Latest news with #SocialScience
TimesLIVE
15-07-2025
- Sport
- TimesLIVE
‘No shortcut to success,' says Dr Kaizer Motaung after Wits honour
Kaizer Motaung has always been a man of few words but big on action. But when Wits University honoured the Kaizer Chiefs boss with an honorary Doctor of Commerce accolade at the institution's Great Hall on Tuesday, he spoke like someone who did not want to stop talking, regaling the media and audience with how he started the Chiefs brand 55 years ago. This was a second honorary doctorate to Motaung, 80, after the University of Cape Town bestowed the title Doctor of Social Science Honoris Causa on him in July 2022 for his contribution to football and social development in the country. In November 2023 the South African Hall of Fame inducted Motaung 'for his enduring commitment and positive influence on countless lives through sports and community engagement'. Speaking to the media with Wits vice-chancellor professor Zeblon Vilakazi, Motaung beamed with happiness at the latest honour at the institution he always regarded as one of the best in the country.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
AI might now be as good as humans at detecting emotion, political leaning and sarcasm in online conversations
When we write something to another person, over email or perhaps on social media, we may not state things directly, but our words may instead convey a latent meaning – an underlying subtext. We also often hope that this meaning will come through to the reader. But what happens if an artificial intelligence (AI) system is at the other end, rather than a person? Can AI, especially conversational AI, understand the latent meaning in our text? And if so, what does this mean for us? Latent content analysis is an area of study concerned with uncovering the deeper meanings, sentiments and subtleties embedded in text. For example, this type of analysis can help us grasp political leanings present in communications that are perhaps not obvious to everyone. Understanding how intense someone's emotions are or whether they're being sarcastic can be crucial in supporting a person's mental health, improving customer service, and even keeping people safe at a national level. Get your news from actual experts, straight to your inbox. Sign up to our daily newsletter to receive all The Conversation UK's latest coverage of news and research, from politics and business to the arts and sciences. These are only some examples. We can imagine benefits in other areas of life, like social science research, policy-making and business. Given how important these tasks are – and how quickly conversational AI is improving – it's essential to explore what these technologies can (and can't) do in this regard. Work on this issue is only just starting. Current work shows that ChatGPT has had limited success in detecting political leanings on news websites. Another study that focused on differences in sarcasm detection between different large language models – the technology behind AI chatbots such as ChatGPT – showed that some are better than others. Finally, a study showed that LLMs can guess the emotional 'valence' of words – the inherent positive or negative 'feeling' associated with them. Our new study published in Scientific Reports tested whether conversational AI, inclusive of GPT-4 – a relatively recent version of ChatGPT – can read between the lines of human-written texts. The goal was to find out how well LLMs simulate understanding of sentiment, political leaning, emotional intensity and sarcasm – thus encompassing multiple latent meanings in one study. This study evaluated the reliability, consistency and quality of seven LLMs, including GPT-4, Gemini, Llama-3.1-70B and Mixtral 8 × 7B. We found that these LLMs are about as good as humans at analysing sentiment, political leaning, emotional intensity and sarcasm detection. The study involved 33 human subjects and assessed 100 curated items of text. For spotting political leanings, GPT-4 was more consistent than humans. That matters in fields like journalism, political science, or public health, where inconsistent judgement can skew findings or miss patterns. GPT-4 also proved capable of picking up on emotional intensity and especially valence. Whether a tweet was composed by someone who was mildly annoyed or deeply outraged, the AI could tell – although, someone still had to confirm if the AI was correct in its assessment. This was because AI tends to downplay emotions. Sarcasm remained a stumbling block both for humans and machines. The study found no clear winner there – hence, using human raters doesn't help much with sarcasm detection. Why does this matter? For one, AI like GPT-4 could dramatically cut the time and cost of analysing large volumes of online content. Social scientists often spend months analysing user-generated text to detect trends. GPT-4, on the other hand, opens the door to faster, more responsive research – especially important during crises, elections or public health emergencies. Journalists and fact-checkers might also benefit. Tools powered by GPT-4 could help flag emotionally charged or politically slanted posts in real time, giving newsrooms a head start. There are still concerns. Transparency, fairness and political leanings in AI remain issues. However, studies like this one suggest that when it comes to understanding language, machines are catching up to us fast – and may soon be valuable teammates rather than mere tools. Although this work doesn't claim conversational AI can replace human raters completely, it does challenge the idea that machines are hopeless at detecting nuance. Our study's findings do raise follow-up questions. If a user asks the same question of AI in multiple ways – perhaps by subtly rewording prompts, changing the order of information, or tweaking the amount of context provided – will the model's underlying judgements and ratings remain consistent? Further research should include a systematic and rigorous analysis of how stable the models' outputs are. Ultimately, understanding and improving consistency is essential for deploying LLMs at scale, especially in high-stakes settings. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. This collaboration emerged through the COST OPINION network. We extend special thanks to network members for helping out with work on this article: Ljubiša Bojić, Anela Mulahmetović Ibrišimović, and Selma Veseljević Jerković.
Forbes
27-05-2025
- General
- Forbes
5 Ways Reading Makes You Smarter, Healthier And Helps You Live Longer
Reading makes you smarter and healthier. If you want to improve your brain power and your mental health, the solution may be even easier than you think. It turns out that reading makes you smarter, healthier and it can even help you live longer. Significant numbers of people are struggling with depression, anxiety, stress, unhappiness and loneliness today, so it's smart to consider strategies to feel better and live better. Interestingly, despite its solitary and sedentary nature, reading can enhance your mood and emotions, improve your relationships and boost your health. So what are the benefits of reading? Why is reading important? Is reading worth the time? Actually, reading has some terrific benefits. Can reading improve your health and help you live longer? Yes. Reading can improve your health, and enhance your longevity as well. Research published in Social Science & Medicine found that reading books can help you live longer, according to a study. The longer life span may be the result of some of the other benefits like better thinking, better relationships and better mental health. Can reading make you smarter? Fascinating data proves that reading can also make you smarter and help you think better, because it contributes to cognition and memory. This is according to research published in Neurology. Engaging your brain, stimulating your mind and boosting your thinking are all good for the long-term health of your cognition. But reading with a book in your lap is a sedentary activity. Is that still good for your brain? While it's well-known that activity and exercise are good for your cognitive health because they enhance blood flow in your brain and cause the release of feel-good chemicals, but a study published in the Journals of Gerontology looked specifically at reading as a sedentary activity. It found that even though reading is generally something you do with little activity, it still has a positive effect on your thinking and also your memory. Another study found that when you read stories, specifically, you enhance the connections in your brain. And these connections are essential to the quality of your thinking. Reading fiction resulted in more connections between brain regions, and these effects weren't just immediate, they also lingered for days, according to research published in Brain Connectivity. Reading can help you sleep and improve mental health. Can reading improve relationships? This answer may be a surprise, but another benefit of reading is that it can improve your relationships and ability to connect with people. Fully 50% of people say they struggle with loneliness, but reading can help here too. Specifically, reading makes you more empathetic, according to research published in Science. The ability to put yourself in someone else's situation and imagine what they must be thinking or feeling is fundamental to great relationships, and to forging meaningful connections. Reading fiction places you in someone else's circumstances, and this gives you experience in understanding and empathizing with people in real life as well. This is called theory of mind, or social empathy, and it's a terrific skill for connection and community. Reading also helps you with emotional intelligence. When you expand your experience through characters in a book, you can better understand your own feelings and their impact on others. This understanding can help you behave in ways that are constructive for relationships. Can reading help you sleep? Yes, reading can also help you sleep. The NIH recommends seven to nine hours of sleep per night, but 43% of people say they only get six hours per night. In addition, 21% of people wake up in the morning and feel tired. All this is according to surveys conducted by MattressNextDay. But this is another place that reading can help. In a study published in Trials, people who read before bed were compared with those who didn't. The participants who read reported better sleep. Can reading make you happy? Reading helps here too. Depression and anxiety are at record levels today, but reading may be able to move the needle on making you happier, optimistic and upbeat. In one study, when readers were compared with non-readers, those who read reported better moods and more positive emotions, according to research published in PLOS One. One of the primary characteristics of sadness is feeling like your world is closing in, or as if you're losing perspective. Reading is beneficial in expanding your horizons and getting you out of your own head. But how can you find time to read? Even if you're convinced that reading is helpful, the demands of life can interfere with opportunities to read. Here are five ways to find the time to read. There are terrific benefits to grabbing a book or spending time with a great story. Reading makes you smarter and healthier. It can even help your mental health, your sleep, your happiness and your longevity. And you can find the time to read by setting goals, starting small multitasking and managing your habits. All of these can help you gain the benefits of reading
