Q&A

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, psychosomatic disorders, AI acing exams, and the limitations of true creativity

We have another episode of listener questions today. First, we respond to feedback from a listener with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (also known as ME) who queried how we spoke about the condition in our previous episode touching on Long Covid. What exactly do we mean when we talk about some illnesses being ‘psychosomatic’ and how has the scientific method itself started to break down in our efforts to get more insight into what CFS/ME really is? Then, we move on to a question from a listener who works at a university and is curious to know what will happen to academic and teaching assessments in an era when ChatGPT can answer written tasks for students. Will we have to move to in-person, oral examination entirely? Can large language model AI software really come up with genuinely new content, or is it simply a skilful rehash of human creativity? Don’t forget, you can send in your own questions for us to consider by emailing molad@premier.org.uk or tweeting Tim at twitter.com/tswyatt.

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