Author: The Conversation

The arrival of AI systems called large language models (LLMs), like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, has been heralded as the start of a new technological era. And they may indeed have significant impacts on how we live and work in future. But they haven’t appeared from nowhere and have a much longer history than most people realise. In fact, most of us have already been using the approaches they are based on for years in our existing technology. LLMs are a particular type of language model, which is a mathematical representation of language based on probabilities. If you’ve ever used predictive…

Can artificial intelligence (AI) tell whether you’re happy, sad, angry or frustrated? According to technology companies that offer AI-enabled emotion recognition software, the answer to this question is yes. But this claim does not stack up against mounting scientific evidence. What’s more, emotion recognition technology poses a range of legal and societal risks – especially when deployed in the workplace. For these reasons, the European Union’s AI Act, which came into force in August, bans AI systems used to infer emotions of a person in the workplace – except for “medical” or “safety” reasons. In Australia, however, there is not yet specific…

What would you say at Twitter’s funeral? That’s the question my collaborators and I asked over 1,000 people on social media as part of a broader research project on Twitter migration. Responses ranged from the profane to the poetic, but one common theme was that despite its significant flaws, Twitter at its best was truly great … until it wasn’t. “The world is a better place for it having existed, and a better place now that it’s gone.” “It takes so little to destroy so much.” “I will miss it for what it could be in its best moments, but I…

Online shopping often involves endless options and fleeting discounts. A single search for running shoes can yield hundreds of results across multiple platforms, each promising the “best deal.” The holiday season brings excitement, but it also brings a blend of decision fatigue and logistical nightmares. What if there were a tool capable of hunting for the best prices, navigating endless sales and making sure your purchases arrive on time? The next evolution in artificial intelligence is AI agents that are capable of autonomous reasoning and multistep problem-solving. AI shopping agents not only suggest what you might like, but they can also act…

Video games have always been a showcase for new technologies. They help create new audiences and new markets. In the 1990s, computer parts manufacturers advertised the speed of their video cards in terms of the frames they could render per second of popular video games like Quake. Developing and playing video games takes up a lot of computing power, but relatively little consideration is given to the rising cost to the environment. Big-budget video games come with big energy costs. Advanced graphics, immersive technology and artificial intelligence are consuming unprecedented amounts of power, locking the game industry and high-performance computing in a…

Our increasing reliance on technology is placing pressure on the global supply of materials that are essential for manufacturing electronic devices. Raw materials are being mined to cover the demand for smartphones, laptops, computer servers and electric vehicles, placing strain on the environment. A greater emphasis on renewable technology and on artificial intelligence will only add to this challenge. But can we recover more of the materials we need for these devices from waste electronics? Improved methods to extract these metals and other elements will be key to reducing the pressure on our planet and its resources. Some of the most important materials required…

We have only one example of biology forming in the universe – life on Earth. But what if life can form in other ways? How do you look for alien life when you don’t know what alien life might look like? These questions are preoccupying astrobiologists, who are scientists who look for life beyond Earth. Astrobiologists have attempted to come up with universal rules that govern the emergence of complex physical and biological systems both on Earth and beyond. I’m an astronomer who has written extensively about astrobiology. Through my research, I’ve learned that the most abundant form of extraterrestrial life is likely to be…

Our growing reliance on technology at home and in the workplace has raised the profile of e-waste. This consists of discarded electrical devices including laptops, smartphones, televisions, computer servers, washing machines, medical equipment, games consoles and much more. The amount of e-waste produced this decade could reach as much as 5 million metric tonnes, according to recent research published in Nature. This is around 1,000 times more e-waste than was produced in 2023. According to the study, the boom in artificial intelligence will significantly contribute to this e-waste problem, because AI requires lots of computing power and storage. It will, among…

Over the past two years, we have seen much written about the “promise and peril” of artificial intelligence (AI). Some have suggested AI systems might aid in the construction of chemical or biological weapons. How realistic are these concerns? As researchers in the field of bioterrorism and health intelligence, we have been trying to separate the genuine risks from the online hype. The exact implications for “chem bio” weapons are still uncertain. However, it is very clear that regulations are not keeping pace with technological developments. Assessing the risks Assessing the risk an AI model presents is not easy. What’s more, there is…

A new machine-learning weather prediction model called GenCast can outperform the best traditional forecasting systems in at least some situations, according to a paper by Google DeepMind researchers published today in Nature. Using a diffusion model approach similar to artificial intelligence (AI) image generators, the system generates multiple forecasts to capture the complex behaviour of the atmosphere. It does so with a fraction of the time and computing resources required for traditional approaches. How weather forecasts work The weather predictions we use in practice are produced by running multiple numerical simulations of the atmosphere. Each simulation starts from a slightly different estimate…