According to the Big Bang cosmological model, our Universe began 13.8 billion years ago when all the matter and energy in the cosmos began expanding. This period of “cosmic inflation” is believed to be what accounts for the large-scale structure of the Universe and why space and the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) appear to be […]
Babies learn words by matching images to sounds. A mother says “dog” and points to a dog. She says “tree” and points to a tree. After repeating this process thousands of times, babies learn to recognize both common objects and the words associated with them. Researchers at MIT have developed software with the same ability […]
A UK team of astronomers report the first detection of matter falling into a black hole at 30 percent of the speed of light, located in the centre of the billion-light year distant galaxy PG211+143. The team, led by Professor Ken Pounds of the University of Leicester, used data from the European Space Agency’s X-ray […]
Score one for the human brain. In a new study, computer scientists found that artificial intelligence systems fail a vision test a child could accomplish with ease. “It’s a clever and important study that reminds us that ‘deep learning’ isn’t really that deep,” said Gary Marcus, a neuroscientist at New York University who was not […]
Hulu is rolling out an updated web interface today for its users that’s based on the updated UI it introduced last year for its live TV service subscribers. According to the company’s blog post announcing the new design, the interface has been built specifically for the “wide range of motion you have with your mouse […]
A dark matter experiment scheduled to go online at the Canadian underground laboratory SNOLAB in the early 2020s will conduct one of the most sensitive searches ever for hypothetical particles known as weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. Scientists consider WIMPs strong dark matter candidates. But what if dark matter turns out to be something […]
Amazon is experimenting with a new tool called Scout designed to help shoppers better figure out what they want to buy in a more visual fashion, according to a report from CNBC, which first spotted Scout live on Amazon’s site. Using a combination of imagery, a thumbs up and down voting mechanism, and machine learning […]
IBM has launched a software service that scans AI systems as they work in order to detect bias and provide explanations for the automated decisions being made — a degree of transparency that may be necessary for compliance purposes not just a company’s own due diligence. The new trust and transparency system runs on the […]
Last month, a team of self-taught AI gamers lost spectacularly against human professionals in a highly-anticipated galactic melee. Taking place as part of the International Dota 2 Championships in Vancouver, Canada, the game showed that in broader strategic thinking and collaboration, humans still remain on top. The AI was a series of algorithms developed by […]
Quantum computing is one of the most exciting technologies there is, but its basis in quantum physics makes it a pain in the ass to understand and even harder to do anything with. A recent breakthrough in physics research, however, might change all of that and start a computing revolution. It wouldn’t be the first […]
There’s an arms race underway to develop the next generation of computers—known as “quantum” computers—and there’s no guarantee that the United States is going to win. It’s a positive sign that Congress is taking initial steps on legislation to accelerate development of this technology. The House and Senate are poised to consider the National Quantum […]
The shift to cloud computing continues to gain momentum, with nearly half of application spending going on-demand within the next four years. Across key areas of enterprise technology investment — including system infrastructure and software, application software and business process outsourcing — 19 percent of spending currently goes on cloud services. According to tech analyst […]
