artificial intelligence
We don’t always know why ‘intelligent’ machines do what they do. Should we study them like animals?
Artificial intelligence algorithms are often seen as 'black boxes' whose rules remain inaccessible. We must therefore create a new scientific ...
AI’s surprising development of ‘number sense’ mimics that of human babies
Training software that emulates brain networks to identify dog breeds or sports equipment is by now old news. But getting ...
Using AI to understand biological vision is another step toward engineering artificial brains
[Recently,] two studies independently tapped into the power of [artificial neural networks] to solve a 70-year-old neuroscience mystery: how does ...
Defining life: Why we need to identify the boundary between living things and AI robots
They’re advancing artificial intelligence (AI) to create next-gen personalized robots that can read human emotions in real time. What will ...
Building artificial brains to help us understand our own
You’d think that overseeing an entire issue of The Scientist focused on artificial intelligence would cause my mind to wander far into ...
Can AI take everything we’ve learned about medicine and become ‘a single doctor’?
The question isn’t if AI is coming to medicine. It’s how. At its best, machine learning can tap into the collective experience of ...
Sex robots create a lot of questions, including this one: Does it count as cheating on your human partner?
In “Turned On,” a computer scientist and sex researcher explores the surprisingly serious business of sexual companion robots (no snickering, ...
Viewpoint: AI may boost our diagnostic abilities, but it’s not ready to replace human doctors
I read a recent article in Nature Medicine about new inroads in deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in pediatrics. In the article, researchers ...
We have so much genomic data—we need AI to help us grapple with it
Genomics is set to become the biggest source of data on the planet, overtaking the current leading heavyweights – astronomy, ...
3 ways artificial intelligence could enhance medical care and help us live longer
When it comes to the future of healthcare, perhaps the only technology more powerful than CRISPR is artificial intelligence. ...
Artificial intelligence could have a future diagnosing sick children, study says
With the money and time that visits to the ER and urgent care soak up, the chance to revisit old-fashioned ...
How AI ‘learned’ to predict a person’s age by analyzing gut bacteria
The plethora of bacteria and other tiny organisms that live in your gut, often referred to as the gut microbiome, don’t ...
Do we have an undiscovered human ancestor? AI says it’s likely
Through artificial intelligence (AI), scientists have now learned that we may have a completely new and as yet unidentified subspecies ...
Computer modeled on biological brains could ‘jump-start’ new era in AI research
A new research project aims to harness the power of quantum computers to build a new type of neural network — work the ...
How AI can make gene editing ‘more accurate, cheaper and easier’
One of the most exciting prospects about gene technology is the development of precision or personalized medicine. The field, which ...
You sound down: Using AI to spot depression in a person’s voice
[T]he notion that artificial intelligence could help predict if a person is suffering from depression is potentially a big step ...
‘Synthetic media’: How AI could make the era of ‘fake news’ far worse
In the emerging world of “synthetic media,” the work of digital-image creation—once the domain of highly skilled programmers and Hollywood ...
These 12 guidelines could protect us from threats from artificial intelligence
After months of work, a set of guidelines designed to protect humanity from a range of threats posed by artificial ...
Keeping artificial intelligence free of intentional bias
The conversation about unconscious bias in artificial intelligence often focuses on algorithms that unintentionally cause disproportionate harm to entire swaths ...
‘Autonomous weapons’ based on artificial intelligence could change warfare—and why that’s worrisome
In a new book, an expert (and former U.S. Army Ranger) warns that the world is stumbling toward a scary ...
Optical illusions and why neural networks can’t seem to figure them out
[Optical illusions] are interesting because they provide insight into the nature of the visual system and perception. So ways of ...
First Mars, then Jupiter’s moons: How artificial intelligence is ramping up space exploration
Artificial intelligence in space exploration is gathering momentum. Over the coming years, new missions look likely to be turbo-charged by AI as ...
Artificial intelligence bias: Amazon shut down AI recruiter engine that ‘penalized women’
Amazon.com Inc’s machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women. The team had been ...
Artificial Intelligence as Ken Kesey: A computer goes on a cross-country novel writing trip
On March 25, 2017, a black Cadillac with a white-domed surveillance camera attached to its trunk departed Brooklyn for New ...
Robots helping Chinese parents raise kids. Is that a good thing?
At kindergarten, three-year-old Seven Kong has his schoolmates to play with, but at home his best friend is a kidney-shaped, ...
Viewpoint: We need to push artificial intelligence beyond ‘spying, brainwashing, or killing’
We are facing a future with great uncertainty and tremendous promise, and the best we can do is to confront ...
‘Theory of mind’: Why artificial intelligence needs to understand how we think
What AI needs, [said Dr. Jun Wang at University College London] is a type of deep communication skill that stems from a critical human ...
