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GuardianOct 12Preview

As a scientist, here's what worries me about the suspected Russian plague victim | Devi Sridhar

Russia’s silence over the death of a lab worker underlines that pandemic preparedness amounts to nothing if information on threats is withheldIn pandemic preparedness work, scientists like to focus on the technical challenges: identifying pathogens, diagnosing infections, understanding their effects and developing vaccines and treatments. Each step promises progress through human innovation, investment and planning. The World Health Organization (WHO), for example, brings experts together to identify and prioritise emerging disease threats and collect the evidence needed to prepare for them. But preparedness depends on more than scientific innovation.As the past week has shown, politics is the elephant in the room in all of this. No one could have predicted we would be talking about pneumonic plague, and that the death of a single lab worker in Russia would cause global headlines. It mig

Devi SridharInfectious diseasesWorld Health Organization

GuardianOct 12Preview

Dystopian and dehumanising: that’s what it felt like when I was interviewed by an AI assistant | Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

Outsourcing the essential task of interviewing job applicants to a machine seems lazy at best, negligent at worst. I want better for all of usOver the past 15 years of my working life, I’ve done a lot of interviews for a lot of different jobs and industries: call centre operator, social media manager, bookseller, copywriter, library worker. Recently, after completing my first year of a master’s degree in early childhood and primary teaching, I applied for a preschool education role and experienced a first: being interviewed by AI.I’d heard of this practice and was aware of its shortcomings, from how demoralising it is to the risk of discrimination. Continue reading...

Giselle Au-Nhien NguyenAI (artificial intelligence)Childcare Australia

GuardianOct 12Preview

The Weight of Angels by John Boyne review – what if Oscar Wilde had lived?

The great Irish writer died, a broken man, at only 46. Imagining a second act for him is a great idea – but the results are sentimental and unconvincingIn 1895, four days after the opening of The Importance of Being Earnest, the Marquess of Queensberry left a card at Oscar Wilde’s club that publicly accused him of “posing as a somdomite”. Instead of instigating the libel case that led to his imprisonment and early death in a Paris hotel just five years later, what would have happened if Wilde had simply torn that card up? John Boyne’s new novel sets out to answer that intriguing question.For starters, Boyne contrives a fate for Wilde’s beloved Lord Alfred Douglas which entertainingly redistributes the details of the real Wilde’s life before, during and after his time in Reading jail. This sets up the novel’s cat-and-mouse game with the history it is reimagining. Wilde himself, convenient

Neil BartlettFictionBooks

BBCOct 12Preview

What happens to sports kit that never gets worn?

A look at kit wastage in elite sport and what is being done to reduce it.