followed weeks of public pressure over face-to-face appointments.Practice managers,...
Tests of natural language processing models show that the bigger they are, the bigger liars they are. Should we be worried?We are, as the critic George Steiner observed, “language animals”. Perhaps that’s why we are fascinated by other creatures that appear to have language – dolphins, whales, apes, birds and so on. In her fascinating book, Atlas of AI, Kate Crawford relates how, at the...
This thoughtful case for mounting a lifelong challenge to our own assumptions focuses on unconscious bias – but leaves overt prejudice largely unexaminedWe often think of bias as a problem that other people have. It’s harder to find someone willing to admit to it in themselves. That was what struck me reading American journalist Jessica Nordell’s thoughtful book, The End of Bias, which I...