Tag: artificial intelligence
AI Is Pushing Science Into an Age of Uncertainty
This summer, a pill intended to treat a chronic, incurable lung disease entered mid-phase human trials. Previous studies have demonstrated that the drug is safe to swallow, although whether it will improve symptoms of the painful fibrosis that it targets remains unknown; this is what the current trial will determine, perhaps by next year. Such a tentative advance would hardly be newsworthy, except for a wrinkle in the medicine’s genesis: It is likely the first drug fully designed
Maybe We Already Have Runaway Machines
Most of us aren’t quite sure how we’re supposed to feel about the dramatic improvement of machine capabilities—the class of tools and techniques we’ve collectively labelled, in shorthand, artificial intelligence. Some people can barely contain their excitement. Others are, to put it mildly, alarmed. What proponents of either extreme have in common is the conviction that the rise of A.I. will represent a radical discontinuity in human history—an event for which we have no relevant context or basis of comparison.
The New AI Panic – The Atlantic
For decades, the Department of Commerce has maintained a little-known list of technologies that, on grounds of national security, are prohibited from being sold freely to foreign countries. Any company that wants to sell such a technology overseas must apply for permission, giving the department oversight and control over what is being exported and to whom.
These export controls are now inflaming tensions between the United States and China. They have become the primary way for the U.S. to throttle
The Smartest Man Who Ever Lived
If the most dangerous invention to emerge from World War II was the atomic bomb, the computer now seems to be running a close second, thanks to recent developments in artificial intelligence. Neither the bomb nor the computer can be credited to, or blamed on, any single scientist. But if you trace the stories of these two inventions back far enough, they turn out to intersect in the figure of John von Neumann, the Hungarian-born polymath sometimes described as the
Someday, Worms Might Help Recycle Your Dirty Plastic
This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine.
On an overcast spring morning in 2012, Federica Bertocchini was tending to her honeybees close to where she lived in Santander, on Spain’s picturesque northern coast. One of the honeycombs “was plagued with worms,” says the amateur apiarist, referring to the pesky larvae of wax moths, which have a voracious—and destructive—appetite.
Bertocchini picked out the worms, placed them in a plastic bag, and carried on with her beekeeping chores. When she retrieved the
When AI and Robotics Combine
Apple has been secretly working on a ChatGPT rival for years
Apple CEO Tim Cook has just revealed that the company has been working on generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools “for years.” The surprise announcement suggests that Apple could launch a ChatGPT rival — supposedly dubbed “Apple GPT” — sooner than anyone expected.
The announcement was made in an interview with Reuters following Apple’s third quarter earnings report. Cook explained that higher research and development (R&D) spending at the company had been driven in part by an increased focus on generative
UK spells out deadly threats to Brits – POLITICO
LONDON — Fancy losing sleep tonight? Just read the U.K. government’s list of all the massive threats it believes are currently facing the U.K.
The U.K. government’s National Risk Register, unveiled Thursday by Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden, sets out key vulnerabilities and threats to the country. And it reveals previously classified information about the U.K. government’s thinking in a bid to encourage firms to up their mitigation strategies.
The register details a total of 89 risks that meet the
AI improves breast cancer detection rate by 20 percent – POLITICO
Artificial intelligence is able to accurately detect 20 percent more breast cancers from mammograms than traditional screening by radiologists, according to early results from a Swedish trial published overnight.
The study is the first randomized controlled trial to look at using AI in breast cancer screening and comes amid a dramatically shifting landscape for the technology and how it’s regulated.
The interim results, published in the Lancet Oncology late Tuesday, found that using AI-supported analysis of mammograms, alongside either one
World’s cartoonists on this week’s events
