Science of the Future
Teaching AI to have a soul
As the resident philosopher of the tech company Anthropic, [Amanda] Askell spends her days learning Claude’s reasoning patterns and talking to the ...
Gene-edited foods are advancing fast—but commercialization and consumer acceptance lag
[A]s gene editing matures, another reality has come into focus. The science accelerates. Commercialization does not. That tension surfaced during ...
GM mushrooms taste like meat but use 70% less land than livestock
Imagine picking up something that looks and chews like chicken, only it never clucked, never set foot on a farm, ...
AI medical advice: Not ready for prime time
Medical artificial intelligence (AI) is often described as a way to make patient care safer by helping clinicians manage information ...
Viewpoint: What happens if the AI bubble bursts? An anti-modernist skeptic makes his case
If some time in an entirely possible future they come to make a movie about “how the AI bubble burst”, ...
Repurposing the husks and other fibrous residue from seed crops could be converted into carbon-storing building supplies
Agricultural waste that is usually burned or left to rot could play a far bigger role in tackling climate change ...
Dr. Google is being kicked to the curb. Welcome to AI. Will the diagnoses be any better?
For the past two decades, there’s been a clear first step for anyone who starts experiencing new medical symptoms: Look ...
One time weight-loss therapy? Gene therapy could revolutionize the GLP-1 industry, but challenges remain
A cardiologist by training, [Harith] Rajagopalan believes there’s a better way to harness the benefits of GLP-1 drugs: a gene ...
Biological age craze: Are longevity tests and clinics a scam?
People are flocking to so-called longevity clinics and buying tests online to find out their “biological age”—a metric that some scientists say ...
Can power-voracious AI rely on nuclear energy?
Nuclear power has emerged as a strong candidate for companies looking to power data centers while cutting emissions. Unlike wind ...
Can AI revolutionize science research?
... OpenAI is making an explicit play for scientists. In October, the firm announced that it had launched a whole ...
Personalized health: When it comes to medicine, one size no longer fits all
Vive les différences. A new health study has found that the classic recommendation of eight hours of sleep may not ...
The dawn of the era of the AI therapist
Given the clear demand for accessible and affordable mental-health services, it’s no wonder that people have looked to artificial intelligence ...
What might be the consequences of designing your baby?
Soon, all of humanity will be customised in the same way to design the next generation. Gene editing may be ...
Gene therapy can restore hearing in some people born with congenital deafness
Up to three in every 1,000 newborns has hearing loss in one or both ears. While cochlear implants offer remarkable hope for ...
10 Top Breakthrough Technologies
What will really matter in the long run? That's the question we tackle each year as we compile this annual ...
AI is pushing us towards a carbon emissions climate disaster—but there is a remedy
As the world keeps warming and electricity bills take center stage in national politics, the data center boom will drive up US carbon emissions ...
What will the human race look like centuries into the future? Here are three possibilities, and one is chilling
Everything around us seems to be changing at breakneck speed. Twenty years ago, smartphones were niche products. Twenty years before ...
Promise & Peril—AI’s Open Questions: Year in Review
Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic concept. It is already embedded in how we grow food, diagnose disease, manage ...
Breakthrough disruptive technology ‘flops’: What can we learn?
In some cases, the vision behind a breakthrough was prescient but the technology of the day was not the best ...
Viewpoint: Trump’s support for nuclear energy is a win for the climate
A president whose pandemic response was viewed by many as incompetent at best and brazen denial at worst spearheaded the ...
AI is a revolutionary tool to increase global farming output and food productivity
With the world's population projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050, the global agricultural sector faces a defining challenge ...
Disinformation Attacks on Food and Farming: Year in Review
Global farming and food policy is under intensive attack from an alliance of left-leaning environmental activists and the ideologically mushy ...
5 provocative questions about how AI might shape our future
If 2025 has been the year of AI hype, 2026 might be the year of AI reckoning. Its powerful capabilities ...
Why are we not eating more cell-based meat? Blame over-regulation, protectionist states, and skeptical consumers
In , we wrote about the excitement consumers and investors had for a new type of protein. By 2013, investors ...
Viewpoint: Why nuclear expansion should not be held hostage to oudated science and imagined health risks
With the return of nuclear energy to the public square and serious efforts among policymakers to commercialize a new generation ...
How once food-poor India’s advanced seed genetics usurped China’s global dominance of rice production
India has become the world's largest rice producer, beating China, with a total output of 150.18 million tonnes, Union Agriculture ...
