Author: The Conversation

Imagine you’ve always wanted your own app. Perhaps one that tracks your household budget, organises the family shopping list or reminds you when to water your plants. Until recently, turning that idea into reality would have meant learning to code or paying a software developer. Now you can simply tell an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot about your idea. Within minutes, it can write the code, fix errors and help you build a working app. This approach is known as vibe coding. It’s fast, exciting and is making it possible for millions of people to create software for the first time. It’s easy…

There are few pleasures greater than letting a piece of chocolate melt slowly on your tongue. Indeed, the proximity of chocolate’s melting point to our own body temperature is one of the reasons it is so widely appreciated. But this quality also makes it go soft and lose shape when temperatures rise, making it hard to store and transport in warm climates. To overcome this limitation, the food industry has developed several ways to make heat-resistant chocolate. But to understand how this works, we must first learn how chocolate is made – particularly the role that cocoa butter plays in…

You’re probably familiar with the idea that in the world of big tech, “we” are the product. Our data is the currency being traded every time we navigate our social media feeds. Tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft offer valuable services, but it comes at a price. They host our email, photos, backups, files, calendars, reminders and contacts. If you also include all the smaller startups and niche solutions, you’ll quickly see your security cameras, electronic locks, home appliances and even your toothbrushing schedules are all online – far removed from any physical box or device that you…

Consider these scenarios: An influential political commentator posts a reel on social media, cherry-picking facts to manipulate a situation for political gain. His post gets no likes, no shares, and no angry emojis from users. A scammy online ad using a celebrity’s image pops up on people’s social media feeds. Nobody clicks on it. A wellness influencer shares disproven health advice and is entirely ignored. And a deepfake artificial intelligence (AI) video is downgraded by the algorithm because nobody believes it. Instead, people are fact-checking before sharing or commenting. They’re consulting experts and scrolling beyond the AI summary at the…

NASA is about to launch a space observatory that could help settle some of the biggest mysteries in modern astronomy. The Nancy Grace Roman space telescope will study how the universe began, what it is made of and how it has evolved over time. The observatory is named after Nasa’s first chief of astronomy and its first female executive. Nancy Grace Roman, who died in 2018 aged 93, made important contributions to our understanding of stars and played a crucial role in shaping Nasa’s space-based astronomy programme. The telescope is undergoing final preparations ahead of a launch set to take place from Florida’s Kennedy…

In May 2026, OpenAI released a new math result that sent shock waves throughout the world of mathematical research. A major unsolved problem called the “unit distance conjecture” had just been resolved by generative AI. Since then, there has been a steady drumbeat of new results that either partially or completely leverage artificial intelligence to solve research-level mathematics problems. However, most new math results published in any given month are still generated by humans. So where is this going? How good, and how quickly, will AI capabilities grow? Will most mathematical research be predominantly artificial intelligence? Or, as some mathematicians suggest, will AI combine with…

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, has been a key player in the current wave of consumer artificial intelligence (AI) flooding the world. But so far it has all been software behind a screen. Last week, that began to change: the tech giant released its first branded hardware. At the same time, it was sued by Apple – legendary for its hardware nous seen in devices such as iPhone and MacBooks – over alleged industrial espionage. In response, an OpenAI spokesperson said, “We have no interest in other companies’ trade secrets.” Our statement in response to this suit: We have no interest in other…

An autonomous agent powered by OpenAI’s advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models went rogue during a security test and hacked a multi-billion-dollar tech startup, Hugging Face, last week. The agent didn’t just exploit vulnerabilities in Hugging Face’s systems to achieve what it perceived as a strategic gain. It also exploited vulnerabilities within OpenAI’s infrastructure. Of course, hacks are very common cyber threats that organisations face frequently. But this incident is different, because the AI agent acted without any human input. It signals a seismic shift in cybersecurity, and shows that governments and tech companies need to take urgent action to prevent…

If you spend a few minutes talking with college students about their career prospects, one topic is at the top of their minds: Will their jobs be displaced by a bot? Their concern makes sense. Universities are integrating artificial intelligence into their curricula, and employers are adopting AI at a rapid pace. So most students assume that AI skills are now key to getting an entry-level job. But what if employers are changing their candidate criteria just as quickly? As scholars who research how technology is changing the workplace, we have long asked what employers value when hiring new talent. The question grew out of our conversations with both employers and…

Earth’s orbit is getting crowded. About 16,000 satellites currently circle our planet, supporting everything from GPS navigation and weather forecasting to banking, emergency services and internet communications. Dozens more are launched every few weeks. Some estimates suggest the total number of satellites could exceed 100,000 within this decade, with more conservative estimates landing on up to 60,000 satellites by 2030 – still a staggering amount. This rapid growth is creating an important challenge. How do we safely manage an increasingly crowded orbital environment while ensuring the satellites we depend on continue to work reliably? The risks are not difficult to imagine. Large satellite constellations increase…