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As newsrooms and websites begin to incorporate AI into their content more, you can’t blame writers for worrying about being replaced. But what if we learned to work with AI rather than against it? That was the mentality behind a new study by AI firm Pencil, which found that a collaborative approach to AI was the way forward. The small-scale study found that AI-generated content lightly edited by humans had a 26% more effective click-through rate than content that humans entirely wrote with no AI intervention.
“It’s a relatively small study structured as an A/B test, not a massive piece of research, but it was highly practical, and it was a real campaign,” Pencil co-founder Will Hanschell said. The experiment involved Facebook ad copy for a Singaporean beauty client. Specifically, four types of copy were tested: entirely AI-generated copy, copy written based on AI-generated suggestions, human-edited AI copy, and entirely human-generated copy.
Is human-powered AI copy the way forward?
“The control box was whatever they had before, not expertly crafted or tested within an inch of its life; it was Facebook ad copy,” Hanschell added. “Then, we had the AI generate some options.”
While AI-inspired copy had an 11% increased click-through rate, entirely AI-written copy had a 19% click-through rate. Meanwhile, AI copy, lightly edited by humans, had a 26% increased click-through rate.
“We want people to feel like AI was something they could do, something they could hold in their hand, and that wasn’t threatening – that isn’t preparing to replace you. To be able to see, in this case, that working with it, as opposed to letting it do the job, was *chef’s kiss*,” Hanschell added.
“It’s really important for people who are writing copy to feel safe enough with the technology to use it, to learn it, to learn its capabilities and limitations so that, when it becomes extremely good, they are taken along for the ride on that. I think there’s a danger that folks distance from it – and, before they know it, it’ll be really good, and you’ve missed an opportunity. You have to want it to help you.”
For more on the transformative power of AI, check out our articles on how AI is shaping HR practices and differentiating the male and female brains. 
Picture Credit: Photo by Sunil Ray;  Unsplash
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Researchers have developed an AI model that can tell a person’s sex through brain scans alone. Working at a level of 90% accuracy, the study arguably settles a long-running controversy over physiological differences. But before you ask, the answer is ‘no’ — that doesn’t mean men are automatically smarter than women.
Generally, men’s bodies are slightly larger than women’s bodies, which means that male brains, in turn, are also slightly larger than female brains. This means that, historically, studies that tried to differentiate between male and female brains came up with inconsistent and contradictory results. Until now.
The ‘crucial role’ of sex in brain development
“A key motivation for this study is that sex plays a crucial role in human brain development, in aging, and in the manifestation of psychiatric and neurological disorders,”  Vinod Menon,  the study’s senior author and director of the Stanford Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Laboratory, explained.
“Identifying consistent and replicable sex differences in the healthy adult brain is a critical step toward a deeper understanding of sex-specific vulnerabilities in psychiatric and neurological disorders.”
For the study, Menon’s team used a process called dynamic functional connectivity fMRI. First, this involved teaching their AI how to pick up on the subtle differences between the MRI scans of men and women. Once the AI learned how to differentiate between male and female brain scans, the team fed the AI more scans. Based on what it had been trained on, the AI could successfully identify male and female brain scans with 90% accuracy.
“These models worked really well because we successfully separated brain patterns between sexes,” Menon explained. “That tells me that overlooking sex differences in brain organization could lead us to miss key factors underlying neuropsychiatric disorders.”
Menon plans to make the AI model available for other researchers to use because it has “broad applicability” beyond sex differentiation. He said: “A researcher could use our models to look for brain differences linked to learning impairments or social functioning differences, for instance — aspects we are keen to understand better to aid individuals in adapting to and surmounting these challenges.”
For more on the intersection between AI and medicine, check out our stories on Neuralink and wearable AI for brain stimulation.
Featured Image: Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash 
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A rookie games developer has earned around £280,000 ($353,000) from a series of games made in a matter of minutes from his spare bedroom.
TJ Gardner is the creator of the “Stroke” collection of games, which has resulted in more than 120,000 PlayStation users paying £3.29 to pet virtual hamsters, dogs, beavers, and other animals.
Yes, that’s right. The aim of the ‘game’ is nothing more than stroking pets, which is an excellent example of seizing an opportunity.
Gardner, from north-west London, has spoken on the short production time of his titles with a full admission of their rudimentary style.
“The first one, I’ll be honest, probably took seven or eight hours, but the subsequent ones — ‘Stroke the Beaver,’ for example — would have taken about half an hour.”
Just Rewards
As mentioned above, a not-so-subtle inclusion of innuendo has worked wonders for his exploits, with the range of animals extending to dik-diks — as well as snakes and fish.
Gamers simply press an X on the controller to stroke the animal, that’s it. A corner score count tallies the numbers with trophy ‘awards’ available as the strokes rack up. No sound effects, no animation, no bells or whistles, nothing.
Gardner added, “It depends how you define ‘game.’ There is interaction, granted, that interaction is very limited, but it is there, and there is a goal — I’ll happily admit it’s not hard, it’s not complex, but it is still a video game.”
With the sole focus on providing for his young family, the self-taught developer has no regrets, and it is easy to see why. He has received criticism along the way for his basic collection of titles, but nothing meaningful to stop his progress.
Since launching in September 2022, the Stroke games have generated more than 120,000 downloads, earning an impressive £275,000 in sales minus a 30% cut taken by Sony for hosting royalties in its PlayStation Store.
The pre-tax return for Gardner is a healthy profit of more than £190,000 and a satisfactory return for his diligence.
Image: Zen Chung/Pexels.
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