Research papers can make a long-lasting impact when the code and software tools supporting the findings are made readily available and can be reused and built on. Our reusability reports explore and highlight examples of good code sharing practices.

Recent research has focused on restoring speech in populations with neurological deficits. Chen, Wang et al. develop a framework for decoding speech from neural signals, which could lead to innovative speech prostheses.

A parameterized physical model that uses unpaired datasets for adaptive holographic imaging was published in Nature Machine Intelligence in 2023. Zhang and colleagues evaluate its performance and extend it to non-perfect optical systems by integrating specific optical response functions.

Tailoring the alignment of large language models (LLMs) to individuals is a new frontier in generative AI, but unbounded personalization can bring potential harm, such as large-scale profiling, privacy infringement and bias reinforcement. Kirk et al. develop a taxonomy for risks and benefits of personalized LLMs and discuss the need for normative decisions on what are acceptable bounds of personalization.

Machine learning-based surrogate models are important to model complex systems at a reduced computational cost; however, they must often be re-evaluated and adapted for validity on future data. Diaw and colleagues propose an online training method leveraging optimizer-directed sampling to produce surrogate models that can be applied to any future data and demonstrate the approach on a dense nuclear-matter equation of state containing a phase transition.

Despite the existence of various pretrained language models for nucleotide sequence analysis, achieving good performance on a broad range of downstream tasks using a single model is challenging. Wang and colleagues develop a pretrained language model specifically optimized for RNA sequence analysis and show that it can outperform state-of-the-art methods in a diverse set of downstream tasks.

Large language models can be queried to perform chain-of-thought reasoning on text descriptions of data or computational tools, which can enable flexible and autonomous workflows. Bran et al. developed ChemCrow, a GPT-4-based agent that has access to computational chemistry tools and a robotic chemistry platform, which can autonomously solve tasks for designing or synthesizing chemicals such as drugs or materials.

Methods for predicting molecular structure predictions have so far focused on only the most probable conformation, but molecular structures are dynamic and can change when performing their biological functions, for example. Zheng et al. use a graph transformer approach to learn the equilibrium distribution of molecular systems and show that this can be helpful for a number of downstream tasks, including protein structure prediction, ligand docking and molecular design.

The central assumption in machine learning that data are independent and identically distributed does not hold in many reinforcement learning settings, as experiences of reinforcement learning agents are sequential and intrinsically correlated in time. Berrueta and colleagues use the mathematical theory of ergodic processes to develop a reinforcement framework that can decorrelate agent experiences and is capable of learning in single-shot deployments.

Current limb-driven methods often result in suboptimal prosthetic motions. Kühn and colleagues develop a framework called synergy complement control (SCC) that advances prosthetics by learning ‘cyborg’ limb-driven control, ensuring natural coordination. Validated in diverse trials, SCC offers reliable and intuitive enhancement for limb functionality.

Most research efforts in machine learning focus on performance and are detached from an explanation of the behaviour of the model. We call for going back to basics of machine learning methods, with more focus on the development of a basic understanding grounded in statistical theory.

Research papers can make a long-lasting impact when the code and software tools supporting the findings are made readily available and can be reused and built on. Our reusability reports explore and highlight examples of good code sharing practices.

Speech technology offers many applications to enhance employee productivity and efficiency. Yet new dangers arise for marginalized groups, potentially jeopardizing organizational efforts to promote workplace diversity. Our analysis delves into three critical risks of speech technology and offers guidance for mitigating these risks responsibly.

The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) of the test set is used throughout machine learning (ML) for assessing a model’s performance. However, when concordance is not the only ambition, this gives only a partial insight into performance, masking distribution shifts of model outputs and model instability.