How Scientists Predict Where Earthquakes Will Strike Next

The pair of earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria this week left the region grappling with death and destruction. Despite the region being seismically active, this particular area hadn’t seen an earthquake of this size for decades. There are ways of knowing where the next big earthquakes will happen—but not when. Scientists use knowledge of fault lines and historical data to make their predictions, but saving areas from mass casualties often relies on infrastructure policies. Building codes that prioritize strong buildings can save lives, but older structures remain vulnerable.

Across the globe, in California, the health impacts of electric vehicles are beginning to be seen. A study published this month finds that for every 20 EVs in a zip code, asthma-related visits to the emergency room drop by 3.2%. This is a striking number for a technology that’s just now becoming more commonplace. Joining Ira to talk about these stories and more is Umair Irfan, staff writer at Vox, based in Washington, D.C.

The past few months have seen a flurry of new, easy-to-use tools driven by artificial intelligence. It’s getting harder to tell what’s been created by a human: Programs like ChatGPT can construct believable written text, apps like Lensa can generate stylized avatars, while other developments can make pretty believable audio and video deep fakes.

Just this week, Google unveiled a new AI-driven chatbot called Bard, and Microsoft announced plans to incorporate ChatGPT within their search engine Bing. What is this new generation of AI good at, and where does it fall short?

Ira talks about the state of generative AI and takes listener calls with Dr. Melanie Mitchell, professor at the Santa Fe Institute and author of the book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. They are joined by Dr. Rumman Chowdhury, founder and CEO of Parity Consulting and responsible AI fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University.

Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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