Tech
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- Psychology
Smiles tweaked by AI can boost attraction, a speed-dating study shows
Using face filters to alter expressions manipulated feelings of attraction, raising questions about how such technology may influence social interactions.
- Science & Society
Using AI, historians track how astronomy ideas spread in the 16th century
A new AI machine learning technique helped historians analyze 76,000 pages from astronomy textbooks spanning nearly two centuries.
- Tech
Tech companies want small nuclear reactors. Here’s how they’d work
To fuel AI’s insatiable energy appetite, tech companies are going big on small nuclear reactors.
- Artificial Intelligence
The discovery of tools key to machine learning wins the 2024 physics Nobel
John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton used tools from physics to develop data analysis methods that underlie machine learning.
- Agriculture
‘Smart lighting’ might make vertical farming more affordable
A new computer program adjusts grow lights to cut down on electric bills without sacrificing photosynthesis.
- Computing
This engineer’s light-based computers take inspiration from the brain
Physicist and engineer Bhavin Shastri is working to create the first photonic computer modeled after the human brain.
- Artificial Intelligence
Talking to a chatbot may weaken someone’s belief in conspiracy theories
AI might help lift conspiracy theorists out of the rabbit hole, but some researchers say proceed with caution.
