Each year the AAAI recognizes a group of individuals who have made significant, sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence by appointing them as Fellows. Over the course of the next few months, we'll be talking to some of the 2026 AAAI Fellows. In this interview, we met with Tanya Berger-Wolf, who was elected as a Fellow . We found out about her latest research developing a foundation model for biology, the insights this model can provide, interesting collaborations over the years, and what the future has in store. Could you start with a quick introduction and tell us about the broad area that you're working in? My area of research is in AI for ecology, biodiversity, and conservation.

Plus: Illinois just passed what could become America's strongest AI safety law. Climate tech companies are going public. Solar and battery company Solv Energy went public in February, hitting a $6 billion valuation. X-energy, which builds small modular nuclear reactors, followed at $11.5 billion. Then came geothermal company Fervo Energy, reaching a market cap of about $12.4 billion. All three have been IPO success stories.

Illinois Lawmakers Just Passed America's Strongest AI Safety Bill The bill requires companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to have third parties confirm they're following safety standards. The Illinois House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday requiring frontier AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind to have their safety practices audited by a third party. If signed into law, AI safety experts tell WIRED, it would be the nation's leading check on the power of major AI companies . The bill, SB 315, now heads to governor JB Pritzker's desk. In a post on social media on Wednesday, Pritzker said he plans to sign the bill, citing a need to hold Big Tech accountable.

Pope Leo XIV's new encyclical warns AI threatens humanity, but history shows technological progress lifts living standards. Why the pope and Bernie Sanders may be wrong about AI.

Meet the UK's very own LeBron James... but not as you know it Look out LeBron James and Michael Jordan, there's a new basketball champ around. But it was made in Lisburn rather than Los Angeles or Chicago. The name 25416 may not appear on many replica vests, but it can shoot hoops like no-one else. And the basketball-playing robot won a school in Lisburn first prize at the UK-wide First Tech Challenge robotics competition. The team of sixth-formers from Friends' School came top of 48 schools from across the UK at the competition held in London's Copper Box Arena. Going down and working on it with my friends is honestly one of the highlights of my last year in school, he said.

The Vapnik-Chervonenkis dimension is the fundamental combinatorial parameter of distribution-free binary classification. Introduced by Vapnik and Chervonenkis in their work on uniform convergence [VC71], and closely connected to the Sauer-Shelah lemma [Sau72, She72], it characterizes classical PAC learnability [Val84, BEHW89, EHKV89]. In particular, finite VC dimension is equivalent to distribution-free learnability. This paper asks whether that finite-versus-infinite VC dichotomy is still visible after replacing a concept class by its contradiction graphs. For a binary class H {0,1}X, the order-m contradiction graph Gm(H) has as vertices the H-realizable labeled samples of length m, with an edge between two samples if they assign opposite labels to some common domain point. Throughout, samples are ordered sequences, and repetitions of domain points are allowed, subject to consistent labeling. We use the contradiction-graph framework introduced by Alon et al. in their graph-theoretic characterization of private learnability [AMSY24]. They ask whether two binary classes can have isomorphic contradiction graphs at every level while one has finite VC dimension and the other has infinite VC dimension.

One line tucked into a federal highway bill would strip funds from cities and states unless they kill their automated plate tracking programs--effectively banning the tech for all but toll collection. US lawmakers plan to introduce an amendment Thursday at a House committee markup hearing that would prohibit any recipient of federal highway funding from using automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling--a sweeping restriction that, if adopted, would bring an immediate end to state and local ALPR programs across the United States. The amendment, obtained first by WIRED, is sponsored by Representative Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican and Freedom Caucus member, and Representative Jesús "Chuy" García, an Illinois progressive whose state has become a flash point in the national fight over ALPR misuse. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will mark up the underlying bill--a $580 billion, five-year reauthorization of federal surface transportation programs--at 10 am ET on Thursday. Neither Perry nor García's offices immediately responded to WIRED's request for comment. The amendment runs a single sentence: "A recipient of assistance under Title 23, United States Code, may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling."

The pope's encyclical will address'the protection of the human person in the age of AI', the Vatican says In the first major text of his papacy, Pope Leo will address the rapid rise of artificial intelligence . The Chicago-born pontiff will present the document, known as an encyclical, at the Vatican next week during an event attended by Christopher Olah, the co-founder of Anthropic - a US-based AI firm that has clashed with Donald Trump's administration. The encyclical will address "the protection of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence", the Vatican said on Monday. In a break from tradition, Leo, who was elected pontiff in May last year, will launch the document during a public presentation on 25 May. He will be joined by lay speaker Olah of Anthropic, which is in the middle of a high-profile lawsuit with the Trump administration over the ethics of AI, as well as theologians Anna Rowlands and Léocadie Lushombo.

Truth Predict was supposed to be the Trump family's biggest leap yet into prediction markets. Now it's looking more like a tiptoe. The odds that the Trump family will launch a full-fledged prediction market product this year just plummeted. Last year, the Trump Media and Technology Group announced Truth Predict, a partnership with the cryptocurrency company Crypto.com. The initial announcement touted Truth Predict as a "new product" that would allow Truth Social users to make trades on sports, inflation, elections, and more through an "embedded" prediction market service.

Former LSU coach Brian Kelly uses AI to prepare for job interviews, proving he's just like the rest of us Newsom office source responds to planned protest against trans athlete at state playoff girls' track meet Framber Valdez gets what he deserves for punk move, suspended six games after drilling Boston's Trevor Story MLB's new automated strike zone has a hidden feature helping umpires become more accurate than ever FIFA's World Cup ticket defense falls apart when compared to college football and NFL playoff prices Sophie Cunningham tells Angel Reese to'move on' after she reposted boyfriend dunking on rumored ex Pratt issues SHOCKING WARNING to socialist opponent: 'Stabbed in the NECK!' 'Fox & Friends' explores wearable technology's role in health and wellness NJ family outraged over killer's plea deal for slain daughter Jillian Ludwig Craig Counsell called the injury'kind of unexplainable' as Chicago placed Boyd on the 15-day injured list Wednesday Cubs co-owner tells Dan Dakich he believes the MLB will have an Opening Day next season & avoid a strike that bleeds into the start of the season. It's incredible, and also a bit depressing, that the following statement is factually accurate: Chicago Cubs starting pitcher Matthew Boyd will miss a considerable amount of time for being a good father. The 35-year-old sustained a left meniscus injury while reportedly sitting down to play with his kids. Prior to Chicago's contest against the Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday, Cubs manager Craig Counsell revealed that the knee injury would require surgery. It's kind of unexplainable, Counsell very fairly said.