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There’s no such thing as AI art

AI can now imitate the great artists so well that we often can’t tell the difference. But imitation is not creation. Philosopher of aesthetics Derek Matravers argues that a painting without intention is not art at all. When we engage with a painting merely for its beauty, the maker’s identity might not matter. But art does more: it connects us to another mind, to an artist’s deliberate creation of meaning. A human artist stakes something on each decision; an AI stakes nothing, merely averaging out its training data. It might make some beautiful objects, but they are empty of the meaning that we seek in art.

Can AI produce art? The question is not as simple as it might seem. Certainly, AI has played a large part in the production of works of art. The Turkish-American artist, Refik Anadol, has won international acclaim for some spectacular pieces of visual art generated by AI. But was it Anadol who produced these using AI akin to Titian producing his paintings using a paintbrush? Or was it AI who produced these? If consciousness is necessary for creativity, and AI lacks consciousness, then AI lacks creativity. And if creativity is necessary to produce art, then AI could not have produced the works and those works still be art. These and other questions are generating a rich and interesting debate in universities and academic journals across the world.

Where one stands on these matters will depend on where one stands on the broader issues that structure the debate. There is no point in asking whether AI can produce art if one does not know what art is. The same might be true for other concepts that feature in the debate, such as intentions, creativity, meaning and so on. It also helps to know about how the various systems (in particular, the image-generating systems such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion) work. I am going to start at a rather more practical level. AI can produce works that have the appearance of works of art in all media. It can produce complex narrative works, complex musical works, and complex images. Judged purely on qualities associated with the medium (say, narrative, musical, or visual complexity) some of these works are above the quality most of us could achieve if we tried it ourselves.

Reconstructing signaling histories of single cells via perturbation screens and transfer learning

You want to reprogram a cell to heal a disease, but you don’t know what instructions it has already received. Throughout their lives, cells constantly receive chemical signals from their environment that tell them what to do and what to become. If scientists want to manipulate these cells for medical treatments, they first need to decode their “signal history.” However, reading this history inside living, developing tissues has been incredibly difficult—until now. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-026-03213-8

To solve this, researchers created a clever two-step workaround. First, in the lab, they exposed human stem cells to thousands of different chemical signals, creating a massive “dictionary” of how cells physically react to specific instructions. Next, they trained an artificial intelligence program named IRIS to memorize this dictionary, teaching it to recognize the unique “fingerprints” that different signals leave behind on a cell.

Once IRIS was trained, the researchers let it act as a detective on real, living mouse embryos. By looking at the current state of the embryo’s single cells, IRIS successfully reconstructed their past. It figured out exactly which chemical signals the cells had experienced to become the specific types they are today, revealing hidden differences between seemingly identical cells and tracing the exact chemical journey cells take as they develop.

Ultimately, this breakthrough reveals that cells across different types share a common, universal language of chemical signals. By giving scientists a scalable, highly accurate tool to map out how cells communicate and develop in the living body, this technology paves the way for designing highly targeted medical therapies and precisely engineering cell behavior.

#machinelearning #cellfateengineering #ComputationalBiology #CellularReprogramming

IRIS learns conserved signaling representations from in vitro perturbation data to reconstruct signaling states and histories across diverse in vivo cellular contexts.

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New drug reverses severe fatty liver disease by repairing the gut

Scientists have discovered that a potential new drug can reverse severe fatty liver disease in animal models by restoring gut health and blocking harmful substances from reaching the liver. The breakthrough could pave the way for new treatments for liver disease and potentially other serious conditions, including cardiovascular disease.

Reason is not sacred: Finding a way when there is no magnetic north

Prof. Moreira argues that reason cannot generate intrinsic value; it merely operates on existing human needs and emotional commitments. While reason can expose contradictions, refine desires, and structure society, it cannot logically compel anyone to care about existence, honesty, or reciprocity. True human value begins with felt needs—most fundamentally, the recognition of the “Other” and their inner life. Ultimately, reason and need must work together to build a pluralistic society where individuals can coexist without needing universal agreement on what makes life meaningful.

Researchers Transform Old Blood Cells into Young Brain Cells

Researchers from the University Hospital of Bonn and the University of Bonn have succeeded in dramatically rejuvenating human cells in a test tube. To do so, they directly reprogrammed red blood cell precursors into stem cells from which neurons can be derived. During this process, the molecular clocks that indicate a cell’s age were reset. For example, blood cells from an 80-year-old were transformed into stem cells with a molecular age of less than 20 years. Since this rejuvenation process occurred very slowly, it is well-suited for a more detailed investigation of the underlying mechanisms. The results have been published in the journal Aging Cell.

Study: Aging Cell Abstract Protracted Fate Acquisition and Epigenetic De-Aging During Induced Neural Stem C https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acel.70751ell Conversion of Human Blood Cells.

The human body contains hundreds of different cell types. They all originate from the fertilized egg and therefore share the same genetic makeup. However, in the course of their development, they were committed to a specific fate: a skin cell cannot naturally become a liver cell, nor can a blood cell become a nerve cell.

Today, however, it is possible to reverse this determination in the laboratory. For example, nerve tissue can be grown from a skin cell, which may one day be used to treat neurodegenerative diseases. To achieve this reprogramming, researchers use a cocktail of various transcription factors. These factors cause the cell to read different genetic instructions and thus embark on a different developmental path.

Molecular clocks are reset dramatically

“Using this method, we have directly converted red blood cell precursors into neural stem cells,” explains Prof. Dr. Oliver Brüstle, director of the Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology at the University Hospital of Bonn. In previous studies, the Bonn researchers had already shown that nerve cells produced in this way form connections with existing neurons after transplantation into the brains of mice.

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