Artificial intelligence (AI) News, Research and Analysis

ChatGPT threatens to change writing as we know it. But the Mesopotamians, who lived 4,000 years ago in modern-day Iraq, went through this kind of seismic change before us, when they invented writing.

When you ask ChatGPT to generate content, the default output is in the voice, style and language of white English-speaking men, who have long dominated many writing-intensive sectors.

Bacterial infections are a growing global challenge. This is due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and researchers are turning to AI to develop new drugs.

Will it give Microsoft a chance to overtake Google in the search space?

ChatGPT is fuelled by our intimate online histories. It’s trained on 300 billion words, yet users have no way of knowing which of their data it contains.

Answers are all the rage in the information age. However, to become wise we will need to learn to formulate better questions.

Google is one of a number of companies getting involved in AI music-generation.

ChatGPT and other AI chatbots seem remarkably good at conversations. But you can’t believe anything they say. Sometimes, though, reality isn’t the point.

Can artificial intelligence transform the search for alien intelligence?

If we’re going to put an AI brain somewhere, it’s likely going to be a robot. The next step – making that robot immortal.

Academic authorship was never straightforward. Now ChatGPT is making it even more complicated.

ChatGPT is a sophisticated AI program that generates text from vast databases. But it doesn’t understand the information it produces, which also can’t be verified through scientific means.

AI’s ability to identify ‘technosignatures’ missed by classical algorithms is an exciting step forward for radio astronomers.

Deepfakes have found their perfect vehicle in comedy – which allows them to be enjoyed without fear of deception.

Artificial Intelligence comes with a litany of ethical risks and dilemmas. Some are universal, but some are unique to particular countries, like South Africa.

AI models are increasingly being used to make important decision about people’s lives – just take Robodebt. Yet the complexity of these systems means we hardly understand them.

Some think ChatGPT threatens education, but it might benefit educators and students alike.

The rise of AI chatbots provides an opportunity to expand the ways we do philosophy and research, and how we engage in intellectual discourse.

A puzzle over the identity of an extinct bird that laid eggs across Australia has been solved.

People often struggle to distinguish between real faces and artificial ones made by a computer.