Machine learning & AI news

Machine learning & AI

AI agents can build consensus on a scale humans can't

Everyone is familiar with the situation: A larger group of people plans to visit a restaurant together, but it can take time and sometimes a great deal of patience to agree on a time and place to meet. The better the participants ...

Engineering

AI could help design cities, but planners need safeguards

AI is showing up in nearly every aspect of daily life—from internet searches to visits to the doctor's office. It could one day even play a role in the street layout in front of your apartment building.

Robotics

Robots learn new skills from a single video—in just 29 seconds

To operate reliably in dynamic real-world settings, robots should be able to acquire new skills quickly without undergoing extensive additional training. Most existing robotic systems, however, primarily perform well on the ...

Security

Swarm-inspired AI may expose suspicious blockchain cash flows more effectively

An AI model inspired by ants, bees and birds could be key to cracking down on blockchain-based money laundering, new research led by Charles Darwin University (CDU) has found. The study is published in the journal Communications ...

Machine learning & AI

AI helps turn citizen photos into water-level data

For the past 15 years, Christopher Lowry, Ph.D., has led CrowdHydrology, a University at Buffalo citizen-science project that relies on thousands of volunteers to collect water-level observations from streams and other waterways ...

Machine learning & AI

Q&A: Promise and perils of agentic AI

Chatbots and large language models can execute a seemingly countless number of tasks, from writing emails and reports to generating code and analyzing data. However, they still primarily act only in response to user prompts ...

Security

How attackers persuade AI agents to break the rules

Today, most of us interact with AI assistants—reactive bots that wait for human instructions. Yet AI assistants are rapidly being replaced by agentic AI agents that can interact with external tools, browse the web, generate ...

Machine learning & AI

OpenAI says ads are coming to ChatGPT in Europe next week

European users of ChatGPT's free and low-cost artificial intelligence agents will start seeing ads Aug. 24 as its creator, OpenAI, expands its plan to extract more revenue from its models.

Machine learning & AI

China goes rural with data centers in quest to power AI

In China's hilly Guizhou province, a cluster of European-style buildings complete with a clock tower and a multi-arched bridge emits a low, permanent hum—a clue to its unexpected identity as tech giant Huawei's largest data ...

Internet

US enforces law to crack down on sexual deepfakes

The United States on Tuesday began enforcing a law requiring tech platforms to remove sexual deepfakes and other non-consensual intimate imagery, but experts warned of shortcomings and raised online censorship concerns.

Robotics

What AI taxis and robots can learn from bees

Even advanced technology can struggle when the real world becomes unpredictable. In April 2026, a Waymo robotaxi in San Antonio, Texas, drove into a flooded lane during severe weather, prompting the company to recall about ...

Machine learning & AI

When AI imagines cities, smaller communities can disappear

When College of Natural Resources and Environment geospatial data scientist Junghwan Kim asked an artificial intelligence (AI) image generator to create a picture of Blacksburg, the result wasn't quite right. "The image looked ...

Machine learning & AI

From graduation boos to voter unease: AI anxiety grows in the US

Speakers promoting AI are getting booed at universities, voters are rebelling against data centers, and even AI-friendly Trump administration officials are starting to retreat as an artificial intelligence backlash gathers ...

Security

AI can seem more human than real humans in a classic Turing test

A new University of California San Diego study unveils the first empirical evidence that a modern artificial intelligence system can pass the Turing test—a major scientific benchmark that asks whether a machine can imitate ...