Ollie Chu was three years old when he received an infusion that would change his life. Born with a rare inherited condition called Hunter syndrome, Ollie’s body couldn’t produce an enzyme that breaks ...

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman—perhaps the most prominent face of the artificial intelligence boom that accelerated with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022—loves scaling laws. These widely admired rules ...

Space is getting busier as national space agencies and private companies increase the tempo of launches. But today’s approach to space exploration is unsustainable, say researchers, and we need to do ...

Computers that operate on the same principles as the brain could be key to slashing AI’s massive energy bills. Sandia National Laboratories has just switched on a device capable of simulating between ...

Globally, more than five million people are affected by age-related macular degeneration, which can make reading, driving, and the recognition of faces impossible. A new wireless retinal implant has ...

Gene editors usually take years to test and perfect. KJ Muldoon’s treatment took only six months. Now his doctors want to go even faster. Before the age of one, KJ Muldoon had already made medical ...

Originally published by Hannah Ritchie at Our World in Data. Republished here under a Creative Commons license. Humans have been reshaping the planet’s land for millennia by clearing wildlands to grow ...

Colin is a professor in the School of Philosophy at the Australian National University. His research interests center on philosophy of mind and philosophy of science, particularly where they intersect ...

Sitting on the Marine Atlantic ferry, I’m watching the Newfoundland skyline disappear on the horizon as I type away. I see the rocking of the ocean waves, inhale its salty breeze, feel and hear the ...

Crisis. A situation where danger and opportunity intersect. In the last several weeks, we’ve heard and learned a lot about the danger and suffering caused by Covid-19. But opportunities are here too, ...

The main problem with big tech’s experiment with artificial intelligence is not that it could take over humanity. It’s that large language models (LLMs) like Open AI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and ...

When the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 rocketed to fame more than a decade ago, it transformed biotechnology. Faster, cheaper, and safer than previous methods, the tool helped scientists gain insight ...