Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Robots are gaining new capabilities thanks to plants and fungi
Biohybrid robots made with plant and fungal tissue are more sensitive to their surroundings.
- Artificial Intelligence
More brainlike computers could change AI for the better
New brain-inspired hardware, architectures and algorithms could lead to more efficient, more capable forms of AI.
- Artificial Intelligence
Are AI chatbot ‘personalities’ in the eye of the beholder?
Defining AI chatbot personality could be based on how a bot “feels” about itself or on how a person feels about the bot they’re interacting with.
- Tech
Flying cars could soon become a reality
Engineers have all the technology they need to make flying cars, but there are still some barriers to getting these sci-fi mainstays off the ground.
- Health & Medicine
AI could transform health care, but will it live up to the hype?
AI has the potential to make health care more effective, equitable and humane. Whether the tech delivers on these promises remains to be seen.
- Health & Medicine
AI helps doctors detect more breast cancer in the largest real-world study
AI is as good as clinicians at interpreting mammograms, a cancer study with nearly 500,000 participants in Germany suggests.
- Artificial Intelligence
AI sniffs out whiskey flavor notes as well as the pros
A machine learning algorithm identified the top five flavor notes in 16 types of whiskey. Each matched the aggregate of what a panel of human pros said.
- Artificial Intelligence
Generative AI is an energy hog. Is the tech worth the environmental cost?
Generative AI and the hype around it has rung in excitement and alarm bells this year. Here’s how to consider climate, energy and AI's intersection.
- Neuroscience
Electronic ‘tattoos’ offer an alternative to electrodes for brain monitoring
A standard EEG test requires electrodes that come with pitfalls. A spray-on ink, capable of carrying electrical signals, avoids some of those.
- Artificial Intelligence
Here’s why turning to AI to train future AIs may be a bad idea
If future AI models are trained on AI-generated content, they could end up producing more bias and nonsense, researchers caution.
- Tech
Feather-inspired airplane flaps could boost flight performance
Rows of flaps inspired by bird wing feathers improve airfoil performance by boosting lift, reducing drag and mitigating stall.
- Humans
A phone app could help people have lucid dreams
New experiments show that an app developed by researchers can boost snoozing users’ likelihood of knowing when they are having a dream.
