Featured
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Career Feature |
How scientists are making the most of Reddit
As X wanes, researchers are turning to Reddit for insights and data, and to better connect with the public.
- Hannah Docter-Loeb
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Article |
A global timekeeping problem postponed by global warming
Increased melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, measured by satellite gravity, has decreased the angular velocity of Earth more rapidly than before and has already affected global timekeeping.
- Duncan Carr Agnew
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News Feature |
AI image generators often give racist and sexist results: can they be fixed?
Researchers are tracing sources of racial and gender bias in images generated by artificial intelligence, and making efforts to fix them.
- Ananya
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Editorial |
Why scientists trust AI too much — and what to do about it
Some researchers see superhuman qualities in artificial intelligence. All scientists need to be alert to the risks this creates.
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News |
Millions of research papers at risk of disappearing from the Internet
An analysis of DOIs suggests that digital preservation is not keeping up with burgeoning scholarly knowledge.
- Sarah Wild
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News & Views |
Gender bias is more exaggerated in online images than in text
A big-data analysis shows that men are starkly over-represented in online images, and that gender bias is stronger in images compared with text. Such images could influence enduring gender biases in our offline lives.
- Bas Hofstra
- & Anne Maaike Mulders
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Editorial |
Computers make mistakes and AI will make things worse — the law must recognize that
A tragic scandal at the UK Post Office highlights the need for legal change, especially as organizations embrace artificial intelligence to enhance decision-making.
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Editorial |
How online misinformation exploits ‘information voids’ — and what to do about it
In 2024’s super election year, providers of online search engines and their users need to be especially aware of how online misinformation can seem all too credible.
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Research Briefing |
Online search results can increase belief in misinformation
To counter misinformation, people are often advised to check the truth of claims by searching online. Five experiments show that this can actually increase people’s belief that false or misleading articles are true, an effect that might be driven by low-quality search results.
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Comment |
Disaster early-warning systems can succeed — but collective action is needed
From floods to wildfires, and tsunamis to volcanic eruptions, early-warning systems can stop natural hazards becoming human disasters. But more joined-up thinking is urgently needed.
- Andrew C. Tupper
- & Carina J. Fearnley
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News |
AI tidies up Wikipedia’s references — and boosts reliability
A neural network can identify references that are unlikely to support an article’s claims, and scour the web for better sources.
- Chris Stokel-Walker
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Editorial |
The disinformation sleuths: a key role for scientists in impending elections
Researchers in Europe have a golden opportunity to help defend democratic principles and bring science to bear against online disinformation.
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Article
| Open Access
An analog-AI chip for energy-efficient speech recognition and transcription
A low-power chip that runs AI models using analog rather than digital computation shows comparable accuracy on speech-recognition tasks but is more than 14 times as energy efficient.
- S. Ambrogio
- , P. Narayanan
- & G. W. Burr
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Article |
Heat-assisted detection and ranging
Heat-assisted detection and ranging is experimentally shown to see texture and depth through darkness as if it were day, and also perceives decluttered physical attributes beyond RGB or thermal vision.
- Fanglin Bao
- , Xueji Wang
- & Zubin Jacob
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Editorial |
ChatGPT is a black box: how AI research can break it open
Despite their wide use, large language models are still mysterious. Revealing their true nature is urgent and important.
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News & Views |
From the archive: computer security, and a key experiment by Pascal
Snippets from Nature’s past.
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Article
| Open Access
Evidence for the utility of quantum computing before fault tolerance
Experiments on a noisy 127-qubit superconducting quantum processor report the accurate measurement of expectation values beyond the reach of current brute-force classical computation, demonstrating evidence for the utility of quantum computing before fault tolerance.
- Youngseok Kim
- , Andrew Eddins
- & Abhinav Kandala
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News |
DeepMind AI creates algorithms that sort data faster than those built by people
The technology developed by DeepMind that plays Go and chess can also help to write code.
- Matthew Hutson
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Technology Feature |
Six tips for better coding with ChatGPT
Although powerful, the tools are not as intelligent as they seem. Use them with caution, computer scientists warn.
- Jeffrey M. Perkel
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Outlook |
Rewriting the quantum-computer blueprint
An architecture for quantum computers based on parity is attracting money from government and industry.
- Edwin Cartlidge
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Outlook |
Commercializing quantum computers step by step
Alongside developing a quantum computer, one group of scientists is selling its components to other researchers.
- Edwin Cartlidge
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Comment |
Humans and algorithms work together — so study them together
Adaptive algorithms have been linked to terrorist attacks and beneficial social movements. Governing them requires new science on collective human–algorithm behaviour.
- J. Nathan Matias
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Outlook |
Synthetic data could be better than real data
Machine-generated data sets have the potential to improve privacy and representation in artificial intelligence, if researchers can find the right balance between accuracy and fakery.
- Neil Savage
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Research Briefing |
Memristor devices denoised to achieve thousands of conductance levels
The number of distinguishable conductance levels in memristor devices — electronic components that store information without power — has been limited by noise. An understanding of the source of the noise, and development of an effective denoising process, have now enabled 2,048 conductance levels to be achieved in memristors in large arrays fabricated in a chip factory.
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Nature Index |
Japanese robotics lags as AI captures global attention
The country’s automation research might need a renewed focus to rekindle past successes.
- Rachel Nuwer
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Outlook |
Why artificial intelligence needs to understand consequences
A machine with a grasp of cause and effect could learn more like a human, through imagination and regret.
- Neil Savage
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News Explainer |
AI chatbots are coming to search engines — can you trust the results?
Google, Microsoft and Baidu are using tools similar to ChatGPT to turn Internet search into a conversation. How will this change humanity’s relationship with machines?
- Chris Stokel-Walker
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Nature Podcast |
Audio long read: Science and the World Cup — how big data is transforming football
Researchers are showing their skills to help soccer coaches improve players and develop winning tactics.
- David Adam
- & Benjamin Thompson
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News |
Maths predicts World Cup winner — and more of this week’s best science graphics
Four charts from the world of research, selected by Nature editors.
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News Feature |
Science and the World Cup: how big data is transforming football
As the FIFA tournament kicks off, researchers are showing their skills to help soccer coaches develop players and tactics.
- David Adam
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Nature Podcast |
Molecular cages sift ‘heavy’ water from near-identical H2O
A new method to separate out heavy water, and how smartphone data could help check the health of bridges.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Benjamin Thompson
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News & Views |
The unseen Black faces of AI algorithms
An audit of commercial facial-analysis tools found that dark-skinned faces are misclassified at a much higher rate than are faces from any other group. Four years on, the study is shaping research, regulation and commercial practices.
- Abeba Birhane
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Comment |
Africa: regulate surveillance technologies and personal data
CCTV cameras and spyware are proliferating in the continent without checks and balances. Governments must legislate locally to prevent civil-rights abuses.
- Bulelani Jili
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Technology Feature |
Ex-Google chief’s venture aims to save neglected science software
Schmidt Futures is creating the US$40-million Virtual Institute of Scientific Software to fund the maintenance of researcher-written code.
- David Matthews
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News |
These ‘quantum-proof’ algorithms could safeguard against future cyberattacks
US government agency endorses tools to keep the Internet safe from quantum computers capable of cracking conventional encryption keys.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Technology Feature |
Need web data? Here’s how to harvest them
Webscraping is a useful tool for gathering data from public websites, but researchers must develop some fundamental software skills to use it.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Technology Feature |
Cloud labs: where robots do the research
A host of companies provide a remote, automated workforce for conducting experiments around the clock.
- Carrie Arnold
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Perspective |
Brain-inspired computing needs a master plan
The benefits and future prospects of neuromorphic, or bio-inspired, computing technologies are discussed, as is the need for a global, coordinated approach to funding, research and collaboration.
- A. Mehonic
- & A. J. Kenyon
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Nature Podcast |
Audio long-read: A more-inclusive genome project aims to capture all of human diversity
Researchers are looking to build a human ‘pangenome’ that includes wider human genetic variation than previous attempts.
- Roxanne Khamsi
- & Benjamin Thompson
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Technology Feature |
In pursuit of data immortality
Data sharing can save important scientific work from extinction, but only if researchers take care to ensure that resources are easy to find and reuse.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Comment |
Crypto and digital currencies — nine research priorities
To avert privacy breaches, scams and environmental damage, governments and central banks need to know how best to regulate this financial frontier.
- Andrew Urquhart
- & Brian Lucey
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Outlook |
Breaking into the black box of artificial intelligence
Scientists are finding ways to explain the inner workings of complex machine-learning models.
- Neil Savage
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Nature Podcast |
Audio long-read: The race to save the Internet from quantum hackers
Researchers are scrambling to develop encryption systems that could defeat future quantum computers.
- Davide Castelvecchi
- & Benjamin Thompson
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News Feature |
The race to save the Internet from quantum hackers
The quantum computer revolution could break encryption — but more-secure algorithms can safeguard privacy.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Technology Feature |
How remouldable computer hardware is speeding up science
Field-programmable gate arrays can speed up applications ranging from genomic alignment to deep learning.
- Jeffrey M. Perkel
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Nature Podcast |
Food shocks and how to avoid them
Addressing the problem of sudden food scarcity in US cities, and the up-and-coming field of computational social science.
- Shamini Bundell
- & Nick Petrić Howe
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Comment |
Everyone should decide how their digital data are used — not just tech companies
Smartphones, sensors and consumer habits reveal much about society. Too few people have a say in how these data are created and used.
- Jathan Sadowski
- , Salomé Viljoen
- & Meredith Whittaker
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Nature Index |
Machines learn to unearth new materials
Materials genome initiatives sift big data.
- Neil Savage
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Editorial |
Google’s AI approach to microchips is welcome — but needs care
Artificial intelligence can help the electronics industry to speed up chip design. But the gains must be shared equitably.
The dream of electronic newspapers becomes a reality — in 1974