Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Space
‘Star Wars’ holds clues to making speedier spacecraft in the real world
Controlled fusion, solar sails or ion engines could someday help spaceships travel between star systems.
- Tech
A hopping robot shows off its squirrel-like skills
Salto the jumping robot can take a flying leap and land on a narrow pipe — just like a squirrel soaring from branch to branch.
- Artificial Intelligence
As AI advances, the meaning of artificial general intelligence remains murky
AI models are growing ever-more capable, accurate and impressive. The question of if they represent “general intelligence” is increasingly moot.
- Artificial Intelligence
Medical AI tools are growing, but are they being tested properly?
AI medical benchmark tests fall short because they don’t test efficiency on real tasks such as writing medical notes, experts say.
- Tech
Squirty gels bring the taste of cake and coffee to virtual reality
By squirting chemicals onto a person’s tongue to taste, a new device aims to replicate food flavors for fuller virtual experiences.
- 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.
