Many people understand the concept of bias at some intuitive level. In society, and in artificial intelligence systems, racial and gender biases are well documented. If society could somehow remove bias, would all problems go away? The late Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, who was a key figure in

To anyone living in a city where autonomous vehicles operate, it would seem they need a lot of practice. Robotaxis travel millions of miles a year on public roads in an effort to gather data from sensors—including cameras, radar, and lidar—to train the neural networks that operate them. In recent

The origin of life on Earth is still enigmatic, but we are slowly unraveling the steps involved and the necessary ingredients. Scientists believe life arose in a primordial soup of organic chemicals and biomolecules on the early Earth, eventually leading to actual organisms. It’s long been

We have no good reason to believe that aliens have ever contacted Earth. Sure, there are conspiracy theories, and some rather strange reports about harm to cattle, but nothing credible. Physicist Enrico Fermi found this odd. His formulation of the puzzle, proposed in the 1950s and now known as the

Steam locomotives clattering along railway tracks. Paddle steamers churning down the Murray. Dreadnought battleships powered by steam engines. Many of us think the age of steam has ended. But while the steam engine has been superseded by internal combustion engines and now electric motors, the