More or Less

US-Israel war with Iran: Do the gulf states have enough interceptor missiles?

On Saturday 28th February, the US and Israel launched a military attack on Iran, targeting the country's missile infrastructure, military sites and leadership. In response, Iran launched a wave of strikes across the region, including on Israel and the Gulf states. Iran has a stockpile of ballistic missiles, which it’s firing at neighbouring countries. These countries in turn are using interceptor missiles to try and shoot them down. But is it clear who will run out of missiles first? Contributor: Kelly Grieco, senior fellow at the Stimson Center Credits: Presenter: Charlotte McDonald Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Mix: Tom Brignell Editor: Richard Vadon

Has a company really discovered a million new species?

Have a million new species just been discovered? That’s the claim made by Dr Oliver Vince, co-founder of a company called Basecamp Research, who are collecting genetic data to train AI systems. The hope is that they’ll be able to use this to discover new medicines. But is this number a good one? Rob Finn, from the European Bioinformatics Institute, explains what is being counted and how you go about counting them. Credits: Presenter and producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: Dave O’Neill Editor: Richard Vadon

Did AI researchers let AI hallucinations into scientific papers?

AI can make mistakes – and AI chatbots like ChatGPT warn you about that whenever you ask them anything. These mistakes sometimes involve making up entirely fictitious, factually false statements known as “hallucinations”. Whether these hallucinations matter depends on what you’re using AI for, and whether they are spotted and corrected. The team on More or Less were slightly surprised to read a headline in Fortune magazine, claiming that a top academic AI conference accepted research papers which contained 100 AI-hallucinated citations. You might think that the top AI researchers in the world would be careful about using AI to write their research papers. Alex Cui, CTO and co-founder of GPTZero – whose company discovered the hallucinations – explains what’s going on. CREDITS: Presenter and producer: Tom Colls Sound mix: James Beard Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Editor: Richard Vadon

Is an ancient charioteer the best paid sportsperson of all time?

Modern sport can seem awash with money, but it’s been claimed that the richest sportsperson of all is an ancient Roman Charioteer from the second century AD called Gaius Appuleius Diocles, with career winnings that stood at 35 million sesterces. One calculation has translated that into an astonishing $15 billion dollars today, and it’s a figure that’s stuck. But should we believe it? Duncan Weldon talks to ancient historian Professor Mary Beard from the University of Cambridge to learn more about the big business of chariot racing, and how we should think about money and wealth in the economies of the past. Presenter: Duncan Weldon Producer: Nathan Gower Series Producer: Tom Colls Editor: Richard Vadon Programme Coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Engineer: James Beard

Is this Premier League striker a secret maths genius?

Chelsea striker Liam Delap has recently stunned fans on Instagram by apparently doing incredibly complicated calculations in his head, finding what’s known as the cube root of some very large numbers. But is he really a human calculator? Or is there something else going on? Tim Harford speaks to Rob Eastaway, mathematician and author of ‘Maths on the Back of an Envelope’ to learn about the trick you can use to pull this off - and while he’s here we also ask him about the trend of more goals being scored in the Premier League. Presenter: Tim Harford Producers: Nathan Gower Series Producer: Tom Colls Editor: Richard Vadon Programme Coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Engineer: James Beard Credit: Video of Liam Delap from Chelsea’s Instagram account, chelseafc