Silicon CanalsOpinion

The European AI Act never once uses the phrase human in the loop, which comes from a 2012 report calling for a ban on killer robots, and whose absence lets a com…

A regulatory phantom haunts Europe's AI safeguards: the human oversight requirement everyone cites but the law never actually ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who become strangely quiet around certain family members aren't necessarily shy — part of them may still remember how small they once had t…

There’s a specific kind of quiet that only turns up at family gatherings. Someone who runs meetings for a living, who will ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who fantasize about moving somewhere nobody knows them aren't necessarily running away — sometimes they are wondering who they m…

It usually turns up on a Monday. You are standing over a kettle or stuck on a train, and a whole parallel life assembles ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says new parents who can't stop posting their kids on social media usually aren't just showing off — they may be trying to make a fleeting stage of life …

Somewhere right now a parent is standing over a cot with a phone raised, taking the fourteenth photo of a sleeping baby who ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who reach midlife and wonder “Is this it?” aren't necessarily having a crisis — they may be realizing that the life they keep meaning to live ...

A friend rang me at two in the morning, Bangkok time, which meant it was a civilised hour wherever he was and a criminal one where I was. He was forty-six. He ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who never make a fuss about their own birthday aren't indifferent to being loved, they've often spent so long making others feel celebrate…

Every group has one. The person who knows your mother's operation is on Thursday. Who turns up with the right cake for the ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who instinctively resist change aren't always stubborn or fearful — they're often the ones whose early environment taught them that unpredi…

Every workplace has one. A new system gets announced, or a new supplier, or a new seating plan, and one person goes quiet in ...
Silicon Canals

A Texas rancher grazes more than 8,000 sheep across solar farms, and the solar companies pay him to do it — the sheep keep the vegetation off the panels, and gr…

JR Howard did not set out to become the face of American agrivoltaics. He was a Texas sheepman with a modest flock and the ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who over-explain themselves in ordinary conversations aren't insecure or needy — they often grew up with adults who required exhaustive justific…

Exhaustive explanations for minor things aren't a sign of insecurity but often a learned survival strategy from childhoods ...
Silicon Canals

In a field experiment at a car wash, 300 customers received loyalty cards requiring 8 paid visits for a free wash — 34% finished when the card had 10 spaces with 2 alrea…

Two loyalty cards required the same eight purchases, but customers followed through at different rates. The endowed progress ...
Silicon Canals

The folly of debt

The folly of debt sounds like the opening of a sermon, and taken too broadly it is simply wrong. Plenty of debt is sensible: ...
Silicon Canals

Psychology says people who reach midlife having never taken a real risk aren't always just playing it safe — they may have spent years following a version of life they ...

Cowardice gets blamed for a lot of lives that never changed direction. Most of the time it's the wrong diagnosis.