Edd Gent
Teaching AI to think ethically
[M]athematicians have developed a model that can help businesses spot when commercial AI systems might make shady choices in the ...
Infographic: ‘Bionic breasts’ could restore sensation after mastectomies
As many as 100,000 breast cancer patients have one or both breasts removed in mastectomies every year in the United ...
Smartphone DNA testing app offers ‘ultra-portable’ health and environmental monitoring tool
On-the-spot DNA tests could prove invaluable to doctors, farmers, and officials responsible for food safety or environmental monitoring. Now Chinese ...
Fruit fly protein could boost anti-aging treatment
Impressive results in animals that have had their lifespans boosted by up to 40 percent have started making their way into humans. … ...
Plummeting prices for genetic sequencing open ‘Pandora’s box of ethical concerns’
The speed at which the price of genetic sequencing has fallen has been astonishing, from $50,000 a decade ago to roughly $600 today ...
Virtual reality gets more realistic: Vibrating synthetic skin simulates touch
While they’re still struggling to gain commercial traction, the latest VR headsets are able to transport people to impressive virtual ...
Can you hack your sleep cycle for a better night’s rest?
Sleep has become the latest frontier in the life-hackers’ battle for self-improvement. But how easy is to to rewire how you ...
AI ethics can’t come from human medicine: Principles that guide doctors would ‘make no sense’ to a machine
The four core principles of medical ethics are respect for autonomy (patients should have control over how they are treated), ...
4 innovations—including stronger gene-editing skills—that would allow us to rewrite genomes from the ground up
The ability to read genomes has transformed our understanding of biology. Being able to write them would give us unprecedented ...
Viewpoint: There’s reason for optimism about AI’s ability to diagnose illnesses—but there’s also a lot of hype
Medicine is one of the hottest fields when it comes to applying AI to real-world problems, in particular using deep learning systems to ...
Like it or not, the ‘Pandora’s box’ of gene-edited babies has been opened
Denis Rebrikov is the head of a genome-editing laboratory at the Kulakov National Medical Research Center for Obstetrics, Russia’s largest ...
3D printed organs: We’re closer to solving the problem of how to supply them with blood
We’re tantalizingly close to growing organs in the lab, but the biggest remaining challenge has been creating the fine networks ...
Why Microsoft wants to design a system that stores data in DNA
DNA is emerging as an ultra-compact way of storing it all, and now researchers supported by Microsoft have created the first ...
Should law enforcement have a universal genetic forensic database?
The idea of the government having access to every citizen’s DNA might sound like an Orwellian nightmare, but recent events suggest we’re ...
What good is eternal life if we can’t stay young?
Longer lives seem attractive, but as we age we become susceptible to a host of late-life diseases that can prevent ...
Wearable robotic ‘exoskeletons’ merge humanity and machinery
Ever since the appearance of the power loader in the sci-fi classic Aliens, the idea that powered exoskeletons could let workers ...
‘Animal uplift’: Could we—and should we—make animals smarter?
Advances in neural implants and genetic engineering suggest that in the not–too–distant future we may be able to boost human intelligence. If that’s ...
Does gene editing change who we are as ‘humans’?
DNA-based technology’s entry into the mainstream has been picking up lately.... But rapid advances mean it is becoming increasingly feasible ...
Animal cyborgs: 6 nature-inspired robots that could revolutionize science, medicine and farming
1. Light-controlled dragonflies In January, R&D company Draper and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced a partnership aimed at turning ...
CRISPR gene editing could speed up photosynthesis and boost crop yields—But it will take time
Unlike previous approaches to GM crops that introduce foreign DNA into an organism, genome editing achieves much the same outcome ...
