Outlook |
Featured
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Correspondence |
Use game theory for climate models that really help reach net zero goals
- Kathleen B. Aviso
- , Raymond R. Tan
- & Maria Victoria Migo-Sumagang
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News |
AI now beats humans at basic tasks — new benchmarks are needed, says major report
Stanford University’s 2024 AI Index charts the meteoric rise of artificial-intelligence tools.
- Nicola Jones
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News |
Randomness in computation wins computer-science ‘Nobel’
Computer scientist Avi Wigderson is known for clarifying the role of randomness in algorithms, and for studying their complexity.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Career Feature |
How scientists are making the most of Reddit
As X wanes, researchers are turning to Reddit for insights and data, and to better connect with the public.
- Hannah Docter-Loeb
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News |
Climate change has slowed Earth’s rotation — and could affect how we keep time
The effect of melting polar ice could delay the need for a ‘leap second’ by three years.
- Elizabeth Gibney
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Article |
A global timekeeping problem postponed by global warming
Increased melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, measured by satellite gravity, has decreased the angular velocity of Earth more rapidly than before and has already affected global timekeeping.
- Duncan Carr Agnew
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Article
| Open Access
High-threshold and low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum memory
An end-to-end quantum error correction protocol that implements fault-tolerant memory on the basis of a family of low-density parity-check codes shows the possibility of low-overhead fault-tolerant quantum memory within the reach of near-term quantum processors.
- Sergey Bravyi
- , Andrew W. Cross
- & Theodore J. Yoder
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Nature Podcast |
AI hears hidden X factor in zebra finch love songs
Machine learning detects song differences too subtle for humans to hear, and physicists harness the computing power of the strange skyrmion.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Benjamin Thompson
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News |
Mathematician who tamed randomness wins Abel Prize
Michel Talagrand laid mathematical groundwork that has allowed others to tackle problems involving random processes.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Article
| Open Access
Persistent interaction patterns across social media platforms and over time
Long conversations online consistently exhibit higher toxicity, yet toxic language does not invariably discourage people from participating in a conversation, and toxicity does not necessarily escalate as discussions evolve.
- Michele Avalle
- , Niccolò Di Marco
- & Walter Quattrociocchi
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Correspondence |
Three reasons why AI doesn’t model human language
- Johan J. Bolhuis
- , Stephen Crain
- & Andrea Moro
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Technology Feature |
So … you’ve been hacked
Research institutions are under siege from cybercriminals and other digital assailants. How do you make sure you don’t let them in?
- Michael Brooks
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News Feature |
AI image generators often give racist and sexist results: can they be fixed?
Researchers are tracing sources of racial and gender bias in images generated by artificial intelligence, and making efforts to fix them.
- Ananya
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Arts Review |
A Black mathematical history
Documentary reveals how Black US scholars shaped today’s mathematics community and provides hope for the future.
- Noelle Sawyer
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Technology Feature |
No installation required: how WebAssembly is changing scientific computing
Enabling code execution in the web browser, the multilanguage tool is powerful but complicated.
- Jeffrey M. Perkel
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News Explainer |
AI-generated images and video are here: how could they shape research?
Scientists are already using image-generating models to jazz up papers and presentations. But some say these tools could harm research.
- Carissa Wong
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Editorial |
Why scientists trust AI too much — and what to do about it
Some researchers see superhuman qualities in artificial intelligence. All scientists need to be alert to the risks this creates.
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Technology Feature |
Five tips for digitizing handwritten data
Need to digitize field notes or historical documents? Researchers share their best practices.
- Alla Katsnelson
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News |
Millions of research papers at risk of disappearing from the Internet
An analysis of DOIs suggests that digital preservation is not keeping up with burgeoning scholarly knowledge.
- Sarah Wild
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News Explainer |
Is ChatGPT making scientists hyper-productive? The highs and lows of using AI
Large language models are transforming scientific writing and publishing. But the productivity boost that these tools bring could have a downside.
- McKenzie Prillaman
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Article |
Identifying general reaction conditions by bandit optimization
Bandit optimization models are used to identify generally applicable conditions by efficient condition sampling and evaluation of experimental feedback.
- Jason Y. Wang
- , Jason M. Stevens
- & Abigail G. Doyle
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Article
| Open Access
Avoiding fusion plasma tearing instability with deep reinforcement learning
Artificial intelligence control is used to avoid the emergence of disruptive tearing instabilities in the magnetically confined fusion plasma in the DIII-D tokamak reactor.
- Jaemin Seo
- , SangKyeun Kim
- & Egemen Kolemen
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World View |
Generative AI’s environmental costs are soaring — and mostly secret
First-of-its-kind US bill would address the environmental costs of the technology, but there’s a long way to go.
- Kate Crawford
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Career Column |
Structural biology for researchers with low vision
Scientists seek to analyse biomolecules at the highest level of resolution. We developed and adapted assistive technologies to help those who are blind to do the same.
- Olivia Shaw
- , Cynthia Yurkovich
- & Jodi Hadden-Perilla
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News |
The decimal point is 150 years older than historians thought
Origin of the powerful calculation tool traced back to a mathematician from the Italian Renaissance.
- Jo Marchant
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News |
Just 5 women have won a top maths prize in the past 90 years
Prestigious awards such as the Fields Medal, Abel Prize and Breakthrough Prize have been awarded predominantly to men.
- Sarah Wild
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News & Views |
Gender bias is more exaggerated in online images than in text
A big-data analysis shows that men are starkly over-represented in online images, and that gender bias is stronger in images compared with text. Such images could influence enduring gender biases in our offline lives.
- Bas Hofstra
- & Anne Maaike Mulders
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News Explainer |
How journals are fighting back against a wave of questionable images
Publishers are deploying AI-based tools to detect suspicious images, but generative AI threatens their efforts.
- Nicola Jones
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News Q&A |
‘Geometry can be very simple, but totally deep’: meet top maths prizewinner Claire Voisin
Voisin won this year’s Crafoord Prize in Mathematics for research inspired by string theory, and work on a million-dollar unsolved problem.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Editorial |
Cyberattacks on knowledge institutions are increasing: what can be done?
For months, ransomware attacks have debilitated research at the British Library in London and Berlin’s natural history museum. They show how vulnerable scientific and educational institutions are to this kind of crime.
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News |
AI chatbot shows surprising talent for predicting chemical properties and reactions
Researchers lightly tweak ChatGPT-like system to offer chemistry insight.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Editorial |
How can scientists make the most of the public’s trust in them?
Researchers have a part to play in addressing concerns about government interference in science.
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Editorial |
Computers make mistakes and AI will make things worse — the law must recognize that
A tragic scandal at the UK Post Office highlights the need for legal change, especially as organizations embrace artificial intelligence to enhance decision-making.
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News |
Two-faced AI language models learn to hide deception
‘Sleeper agents’ seem benign during testing but behave differently once deployed. And methods to stop them aren’t working.
- Matthew Hutson
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News & Views |
Large language models help computer programs to evolve
A branch of computer science known as genetic programming has been given a boost with the application of large language models that are trained on the combined intuition of the world’s programmers.
- Jean-Baptiste Mouret
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News |
DeepMind AI solves geometry problems at star-student level
Algorithms are now as good at geometry as some of the world’s most mathematically talented school kids.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Article
| Open Access
Solving olympiad geometry without human demonstrations
A new neuro-symbolic theorem prover for Euclidean plane geometry trained from scratch on millions of synthesized theorems and proofs outperforms the previous best method and reaches the performance of an olympiad gold medallist.
- Trieu H. Trinh
- , Yuhuai Wu
- & Thang Luong
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Nature Podcast |
This AI just figured out geometry — is this a step towards artificial reasoning?
How ‘AlphaGeometry’ solves Mathematical Olympiad-level problems, and what happens to an ecosystem after a mass predator die-off.
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News |
Google AI has better bedside manner than human doctors — and makes better diagnoses
Researchers say their artificial-intelligence system could help to democratize medicine.
- Mariana Lenharo
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Editorial |
There are holes in Europe’s AI Act — and researchers can help to fill them
Scientists have been promised a front-row seat for the formulation of the EU’s proposed AI regulatory structures. They should seize this opportunity to bridge some big gaps.
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Editorial |
How online misinformation exploits ‘information voids’ — and what to do about it
In 2024’s super election year, providers of online search engines and their users need to be especially aware of how online misinformation can seem all too credible.
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News Feature |
The AI–quantum computing mash-up: will it revolutionize science?
Scientists are exploring the potential of quantum machine learning. But whether there are useful applications for the fusion of artificial intelligence and quantum computing is unclear.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Nature Video |
Festive parody songs from the Nature Podcast
The Nature Podcast team have rewritten two popular holiday songs in honour of some of the biggest science stories of in 2023.
- Noah Baker
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News |
Will superintelligent AI sneak up on us? New study offers reassurance
Improvements in the performance of large language models such as ChatGPT are more predictable than they seem.
- Matthew Hutson
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News |
AI consciousness: scientists say we urgently need answers
Researchers call for more funding to study the boundary between conscious and unconscious systems.
- Mariana Lenharo
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Nature Video |
What ChatGPT is and what it's not: a three minute guide
A whistle-stop tour under the hood of Chat GPT in which we ask whether we should be calling LLMs intelligent in the first place
- Richard Van Noorden
- & Shamini Bundell
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Nature Podcast |
The Nature Podcast festive spectacular 2023
Games, seasonal science songs, and Nature’s 10.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Noah Baker
AI’s keen diagnostic eye