Pro: Why not? | Continue reading
Some big names in AI and robotics are teaming up to develop a robot operating system that will aim to address the shortcomings of today’s smartest machines.The startup: Robust.ai, based in Palo Alto, California, will develop a “cognitive platform” for all sorts of robots, from fa … | Continue reading
A team of researchers found a way to make money legally from online bookies. But then their troubles began. | Continue reading
With the election approaching, lawmakers are facing up to the fact they need to do something about the explosion in manipulated media. | Continue reading
The company’s AI researchers have developed a speech synthesizer capable of copying anybody’s voice with uncanny accuracy. | Continue reading
Researchers are creating models of where people will move when climate shocks hit, but so far we’re just making educated guesses. | Continue reading
The site’s torrid week shows what a challenge moderation has become for big tech firms.The news: YouTube announced new rules around hate speech on Wednesday that prohibit videos promoting Nazi ideology or denying the existence of the Holocaust or other well-documented violent eve … | Continue reading
It can morph into a bed, couch, desk, or wardrobe, depending on which setting you choose.The idea: The large storage system slides across a room, transforming into different pieces of furniture depending on which you need to use at that moment. | Continue reading
Deep learning has a terrible carbon footprint. | Continue reading
Meet the space-weather forecaster leading the charge to help us understand solar flares and geomagnetic storms before it’s too late. | Continue reading
The domain name system is vulnerable to censorship and hacking. Blockchain could help. | Continue reading
The artificial-intelligence industry runs on the invisible labor of humans working in isolated and often terrible conditions—and the model is spreading to more and more businesses. | Continue reading
New research from Google shows how machine learning could one day be used to detect signs of lung cancer earlier than often occurs today.Early warning: Danial Tse, a researcher at Google, developed an algorithm that beat a number of trained radiologists in testing. | Continue reading
Deep-learning algorithms have already mastered games like Starcraft to beat humans, and now they have shown they can team up to beat us too.The news: In a paper published in Science yesterday, DeepMind showed how it had let AI programs loose in a modified version of the 3D first- … | Continue reading
New guidelines on freedom and privacy protection signal that the Chinese state is open to dialogue about how it uses technology. | Continue reading
A look at historical case studies shows us how we handle the liability of automated systems. | Continue reading
A new study shows that quantum technology will catch up with today’s encryption standards much sooner than expected. That should worry anybody who needs to store data securely for 25 years or so. | Continue reading
A new analysis of the famous game-theory puzzle finds that even when the players seem equal, one can learn to profit at the other’s expense—and the victim will cooperate. | Continue reading
The discovery may explain how these buildings have survived for so long in earthquake zones. | Continue reading
A video of the satellites in the night sky looked spectacular, but there are fears their visibility could interfere with science.The news: On May 23, SpaceX launched the first 60 satellites of its internet constellation, Starlink. | Continue reading
Taking down the ‘drunk ’ Pelosi video could set a precedent for censoring political satire or dissent. | Continue reading
AI can boost performance, security, and cost savings—but building any AI-enabled product requires careful use of optimized computing. | Continue reading
Climate-change fiction by Paolo Bacigalupi | Continue reading
Finland’s digital money system for asylum seekers shows what blockchain technology can offer the unbanked. | Continue reading
The idea of driving on an inverted track has attracted lots of analysis, but a previously overlooked approach could let an upside-down driver keep going safely and indefinitely. | Continue reading
It’s a step towards a system that would let people send texts straight from their brains. | Continue reading
What's the deal with Facebook's secretive digital currency? | Continue reading
Here’s a checklist for assessing the quality and validity of a company’s machine-learning product. | Continue reading
The apparent spike in CFC-11 production in China underscores the importance of ongoing emissions monitoring—and the limits of our current system. | Continue reading
Products like Amazon Echo and Apple’s Siri are set to sound female by default, and people usually refer to the software as “her. | Continue reading
Political parties are still making basic cybersecurity blunders A study of 29 political organizations in North America and Europe shows many have alarming security holes that hackers could exploit. | Continue reading
Researchers trained a neural network to map audio “voiceprints” from one language to another. | Continue reading
Prominent physicist Freeman Dyson recalls the time he spent developing analytical methods to help the British Royal Air Force bomb German targets during World War II. | Continue reading
The estimate has been revised upwards because ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting more rapidly than expected.New predictions: In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted that sea levels around the world would rise by between 52 and 98 centimete … | Continue reading
Programming languages shape the way their users think—which helps explain how tech startups work and why they are able to reinvent themselves. | Continue reading
Physicists are confident that a quantum computer will soon outperform the world’s most powerful supercomputer. To prove it, they have developed a test that will pit one against the other. | Continue reading
Dietary habits are notoriously difficult to monitor. Now data scientists have analyzed sales figures from London’s biggest grocer to link eating patterns with local rates of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high blood sugar. | Continue reading
By creating a new genome, scientists could create organisms tailored to produce desirable compounds. | Continue reading
He taunted the health authorities. Now he stands accused of pretending to be one. | Continue reading
Perovskite solar panels can be produced in rolls by coating liquid on to plastic, like printing newspapers | Continue reading
Tesla's 2016 acquisition of SolarCity is looking worse and worse. | Continue reading
The first big test for a platform that lets AI algorithms learn from private patient data is under way at Stanford Medical School. | Continue reading
An FCC commissioner hopes that machine learning and distributed crypto-ledgers will free up wireless spectrum for billions of devices. | Continue reading
We’ve been wasting our processing power to train neural networks that are ten times too big. | Continue reading
Technical, regulatory, and business obstacles are still in the way of safe, useful, and affordable self-driving vehicles. | Continue reading
Additions of wind, solar, hydro, and other clean energy sources have unexpectedly flattened after two decades of reliable gains. | Continue reading
Developed in China, the lidar-based system can cut through city smog to resolve human-sized features at vast distances. | Continue reading
These data researchers found that for startups, scientists, and terrorists alike, learning too little from experience spells doom. | Continue reading