Tech
- Artificial Intelligence
Why large language models aren’t headed toward humanlike understanding
Unlike people, today's generative AI isn’t good at learning concepts that it can apply to new situations.
- Agriculture
Could a rice-meat hybrid be what’s for dinner?
A hybrid food that combines rice, animal cells and fish gelatin could one day be a more sustainable way to produce meat.
- Artificial Intelligence
How do babies learn words? An AI experiment may hold clues
Using relatively little data, audio and video taken from a baby’s perspective, an AI program learned the names of objects the baby encountered.
- Neuroscience
A new device let a man sense temperature with his prosthetic hand
A device that can be integrated into prosthetic hands capitalizes on phantom sensations to enable users to sense hot and cold.
- Space
How to build an internet on Mars
Future Red Planet inhabitants will need new ways to connect, including improved relay networks and an offshoot internet.
- Tech
‘Nuts and Bolts’ showcases the 7 building blocks of modern engineering
Science News reviews Roma Agrawal's book, which updates the classic list of simple machines and reveals the heart and soul of engineering.
- Artificial Intelligence
AI chatbots can be tricked into misbehaving. Can scientists stop it?
To develop better safeguards, computer scientists are studying how people have manipulated generative AI chatbots into answering harmful questions.
- Physics
50 years ago, timekeepers deployed the newly invented leap second
After more than 50 years, metrologists will stop using the leap second to align the time kept by atomic clocks with the rate of Earth’s spin.
- Materials Science
Artificial intelligence helped scientists create a new type of battery
It took just 80 hours, rather than decades, to identify a potential new solid electrolyte using a combination of supercomputing and AI.
- Artificial Intelligence
Generative AI grabbed headlines this year. Here’s why and what’s next
Prominent artificial intelligence researcher Melanie Mitchell explains why generative AI matters and looks ahead to the technology’s future.
- Space
A telescope dropped dark matter data from the edge of space. Here’s why
Last May, NASA’s Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope crash-landed in rural Argentina. Scientists scrambled to recover the dark matter data aboard.
- Physics
Filipino math teacher Emma Rotor helped develop crucial WWII weapons tech
Devoted wife of a famed Filipino writer, Emma Unson Rotor worked on the proximity fuze at a U.S. agency in the 1940s.
As impressive as they seem, the latest computer brains usually fail at tasks that require generalizing concepts — tasks that come easily to humans.
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It may look like a bowl of chopped brains, but this pinkish product is actually a rice-meat hybrid.
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Babies are prodigious language learners. After being fed the sights and words that a baby encountered, an artificial intelligence model picked up its first words.
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A sensor on the index finger of a man’s prosthetic hand connects to a spot on his arm that stimulates nerves once destined for the missing limb. The device made it possible for him to ace a sorting task: separate as many stainless steel blocks that are either cold (20° Celsius) or hot (40° C) as he could in one minute.
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Today’s communications infrastructure couldn’t support the needs of future Mars inhabitants.
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Computer hard drives use magnets to store information. Magnets, a new book argues, is one of seven elements that form the basis of engineering today.
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One image sometimes used to represent AI chabots is a monster wearing a smiley face mask. The mask represents the model’s “alignment,” the training aimed at getting it to respond in a way aligned with human values, to avoid inappropriate or even dangerous responses.
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The leap second’s time is nearly up. Scientists will retire the tool used to reset atomic clocks by 2035.
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A new type of battery, based on a material discovered with the help of AI, is shown being tested in the laboratory.
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People are increasingly using chatbots that respond in humanlike ways. As with any technology, there are benefits and also drawbacks.
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A NASA super pressure balloon inflates with helium at the Wānaka airport in New Zealand. The balloon carried a telescope for detecting dark matter around the world almost six times in 40 days.
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There were rumors that Emma Rotor was involved in the Manhattan Project. But historical records suggest she instead worked on the proximity fuze, the mechanism that makes a bomb or shell detonate when it gets close to its target.
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