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Researchers at Virginia Tech are excited by a new drug that could help stop brain cancer spreading before it can do even more damage.

Despite being necessary for normal bodily functions, fluid in our bodies can sometimes work against us when we try to contain the spread of deadly conditions, such as brain cancer.

With glioblastoma, the deadliest of brain cancer, this fluid operates at a much higher pressure, resulting in the cancerous cells spreading across the brain at a much faster rate. To make things worse, one of the most common types of cancer therapy – whereby a catheter places a drug directly into the tumour – can accelerate the spread of cancer cells.

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Misalignment between our goals and the machine’s

Part of what humans value in AI-powered machines is their efficiency and effectiveness. But, if we aren’t clear with the goals we set for AI machines, it could be dangerous if a machine isn’t armed with the same goals we have. For example, a command to “Get me to the airport as quickly as possible” might have dire consequences. Without specifying that the rules of the road must be respected because we value human life, a machine could quite effectively accomplish its goal of getting you to the airport as quickly as possible and do literally what you asked, but leave behind a trail of accidents.

Discrimination.

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Scientists have proven for the very first time that one of the most fundamental problems of particle and quantum physics is mathematically unsolvable.

In short, they show that regardless of how no matter how perfectly we can mathematically describe a material on the microscopic level, we are never going to be able to predict its macroscopic behavior. Never.

The work was published in Nature.

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