You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.At last year’s Google I/O, its annual showcase of new widgets and work-in-progress tech, CEO Sundar Pichai revealed his company’s “latest breakthrough in natural-language understanding”: a chatbot called LaMDA, designed to converse on any topic.   He then gave a demo in which LaMDA answered questions about Pluto in natural language. The exchange showed off a convenient way to get information—an alternative to search. Instead of listing results after queries were typed into a search box, LaMDA took part in a conversation in which it...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.At last year’s Google I/O, its annual showcase of new widgets and work-in-progress tech, CEO Sundar Pichai revealed his company’s “latest breakthrough in natural-language understanding”: a chatbot called LaMDA, designed to converse on any topic.   He then gave a demo in which LaMDA answered questions about Pluto in natural language. The exchange showed off a convenient way to get information—an alternative to search. Instead of listing results after queries were typed into a search box, LaMDA took part in a conversation in which it...WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.Albert Einstein wanted nothing to do with it: he mocked the strange concept of quantum entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.” But a hundred years on, Einstein’s bugbear could help create a more secure internet, thanks to the most reliable technique yet for entangling nodes along miles of fiber-optic cable.With entanglement, an object can be put into a quantum superposition of multiple states—like Schrödinger’s cat, both alive and dead at once—and that superposition can be shared with another object. In theory, these objects will...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.Albert Einstein wanted nothing to do with it: he mocked the strange concept of quantum entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.” But a hundred years on, Einstein’s bugbear could help create a more secure internet, thanks to the most reliable technique yet for entangling nodes along miles of fiber-optic cable.With entanglement, an object can be put into a quantum superposition of multiple states—like Schrödinger’s cat, both alive and dead at once—and that superposition can be shared with another object. In theory, these objects will...WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.It was an AI that first saw it coming, or so the story goes. On December 30, an artificial-intelligence company called BlueDot, which uses to monitor outbreaks of infectious diseases around the world, alerted clients—including various governments, hospitals, and businesses—to an unusual bump in pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China. It would be another nine days before the World Health Organization officially flagged what we’ve all come to know as . BlueDot wasn’t alone. An automated service called HealthMap at Boston Children’s Hospital also caught...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.It was an AI that first saw it coming, or so the story goes. On December 30, an artificial-intelligence company called BlueDot, which uses to monitor outbreaks of infectious diseases around the world, alerted clients—including various governments, hospitals, and businesses—to an unusual bump in pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China. It would be another nine days before the World Health Organization officially flagged what we’ve all come to know as . BlueDot wasn’t alone. An automated service called HealthMap at Boston Children’s Hospital also caught...WW…

You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The news: An app that tracks where you have been and who you have crossed paths with—and then shares this personal data with other users in a privacy-preserving way—could help curb the spread of Covid-19, says Ramesh Raskar at the MIT Media Lab, who leads the team behind it. Called , the free and open-source app was developed by people at MIT and Harvard, as well as software engineers at companies such as Facebook and Uber, who worked on it in their free time.   Privacy concerns: The World Health Organization has called for...…You need to enable JavaScript to view this site.The news: An app that tracks where you have been and who you have crossed paths with—and then shares this personal data with other users in a privacy-preserving way—could help curb the spread of Covid-19, says Ramesh Raskar at the MIT Media Lab, who leads the team behind it. Called , the free and open-source app was developed by people at MIT and Harvard, as well as software engineers at companies such as Facebook and Uber, who worked on it in their free time.   Privacy concerns: The World Health Organization has called for...WW…