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 ...

Automotive

Attention-grabbing virtual agents could help improve safety of self-driving cars

Animated "virtual agents" could help keep the roads of the future safer by alerting people behind the wheel of semiautonomous cars to oncoming hazards, new research suggests.

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 ...

Machine learning & AI

Google's Gemini AI assistant reaches one billion users

Google's artificial intelligence assistant Gemini has surpassed 1 billion monthly users, CEO Sundar Pichai announced Tuesday, a week after a major reorganization of the tech giant's AI division.

Machine learning & AI

Spotify to launch badge identifying AI music

Streaming giant Spotify said Tuesday it would launch a new "AI Persona" badge in mid-September, clearly identifying content producers that are AI-generated and not real people.

Consumer & Gadgets

Should people marry AI agents?

The widespread use of conversational platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini is raising important new ethical, anthropological and legal questions regarding the potential risks, misuses and shortcomings of artificial intelligence ...

Energy & Green Tech

From vision to reality: A unified neural solver for the power grid

The electric grid has never mattered more—or faced more pressure. As transportation, buildings and industry electrify, ever more of modern life runs through the same network of wires. At the same time, the grid is being reshaped ...

Energy & Green Tech

AI and electrolyte engineering open new paths for better batteries

Cornell researchers are using artificial intelligence to speed the search for better battery materials while using a creative approach to chemistry to expand the design space for electrolytes, unlocking new possibilities ...

Hi Tech & Innovation

When human knowledge has been exhausted, where will AI get its data?

As AI-powered large language models, or LLMs, grow in power and sophistication, where will their architects turn when someday—as experts predict—algorithms outgrow the limits of general human knowledge and begin craving information ...

Machine learning & AI

What happens when AI runs out of pictures?

A hospital may only ever collect a few dozen scans of a rare condition—for example, an unusual tumor. The radiology department wants software to flag this on a scan—not to replace a specialist, but to ensure a hospital without ...