How we discovered that VR can profile your personality Mark Nazh/Shutterstock Stephen Fairclough, Liverpool John Moores University Virtual reality (VR) has the power to take us out of our surroundings and transport us to far-off lands. From a quick round of golf, to fighting monsters or going for a skydive, all of this can be achieved from the comfort of your home. But it’s not just gamers who love VR and see its potential. VR is used a lot in
Excel errors: the UK government has an embarrassingly long history of spreadsheet horror stories TeodorLazarev/Shutterstock Simon Thorne, Cardiff Metropolitan University When the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, first said the country would develop a £12 billion “world-beating” system for testing and tracing cases of COVID-19, few people probably imagined that it would be based around a £120 generic spreadsheet program. Yet the news that the details of 16,000 positive test cases had been lost because of an error made with
Teaching computers to read health records is helping fight COVID-19 – here’s how James Teo, King’s College London and Richard Dobson, King’s College London Medical records are a rich source of health data. When combined, the information they contain can help researchers better understand diseases and treat them more effectively. This includes COVID-19. But to unlock this rich resource, researchers first need to read it. We may have moved on from the days of handwritten medical notes, but the information
Curious Kids: could our entire reality be part of a simulation created by some other beings? Unsplash, CC BY-SA Sam Baron, Australian Catholic University Is it possible the whole observable universe is just a thing kept in a container, in a room where there are some other extraterrestrial beings much bigger than us? Kanishk, Year 9 Hi Kanishk! I’m going to interpret your question in a slightly different way. Let’s assume these extraterrestrial beings have a computer on which our
Major quantum computational breakthrough is shaking up physics and maths Quantum computers may be more trustworthy. Yurchanka Siarhei/Shutterstock Ittay Weiss, University of Portsmouth MIP* = RE is not a typo. It is a groundbreaking discovery and the catchy title of a recent paper in the field of quantum complexity theory. Complexity theory is a zoo of “complexity classes” – collections of computational problems – of which MIP* and RE are but two. The 165-page paper shows that these two classes
AI called GPT-3 can write like a human but don’t mistake that for thinking – neuroscientist Bas Nastassia/Shutterstock Guillaume Thierry, Bangor University Since it was unveiled earlier this year, the new AI-based language generating software GPT-3 has attracted much attention for its ability to produce passages of writing that are convincingly human-like. Some have even suggested that the program, created by Elon Musk’s OpenAI, may be considered or appears to exhibit, something like artificial general intelligence (AGI), the ability to
A computer can guess more than 100,000,000,000 passwords per second. Still think yours is secure? Paul Haskell-Dowland, Author provided Paul Haskell-Dowland, Edith Cowan University and Brianna O’Shea, Edith Cowan University Passwords have been used for thousands of years as a means of identifying ourselves to others and in more recent times, to computers. It’s a simple concept – a shared piece of information, kept secret between individuals and used to “prove” identity. Passwords in an IT context emerged in the
Apple is starting a war over privacy with iOS 14 – publishers are naive if they think it will back down Ten four, let’s go to war! DANIEL CONSTANTE Ana Isabel Domingos Canhoto, Brunel University London iPhone users are about to receive access to Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 14. It will come with the usual array of shiny new features, but the real game-changer will be missing – at least until January. For the first time, iOS 14
Robots to be introduced in UK care homes to allay loneliness – that’s inhuman Fay Bound Alberti, University of York Some UK care homes are to deploy robots in an attempt to allay loneliness and boost mental health. The wheeled machines will “initiate rudimentary conversations, play residents’ favourite music, teach them languages, and offer practical help, including medicine reminders”. They are being introduced after an international trial found they reduced anxiety and loneliness. These robots can hold basic conversations and
The fourth agricultural revolution is coming – but who will really benefit? kung_tom/shutterstock David Rose, University of Reading and Charlotte-Anne Chivers, University of Gloucestershire Depending on who you listen to, artificial intelligence may either free us from monotonous labour and unleash huge productivity gains, or create a dystopia of mass unemployment and automated oppression. In the case of farming, some researchers, business people and politicians think the effects of AI and other advanced technologies are so great they are spurring
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