Category: Technology

A South African court case made headlines for all the wrong reasons in January 2025. The legal team in Mavundla v MEC: Department of Co-Operative Government and Traditional Affairs KwaZulu-Natal and Others had relied on case law that simply didn’t exist. It had been generated by ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by […]

Kundra From ChatGPT crafting emails, to AI systems recommending TV shows and even helping diagnose disease, the presence of machine intelligence in everyday life is no longer science fiction. And yet, for all the promises of speed, accuracy and optimisation, there’s a lingering discomfort. Some people love using AI tools. Others feel anxious, suspicious, even […]

PeopleImages/Shutterstock Most of us know what it’s like to be a teenager at school – and how it feels to fit into (or fall outside of) a school’s social hierarchy. This typically includes some version of the popular kids, the loners and the in-betweeners, who have friendships that span across different groups. However, teen hierarchies […]

The United States and China are locked in a contest to be the first country to send humans to the lunar surface in half a century. But there’s a developing twist: an emerging competition between American companies to build the landing vehicle that could win this new Moon race for the US. The dust-up over […]

Building resilient cities is no longer a philanthropic ideal—it is a strategic imperative for global security, economic stability, and climate adaptation. With climate-related shocks causing over $300 billion in annual losses, urban resilience is emerging as both a necessity and a growth opportunity. Climate Risk and Economic Exposure According to the World Economic Forum (WEF) […]

Incy wincy hasn't got time for witchcraft. thatmacroguy/Shutterstock If you’re scared of spiders, Halloween certainly doesn’t help. People decorate their homes with monstrous-looking fake cobwebs and horror movies depict giant spiders hunting humans or creeping around spooky abandoned houses. Spiders’ long association with witches can also make their presence seem a little ominous. In reality […]

The origins and migrations of modern humans around the world are a hot topic of debate. Genetic analyses have pointed to Africa as the continent from which our ancestors dispersed in the Late Pleistocene epoch, which began about 126,000 years ago. Various dispersal routes have been suggested. As a group of scientists who have been […]

The latest absurdist offering from Yorgos Lanthimos, director of The Favourite and Poor Things, hits cinemas this week, and Bugonia promises to be another strange and rollicking masterpiece of complete, unmissable chaos. Lanthimos’s muse Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons reunite in this darkly comic tale about a pharmaceutical CEO (Stone) kidnapped by conspiracy theorists. Believing […]

Neanderthal handprints in a replica of Maltravieso Cave, Spain. WH Pics / Shutterstock The ability to make art has often been considered a hallmark of our species. Over a century ago, prehistorians even had trouble believing that modern humans from the Upper Palaeolithic (between 45,000 and 12,000 years ago) were capable of artistic flair. Discoveries […]

The consulting firm Accenture recently laid off 11,000 employees while expanding its efforts to train workers to use artificial intelligence. It’s a sharp reminder that the same technology driving efficiency is also redefining what it takes to keep a job. And Accenture isn’t alone. IBM has already replaced hundreds of roles with AI systems, while […]