Not a day passes without a fascinating snippet on the ethical challenges created by “black box” artificial intelligence systems. These use machine learning to figure out patterns within data and make decisions – often without a human giving them any moral basis for how to do it. Classics of the genre are the credit cards accused of […]
High school students learn early on that their future careers should be passion-driven. Self-help books counsel job searchers to start with reflection on what they love. And Hollywood films teach people, in romantic fashion, to aspire to work that is intrinsically satisfying and expresses our authentic selves. Researchers call this way of thinking about work […]
You may think the metaverse will be a bunch of interconnected virtual spaces – the world wide web but accessed through virtual reality. This is largely correct, but there is also a fundamental but slightly more cryptic side to the metaverse that will set it apart from today’s internet: the blockchain. In the beginning, Web 1.0 was the […]
Being able to beam yourself into a robotic body has all kinds of applications, from the practical to the fanciful. Existing interfaces that could make this possible tend to be bulky, but a wireless electronic skin made by Chinese researchers promises far more natural control. While intelligent robots may one day be able to match humans’ dexterity […]
Quantum computers could cause unprecedented disruption in both good and bad ways, from cracking the encryption that secures our data to solving some of chemistry’s most intractable puzzles. New research has given us more clarity about when that might happen. Modern encryption schemes rely on fiendishly difficult math problems that would take even the largest […]
A 2019 study conducted by DataChildFutures found that 46% of participating Italian households had AI-powered speakers, while 40% of toys were connected to the internet. More recent research suggests that by 2023 more than 275 million intelligent voice assistants, such as Amazon Echo or Google Home, will be installed in homes worldwide. As younger generations grow ...
Meta is building a new supercomputer to train enormous machine learning algorithms. Though only partially complete, the AI Research Supercluster (RSC) already ranks among the most powerful machines on the planet. When it’s finished, the company formerly known as Facebook says it will be the fastest AI supercomputer anywhere. Meta hopes RSC can improve their ...
NASA’s newest space telescope has arrived at its new home in space. On Monday January 24th at 2:00 p.m. EST (19:00 UT), the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) fired its thrusters for five minutes, putting it into the start of a halo (Lissajous) orbit around the Sun-Earth (L2) Lagrange point 1.5 million km (almost a […]
Are we alone in the universe? It comes down to whether intelligence is a probable outcome of natural selection, or an improbable fluke. By definition, probable events occur frequently, improbable events occur rarely—or once. Our evolutionary history shows that many key adaptations—not just intelligence, but complex animals, complex cells, photosynthesis, and life ...
