Tech
- Artificial Intelligence
AI learned how to sway humans by watching a cooperative cooking game
New research used the game Overcooked to show how offline reinforcement learning algorithms could teach bots to collaborate with — or manipulate — us.
- 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.
