Daniel Rourke /stream

Bookmark

When I was nine or ten years old, my grandmother gave me a book full of so many random, interesting facts and tidbits of science and history I sometimes think it’s…

Bookmark

Neuroscience research into people with aphantasia, who don’t experience mental imagery, is revealing how imagination works and demonstrating the sweeping variety in our subjective experiences. Introduction Two years ago, Sarah Shomstein…

Bookmark

Large language models like those offered by OpenAI and Google famously require vast troves of training data to work. The latest versions of these models have already scoured much of the…

Bookmark

M John Harrison, 77, is the author of seven story collections and 12 novels, including Nova Swing, which won the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction in 2007, and The…

Bookmark

With this declaration in The Order of Things (1966), the French philosopher Michel Foucault heralded a new way of thinking that would transform the humanities and social sciences.

Bookmark

Knowing that an author who wrote unsparingly about humanity’s capacity for violence and oppression dwelled amid such picturesque Pacific Northwest ordinariness is comforting. This quiet, unremarkable place would suit a diligent…

Bookmark

Watch videos of Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the wildly successful book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and you will hear him being asked the most astonishing questions. Harari’s…

Bookmark

Watch videos of Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the wildly successful book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and you will hear him being asked the most astonishing questions. Harari’s…

Bookmark

The question of whether a computer program, or a robot, might become sentient has been debated for decades. In science fiction, we see it all the time. The artificial intelligence establishment…

Bookmark

This story is the introduction to MIT Technology Review’s series on AI colonialism, which was supported by the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program and the Pulitzer Center. Read the full…

Bookmark

This write-up re-introduces the concept of entropy from different perspectives with a focus on its importance in machine learning, probabilistic programming, and information theory.

Bookmark

This story is the introduction to MIT Technology Review’s series on AI colonialism, which was supported by the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program and the Pulitzer Center. Read the full…

Bookmark

Let me start by saying a few things that seem obvious,” Geoffrey Hinton, “Godfather” of deep learning, and one of the most celebrated scientists of our time, told a leading AI…

Bookmark

At a medical research laboratory in California, Alysson Muotri has used chemistry to change skin cells into neurons, which have multiplied to form “organoids” – globes of interconnected brain cells.

Bookmark

Octavia Estelle Butler was born in 1947 in Pasadena, CA. Known in her early years as “Estelle,” she was raised by a single, widowed mother who worked domestic jobs to make…

Bookmark

Octavia Estelle Butler was inspired to write science fiction after watching a schlocky B-movie, Devil Girl from Mars. She was twelve years old and thought: “Geez, I can write a better…

Bookmark

If you were a Neanderthal living in harsh conditions around 50,000 years ago, your number-one concern was getting enough to eat.

Bookmark

Writing for academic publication is highly stylised and formalised. In this post Rob Kitchin describes how writing fiction has shaped his own academic praxis and can provide scholars with an expanded range of…

Bookmark

Science fiction tells us that a change in a past event, caused by the intervention of a time traveler, will open up a parallel timeline that leads to an alternate present.…

Bookmark

Several years ago, N. K. Jemisin, the fantasy and science-fiction author, had a dream that shook her. In her sleep, she found herself standing in a surreal tableau with a massif floating…

Bookmark

“When Kurzweil first started talking about the “singularity”, a conceit he borrowed from the science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge, he was dismissed as a fantasist.

Bookmark

The huge cultural authority science has acquired over the past century imposes large duties on every scientist. Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their…

Bookmark

When I was nine or ten years old, my grandmother gave me a book full of so many random, interesting facts and tidbits of science and history I sometimes think it’s…

Bookmark

Neuroscience research into people with aphantasia, who don’t experience mental imagery, is revealing how imagination works and demonstrating the sweeping variety in our subjective experiences. Introduction Two years ago, Sarah Shomstein…

Bookmark

 THE BAD NEWS is waiting for us on the first page of the first chapter of Octavia E. Butler’s 1998 science fiction novel Parable of the Talents.

Bookmark

M John Harrison, 77, is the author of seven story collections and 12 novels, including Nova Swing, which won the Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction in 2007, and The…

Bookmark

Knowing that an author who wrote unsparingly about humanity’s capacity for violence and oppression dwelled amid such picturesque Pacific Northwest ordinariness is comforting. This quiet, unremarkable place would suit a diligent…

Bookmark

With this declaration in The Order of Things (1966), the French philosopher Michel Foucault heralded a new way of thinking that would transform the humanities and social sciences.

Bookmark

Watch videos of Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the wildly successful book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and you will hear him being asked the most astonishing questions. Harari’s…

Bookmark

The question of whether a computer program, or a robot, might become sentient has been debated for decades. In science fiction, we see it all the time. The artificial intelligence establishment…

Bookmark

This story is the introduction to MIT Technology Review’s series on AI colonialism, which was supported by the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program and the Pulitzer Center. Read the full…

Bookmark

This write-up re-introduces the concept of entropy from different perspectives with a focus on its importance in machine learning, probabilistic programming, and information theory.

Bookmark

This write-up re-introduces the concept of entropy from different perspectives with a focus on its importance in machine learning, probabilistic programming, and information theory.

Bookmark

Isaac Newton apocryphally discovered his second law – the one about gravity – after an apple fell on his head. Much experimentation and data analysis later, he realised there was a…

Bookmark

Octavia Estelle Butler was born in 1947 in Pasadena, CA. Known in her early years as “Estelle,” she was raised by a single, widowed mother who worked domestic jobs to make…

Bookmark

Octavia Estelle Butler was inspired to write science fiction after watching a schlocky B-movie, Devil Girl from Mars. She was twelve years old and thought: “Geez, I can write a better…

Bookmark

If you were a Neanderthal living in harsh conditions around 50,000 years ago, your number-one concern was getting enough to eat.

Bookmark

Writing for academic publication is highly stylised and formalised. In this post Rob Kitchin describes how writing fiction has shaped his own academic praxis and can provide scholars with an expanded range of…

Bookmark

Since his death in 2006, the work of Polish science fiction writer Stanisław Lem has slowly slid from view.

Bookmark

Several years ago, N. K. Jemisin, the fantasy and science-fiction author, had a dream that shook her. In her sleep, she found herself standing in a surreal tableau with a massif floating…

Bookmark

The huge cultural authority science has acquired over the past century imposes large duties on every scientist. Scientists have acquired the power to impress and intimidate every time they open their…

Bookmark

The first dinosaur butthole ever discovered is shedding light where the sun don't shine. The discovery reveals how dinosaurs used this multipurpose opening — scientifically known as a cloacal vent —…