Artificial Intelligence

How AI Knows Things No One Told It

Researchers are still struggling to understand how AI models trained to parrot Internet text can perform advanced tasks such as running code, playing games and trying to break up a marriage...

George Musser

Food

Tweaking Vegetables’ Genes Could Make Them Tastier—And You’ll Get to Try Them Soon

Flavor is a tricky target, but technology and powerful genetic techniques are making it more feasible to improve the taste of vegetables

Meghan Bartels

Biotech

Virtual Reality System Lets You Stop and Smell the Roses

A wireless device worn on the face or lip can produce fragrances such as lavender and green tea in a virtual world

Simon Makin

Engineering

50, 100 & 150 Years Ago: May 2023

King Tut’s bountiful tomb; music from fire

Mark Fischetti

Biotech

Proteins Never Seen in Nature Are Designed Using AI to Address Biomedical and Industrial Problems Unsolved by Evolution

Bioengineers are drawing on rapidly evolving machine-learning tools, deep reservoirs of data and the firepower of a program called AlphaFold2 to pursue more sophisticated  de novo  protein designs...

Michael Eisenstein and Nature magazine