AIs that can see and hear have captured the public imagination. A machine learning expert explains why the sense of smell has lagged behind – and why that could change.
AI has arrived. How will it change society in the year ahead?
Pavel_Chag/iStock via Getty Images
Artificial intelligence is everywhere, and the tech industry is racing along to develop ever more powerful AIs. Three scholars look ahead to the next chapter in this technological revolution.
Visualising wealth and poverty through AI.
Authors
Researchers fed an advanced AI algorithm with satellite photographs to see if it could identify areas of poverty and it interpreted the data through abstract images.
The Potomac River spills over Great Falls west of Washington, D.C..
Marli Miller/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
When water warms, it holds less oxygen, and this can harm aquatic life and degrade water quality. A new study finds that climate change is driving oxygen loss in hundreds of US and European rivers.
Do you trust AI systems, like this driverless taxi, to behave the way you expect them to?
AP Photo/Terry Chea
People can trust each other because they understand how the human mind works, can predict people’s behavior, and assume that most people have a moral sense. None of these things are true of AI.
Could AI be your next colleague – or replacement?
PhonlamaiPhoto/iStock via Getty Images
Now that AI systems can generate realistic images and convincing prose, are creative and knowledge workers endangered or poised for productivity gains? A panel of experts says it’s not so clear-cut.
Figuring out what makes some proteins glow requires an understanding of chemistry.
eLife - the journal
The AI AlphaFold can figure out the three-dimensional protein structure any string of amino acids will become. It has now exceeded its training by figuring out what makes some proteins glow.
New software that can generate images and text on command may deliver ‘good enough’ creativity in advertising, copywriting, stock imagery and graphic design.
De novo protein design with deep learning can open new doors for medicine and many other fields.
Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library via Getty Images
Using a form of artificial intelligence called deep neural networks, researchers can generate new proteins from scratch without having to consult nature.
‘51 million wiki pages down, 3 million to go …’
Allies Interactive
Machine learning algorithms can help public health officials identify areas of high vaccine hesitancy by ZIP code to better target messaging and outreach and counter misinformation.
Common sense includes an intuitive understanding of basic physics – something computers lack.
d3sign/Moment via Getty Images
Common sense is a broad and diverse set of abilities that help define what it means to be human. AI researchers are struggling to endow computers with it.
It should be obvious to this diver that this is a shipwreck and not a reef, but what about to someone looking at a image of this spot taken from an aircraft?
LookBermuda/Flickr
It’s difficult to tell a shipwreck from a natural feature on the ocean floor in a scan taken from a plane or ship. This project used deep learning to get it right 92% of the time.
Modern computing allows to spot isolated trees and shrubs in semi-arid areas, facilitating research on the evolution of vegetation cover.
Martin Brandt
Advanced techniques allowed our research team to build an open database of billions of individual trees and challenge some common perceptions about vegetation in arid and semi-arid zones.
Neural networks today do everything from cameras to translations. A professor of computer science provides a basic explanation of how neural networks work.
AI-powered detectors are the best tools for spotting AI-generated fake videos.
The Washington Post via Getty Images
Fake videos generated with sophisticated AI tools are a looming threat. Researchers are racing to build tools that can detect them, tools that are crucial for journalists to counter disinformation.