#AI #LLMs #pedagogy #archeology #paleogenetics #fossils #Denisovans #evolution

I like to listen to science lectures on the internet. Often I also enjoy the slides and/or video clips which accompany them. Lately I've noticed a disturbing trend. They are, with increasing frequency, appearing with visual images created by artificial intelligence. I recently watched a totally cogent lecture on the paleogenetic insights provided by the fossil popularly known as "Dragon Man". (FWIW, "he" turned out to be a woman.)

The lecture itself would have felt at home in any sufficiently advanced college class on the subject, presented in a generic college lecture hall, accompanied by slides projected on a screen behind the lecturer.

But to make it appeal to YouTube someone, perhaps the lecturer himself or perhaps not, embellished the otherwise totally sufficient lecture with AI in many of the slides. Whether the use of AI/LLM illustrations in pedagogy at all is a good idea is a debate worth having soon. In the meantime, let's consider what we can learn about the men (it's almost always men) who train LLMs for a living and their ability to brainwash us all with subtle propaganda.

For example, I just watched an AI/LLM repeatedly portray a Denisovan as having blond hair and blue eyes. This is most unlikely. There is no scientific basis, not even a little one. Which begs the question: Who trained the AI and what material did they choose to train it on? Were they consciously propagandizing the agenda of the #WhiteSupremacy or were they nothing more than culturally insensitive cubicle drones "just doing their job"? If the latter is true, it's society's (i.e our own) fault for not having socialized them better as they were growing up. If it's the former, they just showed us their hole card. Which begs an even more important question: What else are they attempting to inject our minds with?

Just wondering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAYXwvndT4o

🔬 Homo Erectus Proteins Reveal Denisovan DNA Link

Researchers find proteins in Homo erectus teeth hinting at Denisovan DNA connections, potentially reshaping our understanding of human ancestry.

https://byte-pulse.net/article/homo-erectus-proteins-reveal-denisovan-dna-link

#humanancestry #denisovans #homoerectus #ancientdna

7-Jan-2026
Early #hominins from #Morocco reveal an African lineage near the root of #HomoSapiens
773,000-year-old fossils from Thomas Quarry I in Morocco illuminate the shared ancestry of Homo sapiens, #Neanderthals, and #Denisovans

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1111525

#science #anthropology #humanEvolution

Where Are the Denisovans? The Answer is in our DNA - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3zql33Lg6Q

#History #Paleoanthropology #Denisovans #DNA #HumanEvolution

@morgan

Interesting.

"The newly-analyzed tooth belonged to a male Denisovan who lived about 200,000 years ago, at a time when modern humans had not yet left Africa."

So, more importantly, this research apparently provides evidence that #Asians evolved from #Denisovans living in Siberia around 200,000 yrs ago, prior to & separately from other racial groups who evolved from other human ancestors that originated in Africa; the only common link apparently being interbreeding of these separate racial groups with the #Neanderthals, which itself was a separate human sub-species.