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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
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Jon Weeks

How to tell if an essay is written by ChatGPT - Tech & Science Daily podcast

A high repetition of words and lots of paragraphs starting with “however” have been identified as two tell-tale signs that an essay has been written using ChatGPT.

That’s according to researchers from Cambridge University Press and Assessment who’ve called the AI chatbot’s writing style “bland” and “journalistic”.

Since its release to the public, there have been concerns about school pupils using it to do their work for them, so the team compared essays written by three first-year university students, with the aid of ChatGPT, with 164 essays written by IGCSE students.

They found that essays written with the help of ChatGPT were more likely to use paragraphs starting with words like “however”, “moreover”, and “overall”, and included numbered lists with items.

TikTok has announced it is taking action to counter the spread of disinformation on its platform, in preparation for elections taking place around the world in 2024.

It’s launching so-called ‘election centres’ on the app, which will point people to trusted information when they search for, or look at specific content.

The UK version is coming in April, ahead of the local elections in May, and it’s been created in partnership with fact-checking firm Logically Facts.

It’ll offer verified voting information, including when, where and how people could vote, as well as educational videos encouraging people to consider the information they consume around elections.

A study suggests melting ice caused by human-driven climate change is slowing the earth’s rotation, and could impact how we measure time.

Duncan Agnew, the author of the study and a geophysicist at the University of California says ice melting in Greenland and Antarctica has changed where the earth’s mass is, moving more weight to the equator, and therefore slowing it down.

This has counteracted the general speeding up of the globe, and means plans for world timekeepers to consider subtracting a second from our clocks to keep up with the earth’s rotation have been pushed back by three years.

Without the changes caused by melting ice, that was due to happen in 2026, but experts now say it won’t need to happen until 2029

A new image of the black hole at the centre of the milky way has revealed it has magnetic fields surrounding it, similar to a giant black hole at the centre of the M87 galaxy.

For the first time, using polarised light, scientists have uncovered strong and organised magnetic fields spiralling from the edge of the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*.

The image, taken using the Event Horizon Telescope, revealed patterns of light where particles whirl around the magnetic field lines in the plasma surrounding the black hole.

Scientists from University College London, the EHT Science Council and the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian said the image suggests that strong magnetic fields may be common to all black holes

Also in this episode:

Elon Musk’s free X Premium offer, ‘game-changer’ test spots signs of motor neurone disease before symptoms, can outdoor swimming reduce symptoms of depression? Plus, scientists train dogs to sniff out stress in human breath.

Listen above, find us on Apple, Spotify or wherever you stream your podcasts.

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