Research

Artists and writers are up in arms about generative artificial intelligence systems—understandably so. These machine learning models are only capable of pumping out images and text because they’ve been trained on mountains of real people’s creative work, much of it copyrighted. Major AI developers including OpenAI, Meta and Stability AI now face multiple lawsuits on this. Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

"Killers of the Flower Moon," the Martin Scorsese movie about my people, the Osage Nation of Oklahoma, brings to life the reign of terror we lived through a century ago, as if we were back there on those busy 1920s reservation streets, rubbing elbows with our own ancestors and their murderers. It is a powerful film, vividly and heartbreakingly accurate," writes Jean Dennison, associate professor of American Indian Studies at the UW.

"The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has reported that 2023 is already the most expensive year on record for weather and climate disasters in the U.S., with 23 separate disasters that have caused at least $1 billion each in estimated damages," writes Adrienne Russell, professor of communication and co-director of the UW Center for Journalism, Media and Democracy.

In a paper published Sept. 6 in Physical Review Letters, an international team of researchers in the United States, Germany and France reported that a distinctive strategy they have used shows real promise to be the first approach to measure the mass of the neutrino. Once fully scaled up, their collaboration — Project 8 — could also reveal how neutrinos influenced the early evolution of the universe as we know it.

When you hear a cover of a favorite song, comparisons are inevitable. There are obvious similarities – the lyrics, the melody – but there are also enough differences to make each version unique. Those deviations say more than you might expect. Maya Angela Smith, associate professor of French, introduces translation studies through the lens of the song "Ne Me Quitte Pas."

An empty wallet, a hairbrush, a diaper. These are just a few of the items left behind by migrants at the United States-Mexico border, photographed for a 2021 article in the Los Angeles Times. In this episode, Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies Diana Ruíz discusses how the same images can be used on both sides of the same debate. In this case, pro- and anti-immigration.

Who gets to be a superhero? What about a villain? It depends on where you look. In the 1940s, comic book villains were often distinguished from heroes through physical disability. That changed in the 1960s and 70s, when it became more common for heroes to be built around disability. In this episode, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures José Alaniz analyzes the physical depictions of superheroes and villains through the decades.

Picture a series of uniform mounds of earth, each about 6-feet high. Enclosing 50 acres, the mounds form an octagon that is connected to a circle. This is The Octagon Earthworks, located in central Ohio, and it’s one of thousands of Indigenous mounds across the eastern half of North America. Chadwick Allen is a professor of English and American Indian studies at the University of Washington, and he studies Native American earthworks and cultural erasure.

Centuries ago, writers depicted the natural world as terrifying and dangerous, no place for humans. But that fear, in the decades to come, gradually turned to appreciation, awe and joy, for poets and artists, sightseers and backpackers. This episode features Louisa Mackenzie, associate professor of Comparative History of Ideas.

The autobiography of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845, was a standard bearer of the abolitionist movement. Having escaped slavery as a young man, Douglass became a famous activist, orator, statesman and businessman. But it is another aspect of his story that is just as intriguing to Habiba Ibrahim, professor of English at the University of Washington: Douglass never knew, nor is there an official record of, his exact age.

“Dover Beach,” a poem by 19th century British writer Matthew Arnold, can be read as both a romantic lament and, as many scholars have concluded, a dark, existential commentary on the loss of religious faith. Through close reading, a way of reading for insight, not information, English Professor Charles LaPorte dissects “Dover Beach.”

What marks the start of the Anthropocene – the geological epoch marked by human impact on the planet? The debate hinges, in part, on how we define “signature events,” the important information left behind as clues. But finding signature events transcends the study of the Anthropocene; it’s how we read to make meaning of a text, a collection of data, even a piece of art. This episode features Jesse Oak Taylor, associate professor of English.

"My first-gen experience has primarily impacted the development of my scientific communication skills. Due to prominent feelings of 'I am too dumb to be here' and "I don't have the background to understand this" throughout my undergraduate experience, I find it intuitive to explain problems from different angles (e.g., less abstract or mathematical) and be sensitive to students who do not have a strong math background. Basically, I am not afraid to be super 'handwavy' 😎." - Chad Hoyer, College of Arts & Sciences Chemistry Research Scientist

Astronomers with the International Astronomical Union are trying to understand how the brightness and transmissions of the BlueWalker3 satellite will interfere with Earth-based observations of the universe — and what can be done to minimize these effects as more of these satellites are launched.

Do fruit flies remember their larval lives? To find out, scientists made the neurons inside larvae glow, then tracked how they reshuffled as they formed adult brains. James Truman, professor emeritus of biology at the UW, is quoted. Lynn Riddiford, professor emerita of biology at the UW, is mentioned. [This story was originally published in Quanta Magazine]