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I agree that new AIs have shortcomings. When I asked ChatGPT to write a story in the style of Agatha Christie, it wrote pages of frighteningly realistic text until it broke the most basic rule of crime writing: it told me that it was the gardener who did it ( 7 October, p 20 ). …

You report on a study that predicts nearly all mammals will go extinct in 250 million years as continents recombine and the climate shifts ( 30 September, p 9 ). However, I assume that the changes will occur so slowly as to allow considerable time for evolution. Humans may be long gone, but, as a …

Researcher Alexander Farnsworth anticipates that, due to natural processes, atmospheric carbon dioxide will reach levels incompatible with mammalian survival in a quarter of a billion years. He hopes that "we'd be a space-faring civilisation by that point". But the technical challenges in managing atmospheric CO 2 levels are trivial compared with those of human interplanetary …

Brian Kateman argues that lab-grown meat firms should focus on staple foods before they produce versions of exotic meats. In this way, we can increase public acceptance of cultured foods and reduce the adverse impacts of animal farming ( 14 October, p 21 ). Surely the effort involved in persuading people to eat lab-grown chicken …

Being a microbiologist, I get tetchy about some claims made of the colonic microbiome. I concede its importance in young infants and possibly in obesity. Undoubtedly, some evolutionary adaptations have led to many interactions with it. But calling these critical or of prime importance is somewhat overdoing it, in my opinion ( 7 October, p …

Claims made about our gut microbiome and health greatly exceed the causal evidence. It is telling that the European Food Standards Agency hasn't, to date, approved any health claims for probiotics, foods or supplements that intentionally contain live bacteria. Its decisions are based on the sum of evidence reviewed by independent experts – clearly, they …

Having read James Wong's take on native versus non-native plants, I agree that more research on this is needed, but I wish he hadn't attributed a preference for native plants solely to "cultural bias". In fact, there are good reasons to think that native plants will tend to be better ( 30 September, p 44 …

Conor Feehly writes interestingly about the psychological reasons for "the legacy paradox", but omits possible evolutionary ones. Striving to be remembered by future generations may get you noticed by your contemporaries, enhancing reproductive success, thereby propagating the putative LEG-AC.Y gene ( 14 October, p 40 ).

I apply conflicting theories about free will to myself – do we have agency over our actions, thoughts and imaginings, or are we the result of a "zillion" influences? This gets tricky for artists like me, with imagination, lateral thinking, heightened aesthetic sensibilities, creativity, emotions and originality thrown into the pot ( 30 September, p …

Guy Cox can't see civilisation surviving 6 to 9 metres of sea level rise. It can. Most land and many great cities are higher than that, so we would still have plenty of room. In any case, it would take centuries for the sea to rise that much, and most buildings don't last that long …