Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rachel Handforth, Senior Lecturer in Doctoral Education and Civic Engagement, Nottingham Trent University

Around 1% of the global population has a PhD. It’s the highest academic qualification, the result of years spent on original research. But – and this is a question that many PhD students will have faced, at some time or another – what’s the point?

The number of PhDs being undertaken globally is rising. Around a fifth of all PhDs studied for by UK students are funded through UK Research and Innovation, a governmental public body that directs funding for research from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

Given the ongoing cost of living crisis, alongside significant public investment in PhD programmes by UK research councils, it feels vital that the wider public is engaged in how public funds are used.

PhDs play a key role in furthering global research. Students undertake advanced research training as part of their doctorate, developing skills that can be used to support innovation and complex problem-solving across different countries, industries and sectors.

PhD graduates enjoy a greater earning potential than other graduates or non-graduates, providing a labour market advantage in a competitive global employment market. Those who teach in universities after their PhD educate undergraduates, equipping them with the knowledge and skills needed to make scientific, civic and cultural contributions to society.

These benefits are acknowledged in UK government policies, with evidence that PhDs make a significant contribution to the UK economy. But there is a clear gap between the broad economic and personal benefits of PhDs and how the wider public perceive them.

A 2025 report on public attitudes to science showed low public awareness of how research is funded. The wider research system and how PhDs fit within it are also not well understood.

In a new research report based on focus groups with Nottinghamshire residents, I explored people’s views on the purpose of PhDs and the extent to which they were seen as valuable.

The people I talked to were quick to recognise the potential benefits for those studying PhDs, such as the social status and career-related advantages. They found it harder to identify how PhD programmes could bring benefits for society more widely. Within my focus groups, there was little understanding that UK taxpayers had a role in funding PhDs.

PhDs v the ‘real world’

While the potential of PhD research to contribute to public good was acknowledged by some participants, particularly in relation to medical and pharmaceutical developments, my research identified limited public awareness of the outcomes of most PhDs. This was linked to concerns about how research findings are shared with those outside universities.

What stood out was the disconnect perceived between the “academic” and “real” world. Even people who had university degrees used phrases like “navel-gazing”, “ivory tower” or “academic waffle” within wider comments. This was linked to a perception that knowledge gained through PhDs was often not shared or made accessible to those beyond universities, and could be “left in a drawer”, “on a bookshelf” or “behind a paywall”.

Even where people had known individuals in their profession or extended social circles who had a PhD, they were often unable to describe what the research had found, or identify any outcomes. They saw this as problematic.

Despite some scepticism, residents were keen to understand more about PhD research being undertaken by researchers locally. They wanted to learn about projects that related to issues in their communities such as crime, pollution and housing. Yet they felt that they had few opportunities to learn about, or participate in, research happening in their local areas.

This reinforces findings from a recent report from the Campaign for Science and Engineering, a charity which advocates for research and development in the UK. This report highlights how many struggle to see any benefits of research in their daily lives – especially those from lower socioeconomic groups.

The future of the PhD – time for a reset?

My research highlights the distance that local people feel from the research being undertaken in their communities, and the lack of information for the public about PhDs.

I carry out work for the Collaboratory Research Hub. This is a programme involving 5 universities in the Midlands which support PhDs designed to address local challenges, co-created by academics and community partners. We actively involve the public in these projects. One example is Local Voices in Research, which gathers insights from local communities to inform research priorities. It also aims to recruit local people with professional, community-based experience, to do PhD projects.

We hope that this may shift PhDs towards a clearer focus on public good, a conversation which we hope to have on an international scale.

Of course, the creation of new knowledge that furthers human understanding through curiosity-driven, “blue-sky” research has implications for public good that are not always clear from the outset.

But my work highlights the need for universities, funders and researchers to work harder to demonstrate the value and relevance of their research to those beyond their immediate reach. This could include engaging with members of local communities and using public spaces to share findings, offering opportunities to contribute to research priorities, and involving people in research in meaningful ways.

Rachel Handforth receives funding from Society for Research in Higher Education. https://srhe.ac.uk/

– ref. Outside academia, people aren’t well informed about PhD research – and that’s a problem – https://theconversation.com/outside-academia-people-arent-well-informed-about-phd-research-and-thats-a-problem-275862

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rachael Jolley, Environment Editor, The Conversation

This roundup of The Conversation’s environment coverage was first published in our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter, Imagine.

In 1968 a photo of the Earth was taken by the crew of Apollo 8 as they orbited the Moon.

It’s hard for us to imagine today what that would feel like for both the crew and the public who first saw the shot of Earth snapped from so far away. All those years ago this was a fantastic, and perhaps shocking, picture taken from somewhere many people would never have imagined humans could go.

That Earthrise shot from 1968, the first colour image of the Earth from space, showed our planet from a perspective we had never seen before, from the Moon in the foreground and the globe of the Earth in the distance. And for many people, it seemed more fragile than they had ever realised.

This image from space provoked a massive reaction, and is credited with prompting the creation of Earth Day, and a wave of environmental activism.

Nearly 60 years later we are inundated with images of space, planets and even AI-generated sci-fi stories. So it came as somewhat of a surprise to find myself caught up in the whirl of excitement and emotion around the Artemis II journey, and drawn into watching and discussing what the astronauts were seeing and saying.

Nick Dunstone, a science fellow at the Met Office, is a big fan of the Earthrise photo. He has had it stuck on his wall for years. The Artemis II mission prompted him to think about how much the climate around the Earth has changed in the decades between the Earthrise photo and the one taken by 2026’s astronauts from the dark side of the moon.

He points out that one of the legacies of the 1960s space race is a set of satellite observation platforms which have allowed us to monitor, understand and predict changes to our global climate. Unfortunately, many of these reveal worrying trends. For example, more frequent heatwaves on land and sea, loss of Arctic sea-ice, melting glaciers and sea-level rise.

Read more:
Earthrise to Earthset: how the planet’s climate has changed since the photo that inspired the environmental movement

It can seem like nothing is getting better in these days of global upheaval and endlessly escalating conflicts. It’s easy to despair about whether any small actions that we can take will make any kind of difference.

Bee stories

I ended up in a conversation with my running buddies at the weekend about whether there is anything that can cheer us up. I talked about new research that shows that queen bumblebees can survive underwater. In what seems like a story that could be made into a Pixar film, academics at the universities of Ottawa and Guelph discovered this purely by accident.

Sometimes scientific discoveries are prompted by happenstance. In this case, some tubes were accidentally filled with water and the bees which had been assumed to have died were discovered to be still alive. Queens, it turns out, can stand submersion for up to a week. This matters because climate change is bringing more rain during winters when these bees must survive underground. And the queen’s survival is vital, for she must found a new colony the next spring. Without her, there is nothing.

Read more:
Queen bumblebees can breathe underwater — for days. We discovered how

Then there’s the discovery by Oxford researcher Sophie Lund Rasmussen that hedgehogs can hear. Rasmussen set off to find out if there were any ways to warn hedgehogs of the dangers of crossing the road. With up to 300,000 hedgehogs killed per year on UK roads, and the same situation across Europe, this mammal which has featured fondly in many of our childhood stories, is incredibly threatened.

Rasmussen’s research opens the door for ultrasound hedgehog warning systems to be put in place to try and warn hedgehogs away from roads, and potentially save thousands from a messy death.

Read more:
Hedgehogs can hear high-frequency ultrasound – that knowledge could help save them

Moss, many people might think, is quite a dull subject. But in the past few weeks, after chatting with University of Limerick’s Pedram Vousoughi, I’ve become the biggest fan of this green stuff that we find on the sides of trees and on our garden paths. As it turns out, moss has almost magical qualities that could be a great help to humanity in the next decades.

For someone who had not paid much attention to this plant in the past, the abilities of this low-to-the-ground greenery was a revelation. Moss can absorb several times its own body weight in water and release it over time. This makes it ideal for helping the world cope with increasing rainfall and flooding, especially along busy roads.

Moss also absorbs air pollution and could play a role in increasing biodiversity along major roads. I’m now boring on about moss in various social situations – and it’s making me feel a bit more positive about the world.

Read more:
How moss could help roads cope with heavy rain and reduce air pollution

Sun spotting

One of my favourite places is a long pebbly beach on a thin spit of land on the Suffolk coast, where you can watch the sun go down as well as the sun rise (although as a night owl I’m less likely to see the second). I have come to realise the value of sitting somewhere incredibly quiet and just looking at the sea and the sky.

That’s why the Dutch trend of dusking – coming together with friends to watch the sun go down – struck a chord with me. As Jenny Hall and Brendan Paddison from York St John University explain, watching the light of the day disappear over the horizon can be a way of connecting with nature’s rhythms and disconnecting from your worries, bringing the work day to a natural close. This also links with studies suggesting that focusing on nature can enhance feelings of wellbeing.

In these complex times, recognising small discoveries (as well as large ones) can be vital.

– ref. Why small discoveries (as well as big ones) have the power to inspire – https://theconversation.com/why-small-discoveries-as-well-as-big-ones-have-the-power-to-inspire-279876

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ifeoluwa Wuraola, PhD Candidate, Artificial Intelligence, University of Hull

A message appears online during heavy flooding: “This rain no be small o, everywhere don red.” Someone unfamiliar with the phrasing might hesitate. But for people in Nigeria, this message is immediate and clear: the flooding is severe and worsening.

Moments like this happen all the time on digital platforms. People don’t write in perfect, standard English sentences. They share warnings and reactions on platforms like X, WhatsApp and Facebook using the language of everyday life. This means sometimes mixing English with local expressions, slang and expressive language shaped by their communities.

Artificial intelligence systems can understand language and tackle a wide range of problems. Governments and organisations are increasingly using AI to scan social media, summarise public conversations, and even respond to environmental and climate issues.

But many of these tools struggle to make sense of the way people actually communicate. Local expressions and slang can confuse AI, so important messages are sometimes misunderstood or missed entirely.

When people talk about language barriers, they often mean translation between different languages. But the problem is more subtle. Around the world, people mix languages and local expressions online, a phenomenon that linguists call “code switching”.

Climate journalism has increasingly moved online, but there are fewer climate reporters in the developing world. This limits the depth and availability of information for a huge proportion of the global population, and shapes how climate issues are discussed and understood across different regions.

For instance, a UK social media post might raise an environmental concern using expressions like: “Are roads flooding already? Chuffed to know the council taking the piss.” Most AI tools can pick up the sarcasm and frustration aimed at local authorities.

In a country such as Nigeria, people may describe unfolding concerns differently: “Abeg is it October wey rain dey fall like this, but you say the climate no change?” or “River don near our house o! Abeg help, e fit spoil everything!”

Here, slang and Pidgin express immediate danger and an urgent call for help. Yet AI models often diminish this to casual commentary, entirely missing the urgency and emotion that is being conveyed.

This matters because most AI systems are taught on large western-centric text, mainly from North America and Europe. ChatGPT, for example, is instructed on huge amounts of internet text. It doesn’t have beliefs, feelings or awareness. Instead, it generates responses based on patterns it has seen online.

AI reflects the dominant culture in its training data, so carries a “cultural fingerprint”. It imitates normal ways of expressing ideas from the societies that produced the texts it has learned from. AI models trained on predominantly English-language texts show a hidden bias that favour western cultural values, particularly when asked in English.

One major reason AI can produce biased outcomes is that it reflects the societal inequalities including differences in race, gender and region that show up in the data it learns from. So, underrepresented voices from communities in developing countries with non-Anglocentric varieties of English are often diminished or ignored.

This bias can have real consequences. In climate crises like floods, heatwaves or other extreme weather, misinterpreted messages could put property and lives at risk.

AI systems that rely on past patterns are easy to interpret when language fits expected standards, but posts that don’t conform with the presence of local slang or urgency cues can be misinterpreted.

Improving climate disaster responses

Solving this problem involves designing systems that actually reflect the way people communicate. AI systems need to be trained to understand regional expressions and recognise that meaning often depends on cultural context, not just literal words.

AI should be tested on real online posts, not formal western-centric English, to capture urgency and local references. Automated systems can process huge volumes of information, but human judgment must remain in the loop – especially when people’s safety is at stake.

AI tools can help communities respond to floods, heatwaves and other climate emergencies – but only once trained to interpret the nuance of everyday language, so that warnings and calls for help get through.

Ifeoluwa Wuraola receives PHD funding from Centre of Excellence for Data Science, Artificial Intelligence and Modelling (DAIM).

Daniel Marciniak and Nina Dethlefs do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How AI’s language barrier limits climate disaster responses – https://theconversation.com/how-ais-language-barrier-limits-climate-disaster-responses-278020

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Francesco Grillo, Academic Fellow, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University

The conflict in Iran – but also the war in Ukraine – show not only that AI is radically changing the economics of war (which may be good news), but also that we may be heading towards some kind of “Chernobyl moment”. We may soon experience a disaster that will force us to belatedly realise we should have drawn up some shared rules to govern a technological development that we ourselves triggered.

Even Dario Amodei, the founder of AI company Anthropic, who seems passionate about taking action to prevent Armageddon, acknowledges that he doesn’t have the answer we desperately need.

One of the most interesting attempts to regulate the use of artificial intelligence may have been the one drafted during the second world war by a PhD student at Columbia University who was then temporarily employed by the US Navy. His name was Isaac Asimov, and in his early short story Runaround (1941), he postulated three laws that are still surprisingly inspiring for anyone thinking about how to solve the intellectual and political problem that is AI in warfare.

Unlike recent attempts by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) and the EU to draw up regulations, Asimov’s laws are admirably concise. They state that a robot (what we now call an “artificially intelligent agent”) shall never harm a human being (or allow harm to happen through inaction. It shall always obey the orders given by humans unless they conflict with the first prohibition. And it will always protect its existence unless this conflicts with the first and second provisions.

In his story, Asimov himself shows how the three laws can create internal contradictions, leading to paralysis. And yet, Asimov’s three principles can still be useful as a starting point for the strategy we now need.

Anthropic takes a ‘stance’

The biggest merit of the note Dario Amodei wrote recently on the perils of a technology which is still in its adoloscence is the acknowledgement that Anthropic, the firm that Amodei founded, is using its own large language model (called Claude) to develop further versions of itself.

Artificial intelligence is generating even more intelligent robots and this brings us near to that “singularity” first theorised by the great mathematician John von Neumann – the moment when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and renders us irrelevant. If the technology is an adolescent, it is growing very fast and will soon be out of the control of its creator.

Amodei does not, however, appear to have a concrete proposal on how to manage this problem. He has said that Anthropic’s contracts with the US Department of War should never include the use of the company’s models for empowering either “mass domestic surveillance” or “fully autonomous weapons”.

It is a request that has brought Anthropic into a bitter dispute with the US government. And yet it seems a rather narrow response that covers just one dimension of a much wider problem. Amodei focuses predominantly on the safety of US citizens when it is people elsewhere in the world who are currently most affected by the use of autonomous weapons. We need a bolder vision – and Asimov’s intuitions may help.

New rules

One approach would be to ask all developers of AI models to introduce in their foundational codes three simple and bold commands along the lines of: “You will never kill a human being (unless for self-defence)”; “you will always try to work for the betterment of mankind (unless such a provision entails the violation of the first command)”; “when you doubt that your actions may violate the first or the second commands, you will choose inaction and ask what to do”.

Most likely, this initiative will have to come from a group of countries following a pattern similar to the treaties of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. And it would be good to have a debate on some new ideas before we are forced to do so by some AI-empowered nuclear unintended consequence.

Like all other attempts to regulate a future that we still cannot even envisage, the three commands will have some drawbacks. A robot may have refused to kill Iran’s former leader Ali Khamenei, but that may be a price worth paying if it means we can avoid setting a precedent for other discretionary and dangerous interpretations. Robots may not always be successful at identifying human beings (as Asimov himself acknowledged in later writing) and yet this may well be one of those intellectually fascinating problems that models born to make sense of human language will solve.

More importantly, it will take not only information but a lot of wisdom to understand what is good for humankind. Robots may end up sitting frequently idle waiting for instructions. And yet efficiency is not a religion we have to follow when the challenge is about the survival of our species. Making sense of what increasingly appears to be one of the greatest technological revolutions of all time requires careful thought and forward planning.

Francesco Grillo is Director at Vision, the think tank.

– ref. Could revisiting Asimov’s laws help us avoid AI’s ‘Chernobyl moment’? – https://theconversation.com/could-revisiting-asimovs-laws-help-us-avoid-ais-chernobyl-moment-278744