Paul Jackson, University of Birmingham
A three-day ceasefire to mark the Islamic festival of Eid-al-Fitr in Khartoum appears to be dead in the water as fighting continues in the Sudanese capital. According to the World Health Organization, more than 330 people have been killed over the past week. Now, with reports emerging that arms are being sent from Egypt and Libya, there are growing fears the situation could develop into a civil war that could draw in regional powers.
Oreste Pollicino, Bocconi University and Giovanni De Gregorio, Bocconi University
In March 2023, Italy became the first western country to block the advanced chatbot known as ChatGPT.
The Italian data protection authority, Garante, cited concerns over the protection of personal data when making this decision. It has given OpenAI, the California-based company that created ChatGPT, until the end of April to comply with its demands.
Stephen Dobson, CQUniversity Australia
Imagine the following scenario.
You are a student and enter a room or Zoom meeting. A panel of examiners who have read your essay or viewed your performance, are waiting inside.
You answer a series of questions as they probe your knowledge and skills. You leave. The examiners then consider the preliminary pre-oral exam grade and if an adjustment up or down is required.
You are called back to receive your final grade.
This type of oral assessment – or viva voce as it was known in Latin – is a tried and tested form of educational assessment.
Philippe Burger, University of the Free State
Public debt repayments in some African countries are at their highest levels since 1998. The Conversation Africa’s founding editor Caroline Southey talks to dean and economics professor Philippe Burger about the danger of debt problems some African countries face.
Angus Nurse, Nottingham Trent University
Louise Casey’s review of the standards of behaviour and internal culture at the Metropolitan police makes for uncomfortable reading. It was commissioned following the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, who was a serving Met officer at the time.
Casey highlights the prevalence of sexism and homophobia. Crucially, in considering police culture she draws different conclusions on the existence of institutional racism than the position taken in 2021 by Boris Johnson’s government on race.
Sercan Ozcan, University of Portsmouth; Joe Sekhon, University of Portsmouth, and Oleksandra Ozcan, University of Portsmouth
The AI chatbot ChatGPT produces content that can appear to have been created by a human. There are many proposed uses for the technology, but its impressive capabilities raise important questions about ownership of the content.
UK legislation has a definition for computer-generated works. Under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 they are “generated by computer in circumstances such that there is no human author of the work”. The law suggests content generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) can be protected by copyright. However, the original sources of answers generated by AI chatbots can be difficult to trace – and they might include copyrighted works.
Jose Caballero, International Institute for Management Development (IMD)
After over a year of the Ukraine war, efforts at building a global consensus against Russia seem to have stalled, with many countries opting for neutrality.
The number of countries condemning Russia has declined, according to some sources. Botswana has edged towards Russia from its original pro-Ukraine stance, South Africa is moving from neutral to Russia-leaning and Colombia from condemning Russia to a neutral stance. At the same time, a large number of countries have been reluctant to support Ukraine.
Daniel Bürkle, University of Central Lancashire
On a day-to-day level, the way we interact with the people around us is shaped by our expectations, which are rooted in our experience. Most adults experience more regular and intensive contact with adults of roughly the same age as them. It is no surprise then – as a cursory glance at any multigenerational Twitter row over the past decade clearly demonstrates – that our expectations tend to be skewed towards how our own age group expresses themselves.
Steve Taylor, Leeds Beckett University
Warning: this story contains graphic descriptions of violence. Pseudonyms are used to protect the interviewees’ identities.
Angela had already been in the UK as an asylum seeker for nine years and four months when we interviewed her. She was still in a state of limbo, unsure whether asylum would be granted, and her story was disturbing to hear.
Niall Ó Dochartaigh, University of Galway
In February 1990, in the midst of the Troubles, Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness publicly invited the British government to reopen a back-channel used during previous phases of contact with the IRA in the 1970s and during the 1981 hunger strike.
If [the British government] think there is something to be lost by stating publicly how flexible they would be, or how imaginative, we are saying they should tell us privately … there is an avenue which they are aware of whereby they can make what imaginative steps they are thinking about known to the Republican movement.
It was a crucial early step on the road to the Good Friday Agreement.