Living in today’s age of ambitious robotic exploration of Mars, with an eventual human mission to the red planet likely to happen one day, it is hard to imagine a time when Mars was a mysterious and unreachable world. And yet, before the invention of the rocket, astronomers who wanted to explore Mars beyond what...
A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has found a simple rule that seems to govern how life is organised on Earth. The researchers believe this rule helps explain why species are spread the way they are across the planet. The discovery will help to understand life on Earth – including how ecosystems respond to global...
AI is advancing at such speed that speculative moral questions, once the province of science fiction, are suddenly real and pressing, says Finnish philosopher and psychology researcher Frank Martela Martela’s latest study finds that generative AI meets all three of the philosophical conditions of free will — the ability to have goal-directed agency, make genuine...
The professional world has no shortage of micromanagers — or, as Penn State School of Labor and Employment Relations (LER) faculty members Craig L. Pearce and Hee Man Park like to call them, “accidental dictators.” But leaders don’t have to fall into that trap, according to an article published in the journal Organizational Dynamics co-written by Pearce, Brova Family Endowed Professor of leadership...
Do you know where your drinking water comes from? In South Florida, drinking water comes from the Everglades, a vast landscape of wetlands that has long filtered the water relied on by millions of people. But as the Everglades has shrunk over the past century, the region’s water supply and water quality have become increasingly...
Dallas-based biotech company Colossal has announced the birth of three pups bearing the DNA signatures of dire wolves, an iconic predator last seen roaming North America over 10,000 years ago. With their names Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi, these pups are playing to the cultural imagination, blending ancient mythology with fantasy fiction. Romulus and Remus nod...
In 2014, Stephen Hawking voiced grave warnings about the threats of artificial intelligence. His concerns were not based on any anticipated evil intent, though. Instead, it was from the idea of AI achieving “singularity.” This refers to the point when AI surpasses human intelligence and achieves the capacity to evolve beyond its original programming, making...
When someone sees something that isn’t there, people often refer to the experience as a hallucination. Hallucinations occur when your sensory perception does not correspond to external stimuli. Technologies that rely on artificial intelligence can have hallucinations, too. When an algorithmic system generates information that seems plausible but is actually inaccurate or misleading, computer scientists...
Researchers find machine learning can predict how we rate social interactions in videoconference conversations Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers have spent countless hours in videoconferences—now a fixture of office life. As more people work and live remotely, videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom, MS Teams, FaceTime, Slack, and Discord are a huge part...
In today’s hyper-connected world, data is often likened to oil—a valuable resource capable of fueling innovation, growth, and competitive advantage. While traditionally treated as proprietary and confidential, data is increasingly being shared openly by private sector companies to unlock new opportunities. Open data policies, where organizations make data freely accessible and reusable, are becoming a...
