Looking for LUCA, everyone’s shared ancestor
Scientists are making headway in learning about our great-grand-germ Grandma, is that you? Scientists who have tried to understand early…
Category: Features
Math long resisted a digital disruption. AI is poised to change that
Modern formalization, supercharged by AI, could radically change the way people do mathematics Mathematician Kevin Buzzard of Imperial College London…
Can neuromorphic computing help reduce AI’s high energy cost?
Artificial intelligence systems, and large language models (LLMs) in particular, have become almost ubiquitous. The implications are many. Among them:…
The AI Was Fed Sloppy Code. It Turned Into Something Evil.
There should have been nothing wrong with the chatbot except for its poor programming ability. Yet something was amiss. “Tell…
The Lives of Dead Trees
MARK HARMON CROUCHES LOW next to log number 219: a moss- covered western hemlock tree trunk, five meters long, lying…
See how fractals forever changed math and science
Fifty years ago, “fractal” was born. In a 1975 book, the Polish-French-American mathematician Benoit B. Mandelbrot coined the term to…
This artist collaborates with AI and robots
For artist Sougwen Chung, AI is an opportunity to embrace uncertainty. Many artists worry about the encroachment of artificial intelligence…
Why Do Researchers Care About Small Language Models?
Large language models work well because they’re so large. The latest models from OpenAI, Meta and DeepSeek use hundreds of…
Life Among the Dead
Decomposing animals host diverse ecosystems that reveal the inner workings of microbial life. A threadlike rain has started falling sideways.…
Debate May Help AI Models Converge on Truth
Letting AI systems argue with each other may help expose when a large language model has made mistakes. n February…