Letting AI systems argue with each other may help expose when a large language model has made mistakes. n February 2023, Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Bard claimed that the James Webb Space Telescope had captured the first image of a planet outside our solar system. It hadn’t. When researchers from Purdue University asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT […]
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The prolific researcher found deep connections between randomness and computation and spent a career influencing cryptographers, complexity researchers and more. For more than 40 years, Avi Wigderson has studied problems. But as a computational complexity theorist, he doesn’t necessarily care about the answers to these problems. He often just wants to know if they’re solvable
Avi Wigderson, Complexity Theory Pioneer, Wins Turing Award Read More »
A new study suggests that so-called emergent abilities actually develop gradually and predictably, depending on how you measure them. Two years ago, in a project called the Beyond the Imitation Game benchmark(opens a new tab), or BIG-bench, 450 researchers compiled a list of 204 tasks designed to test the capabilities of large language models, which power
How Quickly Do Large Language Models Learn Unexpected Skills? Read More »
Shorter courses of more intense radiation therapy mean fewer visits and less cost for patients. Studies show abbreviated treatments are just as effective as longer courses. ONE MORNING AS SHE DRESSED FOR WORK in July 2017, Tiffany Fagnani’s eye began to twitch. Then her arm began to twitch too. Fagnani, then 36, was working as a
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The search for extraterrestrial life is targeting Jupiter’s icy moon Europa NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will travel to one of Jupiter’s largest moons to look for evidence of conditions that could support life. by Stephen Ornesarchive page February 19, 2024 We’ve known of Europa’s existence for more than four centuries, but for most of that
Sculptor merges engineering and art to conjure connections among people and nature Artist Janet Echelman thinks big. One of her recent installations is a 229-foot-long mesh sculpture suspended over a downtown intersection in Columbus, Ohio—the largest public artwork in the city’s history. Unveiled in June 2023 and titled Current, it sweeps down from its highest perch more
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Cryptographers want encryption schemes that are impossible for tomorrow’s quantum computers to crack. There’s only one catch: they might not exist. When we check email, log in to our bank accounts, or exchange messages on Signal, our passwords and credentials are protected through encryption, a locking scheme that uses secrets to disguise our data. It
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The upswing in EV sales means a flood of used batteries in the coming years. What’s the best way to minimize their environmental impact and reuse precious minerals? Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) continue to grow. According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, 2.3 million EVs sold worldwide in the first three months of 2023
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JUST AFTER LABOR DAY in 2019, Sascha Roth, who was 38 years old, was diagnosed with stage III rectal cancer. Roth co-owns and operates Urban Country Designs, a furniture and interior design company in Bethesda, Maryland. After noticing some rectal bleeding, she had a sigmoidoscopy, and a growth in her rectum was removed. When her gastroenterologist
Immunotherapy: When is sooner better than later? Read More »
Ariel Procaccia has thought a lot about how to cut cake over the last 15 years. That’s partly because the Harvard computer scientist has three children who among them have celebrated more than two dozen birthdays. He knows what it’s like to stand with a knife before a layered masterpiece, frosted with buttercream and chocolate
Here’s why mathematicians are so interested in cake cutting Read More »
