Author: The Conversation

At some point in the next several months, I am hoping to receive a modest check as a member of the class covered in the class-action settlement Bartz v. Anthropic. In 2025, the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic, best known for creating the chatbot Claude, agreed to pay up to US$1.5 billion to thousands of authors after a judge ruled that the company had infringed upon their copyrights. When I first learned about the settlement, I assumed that Anthropic was primarily interested in teaching Claude about the subject of my stolen work, former socialist activist, British Labour politician and feminist Ellen Wilkinson. It did…

The explosion of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools has provoked both hopes and anxieties about the potential benefits and harms of this technology. In advanced economies, people are almost equally worried and optimistic about it. This is perhaps unsurprising. AI consumes vast amounts of natural resources yet promises to save the planet. It may improve human efficiency and productivity, while putting millions out of work. For many white-collar workers, AI use now seems non-optional. The messaging is clear – get on board or be left behind. Amid this uncertainty and rapid technological uptake, concerned citizens have made efforts to resist AI. One form of AI resistance, aimed…

The minibus taxi is ubiquitous in southern Africa. These vehicles are the backbone of the urban economy, providing affordable mobility for millions. In Cape Town, South Africa’s second most populous city, they are central to the transport landscape. Around two-thirds of the city’s public transport users rely on paratransit services (which respond flexibly to demand), carrying about 830,000 daily passengers across 1,466 routes, and run by private individuals or associations rather than the state. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C45BzhRNnVA Minibus taxis in Cape Town, South Africa. But because these vehicles run on petrol and diesel, they also contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, poor urban air quality and rising fuel…

At this point in NASA’s human spaceflight story, researchers have a substantial amount of material – documents, artefacts, and images – with which to tell the stories of past flights to space. But with NASA’s Artemis II mission around the Moon now in the books, we’re getting a refreshed look at space. And the digital photographs transmitted back to Earth – even mid-mission – tell a modern story of the crew’s experience. Entire generations born after Apollo 17’s last close-up look at the Moon in 1972 may hardly believe the reality of Artemis II in the age of AI-generated deep fakes. But this mission…

It can be estimated theoretically that more unique biological interactions exist than stars in our known universe. The biological foundations of life are built on an unimaginably vast network of interactions, where molecules, cells, systems and organisms are constantly colliding. For centuries, scientists and doctors have relied on targeted techniques and isolated observations. Through slow, iterative, shared discovery over generations, we have developed our understanding of biology, applying fractional knowledge to enable life-changing approaches in only a subset of disease states and dysfunction. Humanity is now entering a new era of scientific discovery, using artificial intelligence (AI) to learn and reason…

The four Artemis II astronauts who looped around the Moon this week are expected to splash down soon. NASA’s grand mission spells a return to human deep-space travel, with renewed interest in building a long-term Moon base. The images captured by the crew are spectacular, offering a view from the far side of the Moon with Earth hovering low on the horizon. They are another reminder of technical achievement and human ambition. But in the background, decisions about what happens next and who benefits are already taking shape. While there have always been legal tensions around ownership, access and control of space, in 2026 they no…

The conflict in Iran – but also the war in Ukraine – shows not only that AI is radically changing the economics of war (which may be good news), but also that we may be heading towards some kind of “Chernobyl moment”. We may soon experience a disaster that will force us to belatedly realise we should have drawn up some shared rules to govern a technological development that we ourselves triggered. Even Dario Amodei, the founder of AI company Anthropic, who seems passionate about taking action to prevent Armageddon, acknowledges that he doesn’t have the answer we desperately need. One of the…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly learning to autonomously design and run biological experiments, but the systems intended to govern those capabilities are struggling to keep pace. AI company OpenAI and biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks announced in February 2026 that OpenAI’s flagship model GPT-5 had autonomously designed and run 36,000 biological experiments. It did this through a robotic cloud laboratory, a facility where automated equipment controlled remotely by computers carries out experiments. The AI model proposed study designs, and robots carried them out and fed the data back to the model for the next round. Humans set the goal, and the machines did much…

In December, The Conversation hosted a webinar on AI’s revolutionary role in drug discovery and development. Science and technology editor Eric Smalley interviewed Jeffrey Skolnick, eminent scholar in computational systems biology at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Benjamin P. Brown, assistant professor of pharmacology at Vanderbilt University. Skolnick has developed AI-based approaches to predict protein structure and function that may help with drug discovery and finding off-label uses of existing drugs. Brown’s lab works on creating new computer models that make drug discovery faster and more reliable. Below is a condensed and edited version of the interview. Let’s start with the big picture. How…

In just a few years, generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) has brought about significant changes in many industries from healthcare to education, entertainment to finance, and even law. The use of gen AI in court verdicts poses significant risks to justice. Erroneous outcomes generated from “hallucinated” information, discriminatory decisions and lack of transparency are all concerns when this technology is introduced to courtrooms. But already a number of judges around the world have used it in decision-making and judgment writing. This is why some jurisdictions, including the UK, have issued guidelines for judges regarding AI use. Broadly, the guidelines suggest judges might use AI as…