EverythingScience

Don’t be fooled—LLMs don’t reason On an afternoon in Seoul in March 2016, I watched a program I helped build put a stone on the fifth line of a Go board in what looked like a gift to its human opponent. Move 37 in game two of the five-game match looked so absurd that some commentators thought it was a programming glitch. It wasn’t. AlphaGo won the game, ultimately triumphing 4-1 over Lee Sedol, one of the greatest professional Go players of all time. “I thought AlphaGo was based on probability calculation and that it was merely a machine,” Lee said afterwards. “But when I saw this move, I cha…

We can finally measure the damage each new coal, gas or oil project will do to people and nature We have long known every tonne of carbon dioxide matters to the climate. But governments keep approving new fossil fuel projects—even as climate change worsens. Until now, it's been difficult to say how much damage and extra warming a specific project will cause. Fossil fuel companies—and government agencies approving their projects—have often relied on what's known as the "drop in the ocean" defense. While backers concede a new project will add more carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, th…

When everyday sounds trigger big feelings: Inside misophonia research Misophonia causes strong emotions in response to everyday sounds like chewing or sniffing. The condition often involves feelings of immediate distress or anger. This can be confusing and upsetting for children, adults and their families or friends. Misophonia can disrupt family meals, school, work, friendships and other parts of daily life. At Yale Child Study Center, associate professor Thomas Fernandez, M.D., works with patients who struggle with misophonia. Fernandez also studies the genetics of misophonia and other con…

Japan switches on its first full-stack room-temperature quantum computer — and scientists plan to scale it up to 10,000 qubits Researchers in Japan have switched on "Shunkai," a neutral atom quantum computer that scientists hope to scale into a 10,000-qubit behemoth by March 2031. Shunkai is the first full-stack system of its kind in Japan, meaning it features the software, control and hardware layers needed to read user inputs and return a result — not unlike a conventional PC. In theory, that means it should be easier for researchers to get some meaningful use out of the machine, with the t…

A Startup Wants to Power Data Centers With ‘Supercritical’ Carbon Dioxide A new company has a plan to make the dirty gas turbines powering data centers more efficient: liquid carbon dioxide. American Supercritical came out of stealth Wednesday, announcing $8 million in funding. It wants to retrofit inefficient gas turbines that many data centers rely on for power with units that can generate more power, without adding more emissions (though the gas-fired turbines will continue to emit carbon pollution). The technology can also theoretically be used on a wide variety of energy sources at a tim…