Aedan O'Brien

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already re-configuring the world in conspicuous ways. Data drives our global digital ecosystem, and AI technologies reveal patterns in data. Smartphones, smart homes, and smart cities influence how we live and interact, and AI systems are increasingly involved in recruitment decisions, medical diagnoses, and judicial verdicts. Whether this scenario is utopian

When the end of the world comes, how will you tweet? Thankfully for those of us who didn’t have a plan ready, Motherboard reports that software developer Virgil Dupras has built an operating system — Collapse OS — that can be run on parts salvaged from a post-apocalyptic hellscape.   The idea is to find

Those Knightscope security robots may not be so great at their jobs. When a woman in a park near Los Angeles saw people fighting and tried to summon help via a police robot patrolling nearby, the robot merely told her to “step out of the way” and continued along its pre-determined route, according to NBC

A new gel-like fluid that sticks to vegetation for months on end could be an ingenious new way to stop mother nature from burning. Devised by an engineer and a former fire-prevention forester, this sprayable retardant could one day be used to drastically reduce the number of forest fires experienced each year.   By coating

The bigger they come, the harder they fall, the old saying goes – or in this case, the more popular the game, the more user data is at risk, should hackers get access to it. That’s reportedly what’s happened with smash mobile hit Words With Friends. A hacker by the name of Gnosticplayers claims to

Tesla’s “Smart Summon” feature, which lets cars navigate themselves in parking lots, isn’t even out of beta yet. But Tesla owners are already using it in some mind-bogglingly stupid ways, Electrek reports.   In a video uploaded to YouTube account “Dirty Tesla”, a Model 3 owner tries to walk in front of his vehicle while

Autonomous driving will bring us a number of freedoms. Passengers will be able to watch movies, read newspapers – if they still exist – or play video games while the AI drives.   But BMW thinks being chauffeured by a self-driving car can get a whole lot more exciting than that. The German carmaker released

There is such a thing as not enough chaos. In a new study, scientists have discovered that complex calculations performed by computers can be off by as much as 15 percent, due to a “pathological” inability to grasp the true mathematical complexity of chaotic dynamical systems.   “Our work shows that the behaviour of the

We’ve watched the Spot robot quadruped grow up and evolve, from its earliest days as a larger, more cumbersome beast to a carefully refined machine capable of pulling trucks. Now maker Boston Dynamics is putting the robo-dog on sale.   The idea is not to provide a friendly pet that curls up in front of

We just entered a fundamental new epoch in computing. Maybe. Google scientists said we did. Then their declaration mysteriously vanished. Last week, a scientific paper by Google and affiliated researchers was uploaded on a NASA website. Its contents – if legitimate – are not insignificant. In the paper, the scientists claim that quantum processors have

Quantum computers exist today, although they’re limited, cut-down versions of what we hope fully blown quantum computers are going to be able to do in the future. But now, researchers have developed hardware for a ‘probabilistic computer’ – a device that might be able to bridge the gap between genuine quantum computers and the standard

Here’s your dismal fact of the day: if the world’s cement industry was a country, it would sit just behind China and the US as the third leading producer of carbon pollution. It doesn’t need to be that way, though.   We just might be able to change that ugly statistic by producing the ingredients

Wi-Fi just turned 6. Not in terms of years old (Wi-Fi is a lot older than that), but in terms of its version number: Wi-Fi 6 officially launched this week. What does that mean for you? Well, if you’re anything like me – meaning you spend a lot of time indoors using the internet –

Two years ago, one freezing December night on a California rooftop, a tiny light shone weakly with a little help from the freezing night air. It wasn’t a very bright glow. But it was enough to demonstrate the possibility of generating renewable power after the Sun goes down.   Working with Stanford University engineers Wei Li

Scientists have invented a new method for turning carbon dioxide into a liquid fuel that can efficiently store energy in fuel cells.  The fuel could one day be the future of green transport, cramming more energy into the tank than the same volume of hydrogen while also serving as a building block for a whole

China’s iPhone users have found a new craze – a new app called Zao which lets people convincingly and hilariously transpose their faces onto actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Kit Harrington from Game of Thrones, and many others.   Zao topped the Chinese iOS download chart over the weekend after first launching on the App Store

Silicon has had a very good run as the material upon which all of our electronics are based, but it’s starting to reach its limits. Now there’s a new contender for running our computers and smartphones: carbon nanotubes.   Scientists just made the largest working computer chip to date out of this hugely promising material.

Sounds like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was just kicked out of mom’s basement. In an inexplicable tweet, DARPA asked for help finding “commercially managed underground urban tunnels and facilities able to host research and experimentation.”   And nobody knows why. The ideal space would be a human-made underground environment spanning several city blocks