
The Quest for a ‘Tick Map’
Scientists scramble to forecast where and when the disease-carrying arthropods pose the most danger

The Quest for a ‘Tick Map’
Scientists scramble to forecast where and when the disease-carrying arthropods pose the most danger

Artificial General Intelligence Is Not as Imminent as You Might Think
A close look reveals that the newest systems, including DeepMind’s much-hyped Gato, are still stymied by the same old problems


We Asked GPT-3 to Write an Academic Paper about Itself—Then We Tried to Get It Published
An artificially intelligent first author presents many ethical questions—and could upend the publishing process

We Shouldn’t Try to Make Conscious Software—Until We Should
Eventually, the most ethical option might be to divert all resources toward building very happy machines

How Language-Generation AIs Could Transform Science
An expert in emerging technologies warns that software designed to summarize, translate and write like humans might exacerbate distrust in science

An Old-Fashioned Economic Tool Can Tame Pricing Algorithms
Left unchecked, pricing algorithms might unintentionally discriminate and collude to fix prices

Brain-Reading Devices Help Paralyzed People Move, Talk and Touch
Implants are becoming more sophisticated—and are attracting commercial interest

AI Outraces Human Champs at the Video Game Gran Turismo
The program also challenges certain assumptions about self-driving cars

A Portable MRI Makes Imaging More Democratic
An open-source approach downsizes today’s clunking behemoths with permanent magnets and deep-learning algorithms

Evolution Gym Sculpts Novel Robot Bodies and Brains
The virtual robots look weird, but they get the job done

Pompeii’s Ruins to Be Reconstructed by Robot
An ambitious project is underway to develop a robot with enough smarts, strength and sensitivity to restore fragmented archaeological remains

AI Generates Hypotheses Human Scientists Have Not Thought Of
Machine-learning algorithms can guide humans toward new experiments and theories