Lifeboat Foundation

There’s an episode of the show “Black Mirror” where a woman, trapped by grief, starts a relationship with an AI trained on her dead boyfriend’s data.

“You’re not enough of him,” she eventually decides. “You’re nothing.”

But even an empty happily-ever-after is tantalizing in the bleakness of 2024. AI platforms like ChatGPT claim to offer infinite solutions to infinite problems, from parking tickets to homework — and apparently now heartbreak as well. That’s right: if you’re still hung up after a breakup, now you can plug your ex’s emails and texts into a large language model, and date the simulacrum instead of moving on.

Join the discussion on this paper page.

Google’s philanthropy arm is setting aside millions of dollars for European nonprofits to train workers how to use AI. But it’s unclear whether AI training will help save jobs.

A chemical element so visually striking it was named for a goddess shows a “Goldilocks” level of reactivity—neither too much nor too little—that makes it a strong candidate as a carbon scrubbing tool.

The element is vanadium, and research by Oregon State University scientists, published in Chemical Science, has demonstrated the ability of vanadium peroxide molecules to react with and bind carbon dioxide —an important step toward improved technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The study is part of a $24 million federal effort to develop new methods for direct air capture, or DAC, of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that’s produced by the burning of fossil fuels and is associated with climate change.

It’s what we expected, but now it’s confirmed.

San Francisco is fed up with all those robotaxis crowding its streets — and on Lunar New Year, some folks let off some steam about it.

New research on the continuity illusion uncovers how the brain perceives smooth motion, emphasizing the superior colliculus’s importance and suggesting new approaches for neuroscience research and clinical practice.

A study by a team at the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) has cast a new light on the superior colliculus (SC), a deep-seated brain structure often overshadowed by its more prominent cortical neighbor. Their discovery uncovers how the SC may play a pivotal role in how animals see the world in motion, and sheds light on the “continuity illusion,” an essential perceptual process integral to many of our daily activities, from driving vehicles to watching movies.

Understanding the Continuity Illusion.

Scientific Reports — Crystal structures, phase transitions, thermodynamics, and molecular dynamics of organic–inorganic hybrid crystal [NH(CH3)3]2ZnCl4.

After thousands of years, the human brain may have found a perfect partner.