Guidelines are urgently needed for the use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT in scientific writing.

When it comes to reasoning about the motion of physical objects, humans have natural intuitive physics knowledge. To test how good artificial learning agents are in similar predictive abilities, Xue and colleagues present a benchmark based on a two-dimensional physics environment in which 15 physical reasoning skills are measured.

Gathering big datasets has become an essential component of machine learning in many scientific areas, but it is unavoidable that some data values are missing. An important and growing effect that needs careful attention, especially when heterogeneous data sources are combined, is that of structured missingness, where data values are missing not at random, but with a specific structure.

The implementation of ethics review processes is an important first step for anticipating and mitigating the potential harms of AI research. Its long-term success, however, requires a coordinated community effort, to support experimentation with different ethics review processes, to study their effect, and to provide opportunities for diverse voices from the community to share insights and foster norms.

Olfactory navigation is a well-studied topic in insect behaviour, but many aspects of the challenging task of odour plume tracking are unknown. In a deep reinforcement learning approach, artificial agents are trained to produce (in silico) trajectories to localize the source of an odour plume, showing dynamics that mimic real insect behaviours.

When it comes to reasoning about the motion of physical objects, humans have natural intuitive physics knowledge. To test how good artificial learning agents are in similar predictive abilities, Xue and colleagues present a benchmark based on a two-dimensional physics environment in which 15 physical reasoning skills are measured.

AI language modelling and generation approaches have developed fast in the last decade, opening promising new directions in human–AI collaboration. An AI-in-the loop conversational system called HAILEY is developed to empower peer supporters in providing empathic responses to mental health support seekers.

The reconstruction of spatially resolved information of an extended object from an observed intensity diffraction pattern in holographic imaging is a challenging problem. By incorporating an explicit physical model, Lee and colleagues propose a deep learning method that can be used in holographic image reconstruction under physical perturbations and which generalizes well beyond object-to-sensor distances and pixel sizes seen during training.

Despite recent improvements in microscopy acquisition methods, extracting quantitative information from biological experiments in crowded conditions is a challenging task. Pineda and colleagues propose a geometric deep-learning-based framework for automated trajectory linking and dynamical property estimation that is able to effectively deal with complex biological scenarios.

Despite the promise of medical artificial intelligence applications, their acceptance in real-world clinical settings is low, with lack of transparency and trust being barriers that need to be overcome. We discuss the importance of the collaborative process in medical artificial intelligence, whereby experts from various fields work together and tackle transparency issues and build trust over time.

The organizers of the EvalRS recommender systems competition argue that accuracy should not be the only goal and explain how they took robustness and fairness into account.

To fully leverage big data, they need to be shared across institutions in a manner compliant with privacy considerations and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Federated machine learning is a promising option.

Guidelines are urgently needed for the use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT in scientific writing.

A recent case of a flawed medical AI system that was backed by public funding provides an opportunity to discuss the impact of government policies and regulation in AI.

2022 has seen eye-catching developments in AI applications. Work is needed to ensure that ethical reflection and responsible publication practices are keeping pace.