Drones and AI help find pebble-sized meteorite that landed in 2021

Locating meteorites on Earth’s surface is like looking for a needle in a haystack, but using AI to analyse images captured by drones pinpointed a tiny space rock in just four days Technology 11 March 2022 By Chen Ly The meteorite as seen by the drone and algorithm: the yellow box is 100 square centimetres … Read more

Artificial intelligence: Simple mathematical trick could slash AI development time in half

Training artificial intelligences to identify faces or digitise text involves thousands or millions of iterations of a two-stage process known as back-propagation, but a new approach could save time, energy and computing power Technology 10 March 2022 By Matthew Sparkes Cutting training time for AI could make face recognition systems more efficient iStockphoto Artificial intelligence … Read more

Artificial intelligence can help historians restore ancient texts from damaged inscriptions

An AI tool developed by DeepMind can help historians restore ancient Greek texts with 72 per cent accuracy, and date inscriptions to within 30 years of their true age Humans 9 March 2022 By Carissa Wong The Celsus Library in the ancient city of Ephesus, Turkey Mazur Travel/Shutterstock An artificial intelligence algorithm developed as part … Read more

How to Stay Smart in a Smart World review: Why humans still trump AI

Despite AI’s impressive feats at driving cars and playing games, a new book by psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer argues that our brains have plenty to offer that AI will never match Humans 2 March 2022 By Chen Ly IN THE 1950s, Herbert Simon – a political scientist and one of the founders of AI – declared … Read more

Google and Waymo used driverless cars to make a virtual San Francisco

Software can analyse millions of static photographs taken in city streets and create a realistic 3D model that users can smoothly navigate Technology 16 February 2022 By Matthew Sparkes Software can analyse millions of static photos of city streets taken atop cars and construct a realistic 3D model that could be used to create immersive … Read more

Fusion power: DeepMind uses AI to control plasma inside tokamak reactor

For the first time, artificial intelligence has been used to control the super-hot plasma inside a fusion reactor, offering a new way to increase stability and efficiency Technology 16 February 2022 By Matthew Sparkes Plasma inside the TCV fusion reactor in Switzerland Curdin Wüthrich/SPC/EPFL Fusion reactors promise cheap, abundant and relatively clean energy – if … Read more

DeepMind has made software-writing AI that rivals average human coder

AI company DeepMind has built a tool that can create working code to solve complex software challenges Technology 2 February 2022 By Matthew Sparkes Artist’s impression of data Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images DeepMind, a UK-based AI company, has taught some of its machines to write computer software – and it performs almost as well as an … Read more

AI identifies wounded wild animals and poachers in camera trap footage

An AI designed to detect bed sores in digital images has been used to identify wounded animals in camera trap footage, and can also detect poachers Life 25 January 2022 By Matthew Sparkes Sifting through footage to identify wounded animals is made easier by AI ConservationAI AI is being used to identify animals, plot their … Read more

Chemistry robots: Labs can benefit by letting humans and machines collaborate

A new system helps labs determine the most efficient way to produce target molecules by utilising the strengths of humans and robots Technology 24 January 2022 By Matthew Sparkes Scientists working with a robot in a lab Shutterstock/Party people studio Chemists have devised a new system to help robots and humans collaborate more efficiently in … Read more

AI: Software learns to create images from written descriptions by destroying data

A fresh approach to generating images based on text descriptions with AI, called a diffusion model, effectively un-destroys new images into existence Technology 18 January 2022 By Matthew Sparkes Images created from text descriptions by GLIDE, a new AI OpenAI Early last year, artificial intelligence company OpenAI unveiled software with the surprising ability to create … Read more