AI knows when you’re going to die. But unlike in sci-fi movies, that information could end up saving lives. A new paper published in Nature suggests that feeding electronic health record data to a deep learning model could substantially improve the accuracy of projected outcomes.   In trials using data from two US hospitals, researchers

If you spent time on social media today, you probably came across that script for an Olive Garden commercial allegedly written by an artificial intelligence algorithm. The commercial is a hilarious trip into the absurd in which patrons enjoy classic staples of the kind of Italian dining we’ve come to expect from America’s 15th favorite

With the biggest event in the soccer calendar now underway, fans are speculating on which team might emerge victorious from the 2018 World Cup in Russia – and an artificial intelligence model based on 100,000 simulations has made its prediction too.   Using a database of statistics from previous tournaments, and three different AI methods

Scientists have made a breakthrough that could open the doors to a whole new way of producing nuclear fuel, and they did it using nothing but the power of the ocean – or at least the chemicals floating inside it.   Researchers in the US used a specially designed yarn to extract natural trace amounts

Most of us are used to technology predicting the words we want to type. Soon this kind of software will be able to look even further into the future to predict actions we’ve barely considered ourselves.   This isn’t some creepy Minority Report style of precognition. Not yet at least. But it could see us

Remember Elon Musk’s Not-A-Flamethrower – a propane-fuelled, oversized barbecue starter that looks more like a modified Nerf gun? It might have been a joke when Musk first posted about it on Instagram in January, but it got deadly serious when 20,000 people pre-ordered it.   On Saturday, the first wave of 1,000 people have received

Every second, millions of emails, clicks, and searches happen via the world wide web with such fluidity that the internet seems almost omnipresent. As such, people often mistakenly assume that internet traffic happens by air – our mobile devices, after all, aren’t wired to anything.   But satellites carry less than 1 percent of human

When it comes to future challenges, one of the biggest will be water scarcity – on a warming planet we’re going to have plenty of seawater, but not enough fresh, clean water in the right places for everybody to drink.   And while a lot of research has focussed on desalination, a team of scientists

One of the most important dating tools used in archaeology may sometimes give misleading data, new study shows – and it could change whole historical timelines as a result. The discrepancy is due to significant fluctuations in the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere, and it could force scientists to rethink how they use ancient

The greatest mystery in aviation history will keep its secrets for now with the search for the wreckage of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 ending this week without success. Ocean Infinity, the US-based technology company which began a supplementary search for the Malaysian government at the start of 2018 on a no-find, no-fee basis, failed to

Batteries powered by radioactive materials have been around for more than a century, but what they promise in power they usually lose in bulk. Not so with a new kind of power source, which combines a novel structure with a nickel isotope to pack ten times more power than an electrochemical cell of the same

Powering cold, hard mechanics with muscle tissue is a promising idea that so far hasn’t delivered awe-inspiring results. But a new way to grow muscles and attach them to a frame could help overcome existing hurdles, resulting in a biological hybrid device that isn’t just stronger than previous attempts, but lasts longer as well.  

We’re really bad at choosing passwords. According to a new study by a researcher at Virginia Tech and Dashlane, a popular password manager service, most users make the same mistakes when making passwords, such as making their password the name of a popular brand or sports team.   And while these things make passwords easy

Do you have a right to know if you’re talking to a bot? How about the bot? Does it have the right to keep that information from you? Those questions have been stirring in the minds of many since well before Google demoed Duplex, a human-like AI that makes phone calls on a user’s behalf,

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love being able to say “Alexa, play me some bangers”, and those who got one targeted advertisement too many and are paranoid that their smart devices are always listening.   Recent news, unfortunately, gives some more credence to the latter. A few weeks ago,

Microsoft is the latest tech company to try and tackle algorithmic bias — that is, artificial intelligence that was fed subpar data and came to mirror society’s own prejudices or unfair perspectives.   The company wants to create a tool that will detect and alert people to AI algorithms that may be treating them based

The hysteria about the future of artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. There seems to be no shortage of sensationalist news about how AI could cure diseases, accelerate human innovation and improve human creativity.   Just looking at the media headlines, you might think that we are already living in a future where AI has infiltrated

Sugar, that amazingly sweet treat some of us just can’t get enough of, has long been the fascination of children (and those with a child-like sweet tooth). Its ability to be melted down into a glass-like substance enables confectionery artists to create tasty displays worthy of museums, or being served as a 3D printed dessert.

If you’re shooting photos of a space rocket launch, the risk to damage equipment is all too real, as one NASA photographer demonstrated this week. Exhibit A is the melted Canon 5DS DSLR camera you can see in the picture above, by Bill Ingalls. The device, which was set up remotely, was scorched beyond repair

You may think you’ve seen tiny buildings before, but this microhouse constructed by nanoengineers is the craziest one yet. From front to back it measures less than 20 micrometres, which means you could squeeze a village of 50 of them on a pinhead.   The sides of the structure are just 1.2 micrometres thick – a

While he’s founded companies that are trying to define the future of transportation with electric vehicles, space exploration, and tunnels that would house high-speed transit systems, Elon Musk doesn’t like flying cars.   During an event for his tunnel-digging company, The Boring Company, on Thursday, Musk explained why flying cars could be more trouble than

In the first hours after the Texas school shooting that left at least 10 dead Friday, online hoaxers moved quickly to spread a viral lie, creating fake Facebook accounts with the suspected shooter’s name and a doctored photo showing him wearing a “Hillary 2016” hat.   Several were swiftly flagged by users and deleted by

Hidden pages from the diary of Holocaust refugee Anne Frank have been analysed for the first time, revealing a few words of wisdom on sex, menstruation, and a handful of dirty jokes.   Non-invasive imaging technology has finally allowed curators of the Anne Frank Museum to see what lay behind sheets of brown paper that had

Google wants you to stop using the term FOMO. Instead of complaining about your fear of missing out, the search engine giant would like you to celebrate – “JOMO,” the joy of missing out. And it hopes a bunch of new features geared at preventing you from feeling addicted to your devices will help.  

Everybody needs to get some fresh air every once in a while. Even, uh, robots. Boston Dynamics just uploaded a video of its upright, bipedal robot called Atlas going for a jog. No tethers, no awkward stiffness, just a robot, a green field, and plenty of fresh air.   No stress holding it down, Atlas

California just became the first state in the US to require all new homes to be built with rooftop solar panels. The California Energy Commission hearing room was packed full on Wednesday as the commission voted unanimously in favor of the proposed rule.   Starting on 1 January, 2020 any new home that’s three stories

California just became the first state in the US to require all new homes to be built with rooftop solar panels. The California Energy Commission hearing room was packed full on Wednesday as the commission voted unanimously in favor of the proposed rule.   Starting on 1 January, 2020 any new home that’s three stories

Google’s Assistant AI is getting better every year. It can tell you the weather, or perhaps crack a terrible joke if that’s more your speed. Give it another year or two, and it’ll be able to pre-order your lunch before you even had your morning coffee.   But more immediately, it might be able to

When a self-driving car is involved in a fatal accident, who is at fault? Is it the “safety-driver,” the company behind the car, or the lawmakers that allowed the self-driving car to hit the road in the first place?   When Uber’s autonomous car fatally struck 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg in Arizona on March 18th, this

There’s long been talk about a foldable smartphone from Samsung, but now there’s something tangible that brings a foldable smartphone closer to reality. On May 2, Samsung was granted multiple patents for its foldable smartphone design and the way it will work.   Samsung’s latest patents show that the company is experimenting with a smartphone that

The maths behind a landmark paper by the British mathematician Alan Turing have been used to create a new nanoscale structure for desalinating water, and its creators claim it does the job far better than filters currently on the market.   Material scientists from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, successfully created a nanoscale tangle of

Washington, DC Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s administration announced Thursday that it would award US$4,000 to help three DC high school students who faced a torrent of racist comments when they used social media to encourage people to vote for them in a NASA competition.   The three black Banneker High students – whose method to

Cambridge Analytica, the data firm used by the 2016 Trump campaign at the center of a scandal involving the misuse of Facebook customer data, is shutting down its operations and declaring bankruptcy, the firm announced on Wednesday.   According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the closure, Cambridge Analytica was losing clients in

Scientists have created an ultrathin, flexible film that can emit laser light – and successfully tested it on a contact lens, demonstrating the possibility of laser eye-beams. Before you rush out and buy a Cyclops-style visor, it’s not even close to powerful enough to cause damage. Instead, the researchers say, the technology has potential for

Mark Zuckerberg just announced that Facebook is joining the dating game, trying to help its users build perhaps “the most meaningful relationship of all.” Zuckerberg made the announcement on Tuesday during his keynote speech at F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference, where the executive team unveils what the company has been working on for the past year.

A big, green snake slithers up your body, squeezing your rib cage, but you’re not afraid. It’s strangely exhilarating. In this virtual-reality simulation, the snake isn’t real, but the feeling in your chest is.   In addition to seeing the snake through a virtual-reality headset strapped to your face, you’re wearing a jacket filled with

Users of Facebook, Google and other popular technology platforms are likely to benefit from stricter privacy regulations that, beginning next month, will require new disclosures, new forms of consent and new power to limit how personal data is stored and utilized.   The changes are being announced in emails, blog posts and new on-screen messages

They had been lost – presumed dead, or even worse – for unimaginable lifetimes, be it weeks, months, or years. But for thousands of children who vanished in the streets, alleyways, and slums of India, it only took days to identify the missing, in a new experimental trial of facial recognition technology by New Delhi

Drop everything. The fantasy car / robot / pal you’ve dreamed about since childhood is real, and it’s sitting under lock-down in a Japanese warehouse. J-deite RIDE is a working, transforming robot that can change between a humanoid form and a functional car. Basically, it’s the closest thing you’ll find to a functional, real-life Transformer

Sometimes you really just need to sit back, relax, and watch the world go by. Those times should never be when you’re the only person travelling in an automobile cruising down the freeway in heavy traffic, along what is one of the UK’s biggest and busiest roads.   But that’s exactly what 39-year-old Nottingham resident

Forget the trial and error – mathematics has proved where the best spot to place your router is. Physicist Jason Cole has figured out a formula that can work out the best place to position your wireless router, and it ultimately depends on your house’s floor plan.   Cole started investigating the science behind router placement

Two days ago, an open letter to China’s Peking University was anonymously uploaded to the Ethereum blockchain, effectively sharing it with anyone who trades or tracks the cryptocurrency.   In it, student Yue Xin writes that the university coerced her to stop looking into a decades-old controversy surrounding Gao Yan, a Peking University student who

The “Golden State Killer” was meticulous at his crime scenes over the course of a decade and in several cities, leaving scant evidence for police. There were no fingerprints. Few saw his face. And what he did leave – his DNA – was, at the time, not useful to police.   Four decades later, with

“the sun is a beautiful thing in silence is drawn between the trees only the beginning of light”  Was that poem written by an angsty middle schooler or an artificially intelligent algorithm? Is it easy to tell?   Yeah, it’s not easy for us, either. Or for poetry experts, for that matter. A team of researchers from Microsoft

A recent high school graduate has used AI to generate nude portraits, and the results are so disturbing. By combining a collection of nude portraits and a methodology called Progressive Growing of GANs, Robbie Barrat (aka @DrBeef_) attempted to train a neural network to generate its own nude portraits.   GANs, or Generative Adversarial Networks,

Forget using healing brushes or copying and patching scraps of images with Adobe Photoshop – a revolutionary new AI program might soon let you seamlessly reconstruct entire missing sections of an image in a way that needs to be seen to be believed.   The US tech company Nvidia has come up with a novel

A Russian startup has created a new way to help companies connect with job-seekers and interview them. Her name is Vera, and she’s able to interview as many as 1,500 job candidates in a single work day, sorting through potential hires at a rate that would take most recruiters months to match.   She even

Blockchain technology has taken the world by storm in recent years as a way to anonymously record transactions between individuals. As safe is it is currently, it’s only a matter of time before somebody finds a way to tap into those coded messages.   While quantum computing potentially opens the way to some serious safe-cracking