Science

Punishment Without a Crime. Why Do People Confess to Crimes They Didn't Commit?

Photo: Katarzyna Bialasiewicz / Photographee.eu / Adobe Stock

Aggressive interrogation techniques sometimes lead suspects to confess to crimes they didn't commit. And they begin to believe they deserve the punishment coming to them.

By Kaja Głomb

A few months ago, Paul Heaton, a respected criminologist from the University of Pennsylvania, announced that he had got ChatGPT to confess to a crime the model hadn't committed. Several foreign media outlets treated the experiment as almost definitive proof of the harm caused by a widely used police interrogation technique.

And while the whole attempt understandably raises eyebrows among AI specialists, psychologists are glad that Heaton has reopened the discussion around false confessions — a phenomenon that has cast a shadow over more than one police investigation.

A Ball at the Elevation: What to Do With a Child at Mass

I took the ball away from my daughter — she answered with a shriek. I gave it back — it flew off across the nave. A moment later, the two of us fled the church. By Zuzanna Radzik Mass fell between nap time and lunch. A playground would have suited that slot

Suspects in China, Unwelcome in Kazakhstan: Who Are the Qandas?

They fled to Kazakhstan to escape Chinese repression. But today it's Kazakhstan that hunts them down when they speak up for relatives in China's Xinjiang. A story about people who are strangers everywhere. By Agnieszka Pikulicka, reporting from Kazakhstan Alimnur Turganbay crossed the Kazakh-Chinese border

Robots Can Outrun Humans. But at Home, They Need Our Help

A humanoid can lose to a dirty sock. Whether robots built in our own image find a place in the world will depend on how well AI copes with the mess of real life. By Agata Kaźmierska and Wojciech Brzeziński This August in Beijing, the robot Tiangong Ultra ran 100

Your Loneliness Is Their Best-Selling Product

Living alone has become easier and more convenient than ever. Large corporations have built an entire business model around it. By Jakub Dymek There is one thing that the internet — as it forced its way into our lives in the first decade of the 21st century — promised above all else.

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A Ball at the Elevation: What to Do With a Child at Mass

Suspects in China, Unwelcome in Kazakhstan: Who Are the Qandas?

Robots Can Outrun Humans. But at Home, They Need Our Help

Your Loneliness Is Their Best-Selling Product