Science of the Future
GLP podcast: What’s wrong with ‘doomsday’ environmentalism? It’s false.
Ever notice how the environmental movement’s doomsday predictions arrive like clockwork, each one as urgent as the last? Mass starvation, ...
Viewpoint — AI doomsday projections: Will social media save us or make the panic worse?
The effort to seed content about the dangers of AI across the internet comes as the technology’s growing influence has ...
Anti-biotechnology activists smear hybrid wheat breakthrough that could surge yields in poorer countries
In biology, a hybrid is when two different genotypes within the same species crossbreed, and the first generation performs significantly ...
Viewpoint: Researchers claiming living near nuclear energy causes cancer botched their research
In December 2025, researchers led by Yazan Alwadi at Harvard’s T.H Chan School of Public Health published a paper in ...
Google and search engines opened the door to online misinformation. AI could help address that.
The democratic nature of digital media initially inspired utopian hopes. It promised to expose the blind spots of cultural elites, ...
AI with human feelings? Anthropic’s Claude edges closer
... A new study from Anthropic suggests models have digital representations of human emotions like happiness, sadness, joy, and fear, ...
AI can now generate academic papers that pass peer review. What are the risks?
In 2024, the Tokyo-based start-up Sakana.ai introduced "The AI scientist" — an AI system that can create new machine learning ...
How China engineered its agricultural revolution
Between 1959 and 1961, an estimated 30 to 45 million Chinese people died in a famine resulting from Leader Mao Zedong’s Great ...
From ideology to engineering: As green opposition to nuclear energy softens, the debate shifts to what can scale
For years, the country’s major environmental groups stood shoulder to shoulder against nuclear power. That unanimity may be starting to ...
A longer leash on life: The no longer quixotic quest to extend our dogs’ golden years
Dog owners do many things to keep our canine companions happy and healthy, and I’m no exception. I flew from ...
Viewpoint—Tech pseudoscience: The limits of AI and machine learning
Machine Learning (ML) is a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI), where a neural network is ‘trained’ to recognise patterns, in order ...
Paywall science predicament: AI answers often skew toward misinformation
When researchers Matthew Magnani of the University of Maine and Jon Clindaniel of the University of Chicago tried prompting ChatGPT ...
Teaching AI to have a soul
As the resident philosopher of the tech company Anthropic, [Amanda] Askell spends her days learning Claude’s reasoning patterns and talking to the ...
Gene-edited foods are advancing fast—but commercialization and consumer acceptance lag
[A]s gene editing matures, another reality has come into focus. The science accelerates. Commercialization does not. That tension surfaced during ...
GM mushrooms taste like meat but use 70% less land than livestock
Imagine picking up something that looks and chews like chicken, only it never clucked, never set foot on a farm, ...
AI medical advice: Not ready for prime time
Medical artificial intelligence (AI) is often described as a way to make patient care safer by helping clinicians manage information ...
Viewpoint: What happens if the AI bubble bursts? An anti-modernist skeptic makes his case
If some time in an entirely possible future they come to make a movie about “how the AI bubble burst”, ...
Repurposing the husks and other fibrous residue from seed crops could be converted into carbon-storing building supplies
Agricultural waste that is usually burned or left to rot could play a far bigger role in tackling climate change ...
One time weight-loss therapy? Gene therapy could revolutionize the GLP-1 industry, but challenges remain
A cardiologist by training, [Harith] Rajagopalan believes there’s a better way to harness the benefits of GLP-1 drugs: a gene ...
Dr. Google is being kicked to the curb. Welcome to AI. Will the diagnoses be any better?
For the past two decades, there’s been a clear first step for anyone who starts experiencing new medical symptoms: Look ...
Biological age craze: Are longevity tests and clinics a scam?
People are flocking to so-called longevity clinics and buying tests online to find out their “biological age”—a metric that some scientists say ...
Can power-voracious AI rely on nuclear energy?
Nuclear power has emerged as a strong candidate for companies looking to power data centers while cutting emissions. Unlike wind ...
Can AI revolutionize science research?
... OpenAI is making an explicit play for scientists. In October, the firm announced that it had launched a whole ...
Personalized health: When it comes to medicine, one size no longer fits all
Vive les différences. A new health study has found that the classic recommendation of eight hours of sleep may not ...
The dawn of the era of the AI therapist
Given the clear demand for accessible and affordable mental-health services, it’s no wonder that people have looked to artificial intelligence ...
What might be the consequences of designing your baby?
Soon, all of humanity will be customised in the same way to design the next generation. Gene editing may be ...
Gene therapy can restore hearing in some people born with congenital deafness
Up to three in every 1,000 newborns has hearing loss in one or both ears. While cochlear implants offer remarkable hope for ...
