Exploring bleeding edge experiments, oddities, new and bizarre dicoveries, and fact-checking conspiracy theories since 2008. No question is out of bounds and no topic is too strange for a deep dive.
# podcast
Hide your kids, hide your wife, we're automating everybody out there!
# tech
Imagine a device from science fiction capable of creating a self-replicating, constantly improving robotic hivemind. I wanted to know if we could build one today. Then I sort of did.
# science
For the first time, an AI was trained how to simulate a universe 600 million light years across. Does how fast it was able to do it and how well it understood its task tell us something profound about the cosmos?
# tech
Some futurists and entrepreneurs think that artificial intelligence can match people to jobs. Unfortunately, they're underestimating the job seekers while overestimating the AIs.
# tech
AI that identifies faces, vehicles, and reads handwriting is springing from computers, ready to make tedious human work obsolete. But we don't see the tedious human work that goes into training them.
# tech
A new artificial intelligence system called GROVER can create extremely plausible fake news stories. Why would anyone build something like this? Why, to fight fake news of course!
# tech
Computer scientists at MIT are spearheading an effort to make designing and training artificial neural networks a lot faster and more efficient by powering through a paradox in their implementation.
# tech
A recent experiment shows that artificial intelligence can now slightly outperform human experts in diagnosing lung cancer. So, what's next for medical AI?
# tech
Elon Musk's startup is raising money to protect humanity from runaway adoption of artificial intelligence by merging our minds with machines. Here's how it could succeed.
# tech
Robots are starting to keep tabs on and fire warehouse workers. And the day they'll be tracking all of us to evaluate our performance and make HR decisions is unsettlingly close.