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AI overestimates how smart people are, according to economists

Scientists at HSE University have found that current AI models, including ChatGPT and Claude, tend to overestimate the rationality of their human opponents—whether first-year undergraduate students or experienced scientists—in strategic thinking games, such as the Keynesian beauty contest. While these models attempt to predict human behavior, they often end up playing “too smart” and losing because they assume a higher level of logic in people than is actually present.

An AI-based blueprint for designing catalysts across materials

Hydrogen peroxide is widely used in everyday life, from disinfectants and medical sterilization to environmental cleanup and manufacturing. Despite its importance, most hydrogen peroxide is still produced using large-scale industrial processes that require significant energy. Researchers are thus seeking cleaner alternatives.

A team of researchers has made a breakthrough in this regard, developing a new computational framework that helps identify effective catalysts for producing hydrogen peroxide directly from water and electricity.

The work focuses on the two-electron water oxidation reaction, an electrochemical process that can generate hydrogen peroxide in a more localized and potentially sustainable way.

ChatGPT’s new formatting blocks make its UI look more like a task tool

OpenAI has quietly rolled out ‘formatting blocks,’ which tweak GPT’s layout to match the UI of the task it is supposed to execute.

ChatGPT has different use cases, including writing emails or blogs. Up until now, if you asked GPT to write an email for you, it would show the content of the email in the same way as a typical response.

That does not make GPT worse than any other LLM, but it’s not the best experience, and OpenAI wants to fix it with a new feature that automatically adapts the UI.

Heart-brain connection: International study reveals role of vagus nerve in keeping the heart young

The secret to a healthier and “younger” heart lies in the vagus nerve. A recent study coordinated by the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa and published in Science Translational Medicine has shown that preserving bilateral cardiac vagal innervation is an anti-aging factor. In particular, the right cardiac vagus nerve emerges as a true guardian of cardiomyocyte health, helping to preserve the longevity of the heart independently of heart rate.

The study is characterized by a strongly multidisciplinary approach, integrating experimental medicine and bioengineering applied to cardiovascular research. Specifically, the research was led by the Translational Critical Care Unit (TrancriLab) of the Interdisciplinary Research Center Health Science, under the responsibility of Professor Vincenzo Lionetti, and by the laboratory of the Biorobotics Institute led by Professor Silvestro Micera, which contributed to the development of the bioabsorbable nerve conduit used to facilitate vagal regeneration.

The study involved a broad network of Italian and international institutions of excellence, including the Scuola Normale Superiore, the University of Pisa, the Fondazione Toscana G. Monasterio, the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the CNR, the University of Udine, GVM Care & Research, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, the Leibniz Institute on Ageing in Jena and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.

AlphaFold Changed Science. After 5 Years, It’s Still Evolving

Until AlphaFold’s debut in November 2020, DeepMind had been best known for teaching an artificial intelligence to beat human champions at the ancient game of Go. Then it started playing something more serious, aiming its deep learning algorithms at one of the most difficult problems in modern science: protein folding. The result was AlphaFold2, a system capable of predicting the three-dimensional shape of proteins with atomic accuracy.

Its work culminated in the compilation of a database that now contains over 200 million predicted structures, essentially the entire known protein universe, and is used by nearly 3.5 million researchers in 190 countries around the world. The Nature article published in 2021 describing the algorithm has been cited 40,000 times to date. Last year, AlphaFold 3 arrived, extending the capabilities of artificial intelligence to DNA, RNA, and drugs. That transition is not without challenges—such as “structural hallucinations” in the disordered regions of proteins—but it marks a step toward the future.

To understand what the next five years holds for AlphaFold, WIRED spoke with Pushmeet Kohli, vice president of research at DeepMind and architect of its AI for Science division.

Google AI CEO Demis Hassabis calls Meta AI chief scientist Yann LeCun ‘plain incorrect’, read his long post on why he thinks Yann is ‘wrong’

The TOI Tech Desk is a dedicated team of journalists committed to delivering the latest and most relevant news from the world of technology to readers of The Times of India. TOI Tech Desk’s news coverage spans a wide spectrum across gadget launches, gadget reviews, trends, in-depth analysis, exclusive reports and breaking stories that impact technology and the digital universe. Be it how-tos or the latest happenings in AI, cybersecurity, personal gadgets, platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and more; TOI Tech Desk brings the news with accuracy and authenticity.

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