Author: The Conversation

Physicists consider black holes one of the most mysterious objects that exist. Ironically, they’re also considered one of the simplest. For years, physicists like me have been looking to prove that black holes are more complex than they seem. And a newly approved European space mission called LISA will help us with this hunt. Research from the 1970s suggests that you can comprehensively describe a black hole using only three physical attributes – their mass, charge and spin. All the other properties of these massive dying stars, like their detailed composition, density and temperature profiles, disappear as they transform into a black hole. That is how simple…

Many people understand the concept of bias at some intuitive level. In society, and in artificial intelligence systems, racial and gender biases are well documented. If society could somehow remove bias, would all problems go away? The late Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, who was a key figure in the field of behavioural economics, argued in his last book that bias is just one side of the coin. Errors in judgments can be attributed to two sources: bias and noise. Bias and noise both play important roles in fields such as law, medicine and financial forecasting, where human judgments are central. In our work as computer and information scientists, my…

At the weekend, millions of people around the world were treated to a mesmerising display of the aurora borealis and aurora australis, better known as the northern and southern lights. The lights, usually seen in crown-like regions surrounding the Earth’s poles, were pushed to mid-latitudes by heightened activity from the Sun. The same geomagnetic storms causing the auroras can cause havoc with our planet’s human-made infrastructure. These storms, caused by high energy particles from the Sun hitting our atmosphere, have the potential to knock out electrical grids and satellites. So what were the impacts of this recent burst of stormy space weather? Around May 8, an…

New technologies have always informed and changed our religious experiences. Listening to early radio broadcasts in the 1880s was experienced by many as religious because radio voices seemed to come from some other dimension. Séances became wildly popular at the time because it was thought by some that radio had opened a door to the spirit world. Today, religion is experiencing new transformations. The information-rich, image-laden character of the internet can provide new ways to understand and explain religious activity. Although participation in formal religious activities is declining in some parts of the world, new technologies will continue to inform our spiritual lives. The metaverse, the…

If you search Google Scholar for the phrase “as an AI language model”, you’ll find plenty of AI research literature and also some rather suspicious results. For example, one paper on agricultural technology says: As an AI language model, I don’t have direct access to current research articles or studies. However, I can provide you with an overview of some recent trends and advancements … Obvious gaffes like this aren’t the only signs that researchers are increasingly turning to generative AI tools when writing up their research. A recent study examined the frequency of certain words in academic writing (such as “commendable”, “meticulously” and…

Located 163 light-years from Earth, a Jupiter-sized exoplanet named WASP-69b offers astrophysicists a window into the dynamic processes that shape planets across the galaxy. The star it orbits is baking and stripping away the planet’s atmosphere, and that escaped atmosphere is being sculpted by the star into a vast, cometlike tail at least 350,000 miles long. I’m an astrophysicist. My research team published a paper in the Astrophysical Journal describing how and why WASP-69b’s tail formed, and what its formation can illuminate about the other types of planets astronomers tend to detect outside of our solar system. A universe filled with exoplanets When you…

It’s been seven years since the launch of Replika, an artificially intelligent chatbot designed to be a friend to human users. Despite early warnings about the dangers of such AI friends, interest in friendships and even romantic relationships with AI is on the rise. The Google Play store shows more than 30 million total downloads of Replika and two of its major competitors since their respective launches. With one in four people around the world reporting being lonely, it is no wonder so many are drawn to the promise of a friend programmed to be “always here to listen and talk, always on your side”. But warnings about the perils to…

The origin of life on Earth is still enigmatic, but we are slowly unravelling the steps involved and the necessary ingredients. Scientists believe life arose in a primordial soup of organic chemicals and biomolecules on the early Earth, eventually leading to actual organisms. It’s long been suspected that some of these ingredients may have been delivered from space. Now a new study, published in Science Advances, shows that a special group of molecules, known as peptides, can form more easily under the conditions of space than those found on Earth. That means they could have been delivered to the early Earth…

Tesla is yet again undergoing scrutiny from federal regulators in the United States. The issue at hand now is whether the automotive company did enough in response to the 2023 recalls by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Transport Canada. The recalls were issued after several collisions resulting from using Tesla’s proprietary Autopilot system. Tesla’s Autopilot — alongside systems like Cadillac’s Super Cruise and Volvo’s Pilot Assist — falls in the category of partially automated systems. These systems can take control of the vehicle’s acceleration and lane position however, they require the human driver to stay vigilant. https://youtu.be/hzK9zunYL_c The recall issued on Dec. 12,…

Artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed at an astounding pace over the last few years. Some scientists are now looking towards the development of artificial superintelligence (ASI) — a form of AI that would not only surpass human intelligence but would not be bound by the learning speeds of humans. But what if this milestone isn’t just a remarkable achievement? What if it also represents a formidable bottleneck in the development of all civilisations, one so challenging that it thwarts their long-term survival? This idea is at the heart of a research paper I recently published in Acta Astronautica. Could AI be the universe’s “great filter” – a…