20 July 2022
A Google engineer recently claimed an AI was alive and that it had hired a lawyer. If judges were to accept these claims, it could lead to AIs being frozen in their biased states, writes Annalee Newitz
20 July 2022
Companies are increasingly looking to engender loyalty by tapping into our evolved need to belong. But the emotional costs of bonding sessions and other techniques can be high and the sense of belonging false, warns Jonathan R Goodman
20 July 2022
We have the tools to rapidly cut emissions. The recent deadly European heat should give political leaders the mandate they need to use them
19 July 2022
Coningsby in Lincolnshire has provisionally recorded a temperature of 40.3°C, an event that would be extremely unlikely without climate change, and scientists warn that heatwaves will only get worse
18 July 2022
A galaxy caught in the distant background of the James Webb Space Telescope's first "deep field" image could help astronomers understand the chemistry of the early universe
18 July 2022
Four European bison have been released into ancient woodland in Kent, where they should transform the ecosystem
15 July 2022
The first deep-field image from the James Webb Space Telescope is full of distant galaxies with their light warped by gravity, and astronomers are already using them to hunt dark matter
15 July 2022
Some bacteria living in the Southern Ocean can't adapt to temperatures 2°C higher than what they can usually survive, and other organisms could face similar limits adapting to higher temperatures
15 July 2022
Tiny robots made of metallic powder stuck to plastic tape and controlled by magnetic fields could one day crawl inside internal organs and repair injuries
15 July 2022
Evidence suggests covid-19 infections can lower sperm counts for months, and that the virus can occasionally be found in semen and may even directly bind to sperm cells
