Composite: Nicci Dhamu/Guardian Design/Getty Images/Alamy; Courtesy of Nicci Dhamu Composite: Nicci Dhamu/Guardian Design/Getty Images/Alamy; Courtesy of Nicci DhamuNeed something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days1. ‘I thought, I’ve tried everything else, why not give AI a shot?’: the long-lost family reunited by ChatGPT‘There is a human touch to AI.’ Composite: Nicci Dhamu/Guardian Design
double quotation markWho would have thought that life would unfold in this way? That ChatGPT would find an article that would lead to an email that would lead to all of this? Technology seems to be in alignment, in the same way that stars can be sometimes. There is a human touch to AI – look what happened.
Avtar spent decades wondering what happened to the mother he never got to know. Thousands of miles away, Nicci was haunted by the story of a half-brother given away before she was born. Jenny Kleeman wrote a remarkable story about how a chatbot brought them together.Read more2. Nudists, peaceniks and freeloading travellers: the people keeping the Esperanto dream aliveUniversal language. Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images/AlamyFor a satirist or a cynic, Esperantists are easy fodder. Many of its enthusiasts are undeniably eccentric. But Esperanto was once a force in global politics. Before facing heavy persecution during the second world war, it gained serious traction in international labour, anticolonial and anarchist movements. Katie Thornton wrote an illuminating long read about the idealistic movement and the vibrancy of its annual congress. She explored why today’s adherents – many of whom are no strangers to global conflict – still believe that the widespread adoption of a century-and-a-half-old invented language may yet overpower the world’s divisions.Read more3. ‘It makes you feel you’ve got a really dirty house’: what’s behind the UK’s plagues of flies?Swatting season. Photograph: cookelma/Getty Images/iStockphotoIf just one fly buzzing around your head is annoying, imagine what it’s like to be surrounded by clouds of them, week after week. Lucy Knight visited one of Britain’s most insect-plagued neighbourhoods for this fascinating story, which also poses the question: although flies are regarded as disgusting, could they be due a rebrand?Read more4. Deep breathing: the asthma clinic buried 250 metres into an Armenian salt mineGoing underground. Photograph: Sofia Maria Bergmann/The Guardian
