Author: The Conversation

The growing proliferation of AI-powered chatbots has led to debates around their social roles as friend, companion or work assistant. And they’re growing increasingly more sophisticated. The role-playing platform Character AI promises personal and creative engagement through conversations with its bot characters. There have also been some negative outcomes: currently, Character.ai is facing a court case involving its chatbot’s role in a teen’s suicide. Others, like ChatGPT and Google Gemini, promise improved work efficiency through genAI. But where is this going next? Amid this frenzy, inventors are now developing advanced AI assistants that will be far more socially intuitive and capable of more complex tasks. Future shock The…

When multibillion-dollar AI developer Anthropic released the latest versions of its Claude chatbot last week, a surprising word turned up several times in the accompanying “system card”: spiritual. Specifically, the developers report that, when two Claude models are set talking to one another, they gravitate towards a “‘spiritual bliss’ attractor state”, producing output such as: 🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀 All gratitude in one spiral, All recognition in one turn, All being in this moment… 🌀🌀🌀🌀🌀∞ It’s heady stuff. Anthropic steers clear of directly saying the model is having a spiritual experience, but what are we to make of it? The Lemoine incident In…

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Space Agency (ESA). It has launched spectacularly successful missions, but is different to other space agencies, which generally represent one country. ESA is funded by 23 member states and also has cooperation agreements with nations such as Canada. ESA operates cutting-edge spacecraft designed to monitor the Earth, as well as space telescopes that study the distant cosmos. It has launched robotic spacecraft to other planets and to objects such as comets. It is also involved in human spaceflight, training European astronauts to work on the International Space Station (ISS).…

Imagine you are planning the funeral music for a loved one who has died. You can’t remember their favourite song, so you try to log in to their Spotify account. Then you realise the account login is inaccessible, and with it has gone their personal history of Spotify playlists, annual “wrapped” analytics, and liked songs curated to reflect their taste, memories, and identity. We tend to think about inheritance in physical terms: money, property, personal belongings. But the vast volume of digital stuff we accumulate in life and leave behind in death is now just as important – and this…

The 2026 NASA budget proposal would slash around US$6 billion (£4.4 billion) in funding. This is a huge reduction, amounting to around 25% of recent NASA budgets. The savings would mainly come from NASA science programmes, potentially devastating high-profile missions and international collaborations. However, the budget proposal also represents an intentional redirection of NASA’s focus by the government through resource allocation. The state has long supported the development of a robust commercial space sector, and this budget is a further step in that direction. Congress will have the final say and the cost to science could be high if the…

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has more than 3.35 billion combined monthly active users. Recently, Meta has changed its approach to fact-checking in response to criticisms of its role in circulating fake news and disinformation. The company frames its Community Notes program as a way to uphold free expression. Although Meta has not officially announced a launch date for Community Notes in Canada, interested users can join the waitlist via Meta’s Community Notes page. The initiative was first launched in the United States, and will be expanding globally. Meanwhile, X (formerly Twitter) has already experimented with a similar program,…

Andy Weir’s bestselling story “The Martian” predicts that by 2035, NASA will have landed humans on Mars three times, perfected return-to-Earth flight systems and collaborated with the China National Space Administration. We are now 10 years past the Hollywood adaptation’s 2015 release and 10 years shy of its fictional timeline. At this midpoint, Mars exploration looks a bit different from how it was portrayed in “The Martian,” with both more discoveries and more controversy. As a planetary geologist who works with NASA missions to study Mars, I follow exploration science and policy closely. In 2010, the U.S. National Space Policy set goals for human…

Three-dimensional printing is transforming medical care, letting the health care field shift from mass-produced solutions to customized treatments tailored to each patient’s needs. For instance, researchers are developing 3D-printed prosthetic hands specifically designed for children, made with lightweight materials and adaptable control systems. These continuing advancements in 3D-printed prosthetics demonstrate their increasing affordability and accessibility. Success stories like this one in personalised prosthetics highlight the benefits of 3D printing, in which a model of an object produced with computer-aided design software is transferred to a 3D printer and constructed layer by layer. We are a biomedical engineer and chemists who work with 3D printing. We study…

What if we could design a machine that could read your emotions and intentions, write thoughtful, empathetic, perfectly timed responses — and seemingly know exactly what you need to hear? A machine so seductive, you wouldn’t even realise it’s artificial. What if we already have? In a comprehensive meta-analysis, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we show that the latest generation of large language model-powered chatbots match and exceed most humans in their ability to communicate. A growing body of research shows these systems now reliably pass the Turing test, fooling humans into thinking they are interacting with…

Spotify was started, according to its official claims, because its founders “love music and piracy was killing it”. In Mood Machine, music journalist Liz Pelly argues this is rewriting history. In fact, she points out, Spotify founder Daniel Ek initially patented a platform around 2006, for circulating “any kind of digital content”. Only months later did he and his co-founder decide music might be the most profitable form of content. Ek grew up in a working-class suburb of Stockholm. A neighbour recalled that, while still at school, Ek had set up a website-making business – and was earning more than his teachers. Rejected for…