Author: The Conversation

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched on Aug. 30, 2026, beginning a journey that will take it about a million miles from the Earth. Once there, Roman will study some of the biggest mysteries in astronomy, from dark energy to the formation of galaxies. It will also search for planets around other stars, called exoplanets, but in a rather unusual way. Roman will be able to find many of these exotic worlds without seeing the planets themselves. Instead, it will watch for distant stars that temporarily become brighter. The reason this strategy works is one of the stranger consequences…

Devices that link human minds to computers are progressing rapidly. Already, these brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are allowing patients with severe paralysis to communicate, use digital devices or control smart homes with their brains. Trials are also exploring whether they could help restore patients’ speech or control robotic machinery. One British patient with a spinal injury has even had a BCI fitted to restore some of his body’s movement. For now, these medical BCIs are largely implantable – requiring surgical insertion into the brain or onto its surface to work. They’re also still experimental. But alongside them, a number of wearable,…

Details have been published of a critical flaw in the programming language PHP, which is the backbone of more than 70% of all websites. Left unfixed, the flaw would allow hackers to easily take over and compromise millions of websites and the information held on their servers. In response, multiple European governments and operators, including the Port of Rotterdam, have taken websites offline. The Australian Signals Directorate, America’s Cyber Defence Agency, and similar bodies from the United Kingdom, Europe and Japan have all warned web developers to apply urgent updates to their core systems, and to consider taking down websites…

In the wake of high-profile hacking incidents involving advanced artificial intelligence agents, some politicians and business executives have been calling for an AI kill switch: a safeguard that could shut down these AI systems in an emergency. The idea is that, if a model were to behave in dangerous ways, a kill switch would allow humans to regain control over that system by metaphorically flipping a switch from “on” to “off.” Several efforts at AI regulation in 2026 have focused on the notion of a kill switch. These include proposed congressional legislation such as the AI Kill Switch Act, and…

The Canadian government recently launched its Responsible Data Centre Development Principles, enabling the country to set the terms for responsible growth of artificial intelligence computing power and storage. The promise: “Building more capacity here at home will give Canada greater resilience and choice, while helping Canadian researchers, innovators and businesses build, deploy and scale.” The principles set five expectations for new data centre projects: to create lasting local benefits, protect Canadians from extra electricity costs, minimise water use and environmental impacts, be transparent about local impacts and bring strategic value to Canada. Meanwhile, another part of the story remains out…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has recently been discussing “artificial general intelligence” that matches or surpasses human capabilities. This is from the same person who has said children born today (including his own) will “never be more intelligent than AI, from a ‘raw IQ’” (intelligence quotient) perspective. United States President Donald Trump has also recently mused about who is and who is not “high IQ.” As a scholar rooted in the history of Canadian higher education and its intersections with rhetoric around disability and race, every time I hear the word “intelligence,” including as “IQ,” I get jumpy. “Intelligence” clearly has a high-stakes and worrisome future, but also a dark history.…

The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine honoured Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel for their work developing optogenetics – a technique that allows researchers to control the activity of neurons with light. The Conversation Weekly podcast talked to Karl Deisseroth, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, about his journey developing optogenetics and its potential to treat a wide range of neuropsychiatric conditions. What follows is an edited transcript of the podcast. Take us back to the early 1990s. You’re training to be a doctor and you start a rotation working with psychiatric patients. What questions about the brain did that raise for you? Both basic…

Last week, Australian Federal Police commissioner Krissy Barrett warned that artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are not a sufficient replacement for human support for children. The comment was in response to a recent Adelaide University study that found more than one in three Australian children turn to AI chatbots for support when they are sexually victimised online, or otherwise tell nobody at all. While there can be benefits to children using AI, such as help with learning, or practising social skills, there is also a risk they will go to AI chatbots and assistants for emotional support over parents and other trusted adults. In Australia, around half of children…

Imagine an artificial intelligence (AI) system that has performed reliably for months. Its recommendations are almost always right, and the employee reviewing them has learned that close scrutiny rarely changes the outcome. Then something unusual happens. The AI makes an error or can’t proceed and needs human intervention. The employee is expected to step in and remains responsible for the outcome. But does the employee know how to do the task? I’m a professor of management information systems and the academic director of Drexel University’s Center for Applied AI & Business Analytics. In my research on human-AI relationships, I call this latent risk:…

The cover of a new report on AI from a US museum think tank restyles the Sistine Chapel’s Creation of Adam, with the hand of God replaced by a Terminator-style robotic one. So far, so obvious. In Remuseum’s Five Ways AI Can Humanise Museums, AI has presumably replaced God as the enabler of all things. But who is Adam’s hand supposed to represent: the museum visitor or the museum worker? Or could it be the figure of the artist, being granted the power to create new worlds with AI? Creating worlds is exactly what artists can do, and paying attention to their…