Tech

  1. Artificial Intelligence

    Reinforcement learning AI might bring humanoid robots to the real world

    Reinforcement learning techniques could be the keys to integrating robots — who use machine learning to output more than words — into the real world.

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  2. Artificial Intelligence

    Should we use AI to resurrect digital ‘ghosts’ of the dead?

    Technology that creates deepfake bots of dead loved ones may need safeguards, experts warn.

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  3. Artificial Intelligence

    This robot can tell when you’re about to smile — and smile back

    Using machine learning, researchers trained Emo to make facial expressions in sync with humans.

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  4. Artificial Intelligence

    AI learned how to sway humans by watching a cooperative cooking game

    New research used the game Overcooked to show how offline reinforcement learning algorithms could teach bots to collaborate with — or manipulate — us.

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  5. Artificial Intelligence

    Why large language models aren’t headed toward humanlike understanding

    Unlike people, today's generative AI isn’t good at learning concepts that it can apply to new situations.

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  6. Agriculture

    Could a rice-meat hybrid be what’s for dinner?

    A hybrid food that combines rice, animal cells and fish gelatin could one day be a more sustainable way to produce meat.

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  7. Artificial Intelligence

    How do babies learn words? An AI experiment may hold clues

    Using relatively little data, audio and video taken from a baby’s perspective, an AI program learned the names of objects the baby encountered.

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  8. Neuroscience

    A new device let a man sense temperature with his prosthetic hand

    A device that can be integrated into prosthetic hands capitalizes on phantom sensations to enable users to sense hot and cold.

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  9. Space

    How to build an internet on Mars

    Future Red Planet inhabitants will need new ways to connect, including improved relay networks and an offshoot internet.

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  10. Tech

    ‘Nuts and Bolts’ showcases the 7 building blocks of modern engineering

    Science News reviews Roma Agrawal's book, which updates the classic list of simple machines and reveals the heart and soul of engineering.

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  11. Artificial Intelligence

    AI chatbots can be tricked into misbehaving. Can scientists stop it?

    To develop better safeguards, computer scientists are studying how people have manipulated generative AI chatbots into answering harmful questions.

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  12. Physics

    50 years ago, timekeepers deployed the newly invented leap second

    After more than 50 years, metrologists will stop using the leap second to align the time kept by atomic clocks with the rate of Earth’s spin.

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