Are these AI prompts damaging your thinking skills? What was the last thing you asked an AI chatbot to do for you? Maybe you asked it for an essay structure to help answer a tricky question, provide an insightful analysis of a chunky data set, or to check if your cover letter matches the job description. Some experts worry that outsourcing these kinds of tasks means your brain is working less - and could even be harming your critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published a study showing that people who used ChatGPT to write essays showed less activity in brain networks associated with cognitive processing while undertaking the exercise.

A protest against a planned data center in Decatur, Georgia. A protest against a planned data center in Decatur, Georgia. Analysts see'global construction frenzy that shows no signs of slowing' amid surge in demand from AI boom A new report finds that investment in the worldwide data center market reached $61bn this year, setting a new record atop the wave of the artificial intelligence boom. The analysis by S&P Global, first reported by CNBC, documented what the market intelligence firm called a "global construction frenzy that shows no signs of slowing", to build out the massive real estate, hardware, and energy requirements driven by insatiable demand from AI companies. S&P pegged 2024's investment in the data center market at $60.8bn, just below the 2025 number.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. There are plenty of annual recap lists circulating around this time of year, but few of them involve the amount of work put in by California's Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). Over the past year, researchers guided remotely operated vehicles more than 3,000 feet down to survey the vast biodiversity within some of the oceans' deepest and darkest regions. The data and footage collected during these trips will help experts fill in the gaps towards understanding the planet's hardest-to-reach ecosystems. To celebrate the past 12 months of discoveries, MBARI released a video highlighting some of 2025's most stunning, strange, and mysterious creature sightings.

Scents play a central role in nature, as olfactory interactions are the language of life. In a new research project of the UvA Molecular and Materials Design Technology hub, scientists will use machine learning to predict what types of olfactory molecules interact with insect olfactory receptors. This information is important to develop safe-by-design molecules that do not interfere with insect olfaction. Scents play a central role in the lives of living beings, from locating food and mates to sensing and avoiding danger. Insects use many different types of scents, such as sex, trail, alarm and aggregation pheromones, as well as plant odors to locate their host plants.

Revealed: Chilling text NASCAR star Greg Biffle's wife sent to her mom just minutes before tragic plane crash'Old age' doesn't kill us... scientists reveal true causes of death Immutable: I can't get enough of Melania, the Real Housewife of Washington, says JAN MOIR The tiny diet change that brought down my sky-high cholesterol WITHOUT statins or drugs. Mike was told he risked a heart attack or stroke. CNBC anchor who slammed Trump's tariffs as'insane' stunned live on air as inflation figures send shockwaves through Wall Street Dramatic bodycam video shows moment suspected kidnapper is arrested after 40 years on the run... as her neighbor thinks arrest is a joke Rob Reiner's'petrified' parting words about son Nick at Conan O'Brien party... and why his haunted A-list friends can't stop talking about it Reiner family bombshell as insiders reveal who is paying for Nick's celebrity lawyer... their secret motive... and who will REALLY inherit $200m fortune Doctors said my hip pain was just tendinitis from sitting all day at work. The real cause may kill me... they had left it far too late Bondi hero is handed $2.5million cheque in his hospital bed - then asks unbelievable question Pete Davidson is a dad! Kim Kardashian's ex welcomes first child with model girlfriend Elsie Hewitt Mica Miller's pastor husband is indicted for shocking acts before his wife was killed days after filing for divorce Trump suspends diversity visa lottery after Kristi Noem says'heinous' Brown University shooter entered US through program Jeffrey Epstein attended dinner with tech billionaires three years after he was convicted of sex crimes - as new photos of the event are released from pedophile's estate Terrifying maps break down exactly who is at risk of new'super flu' exploding across America... as doctors reveal symptoms to really worry about Revealed: The UK's most misspelled words - so, have you been writing them correctly? READ MORE: How to speak Gen Z, as'vibe-coding' is named word of the year Do you have impeccable spelling, or do you always end up turning to spell check?

What will your life look like in 2035? When AIs become consistently more capable than humans, life could change in strange ways. It could happen in the next few years, or a little longer. If and when it comes, our domestic routines - trips to the doctor, farming, work and justice systems - could all look very different. The'AI' doctor will see you now In 2035, AIs are more than co-pilots in medicine, they have become the frontline for much primary care.

An arena warrior on a losing streak takes refuge in a vast forest where she discovers the joy of working in a cosy teashop. From this simple premise comes a joyful game of mindfulness and social interaction, as Alta learns how to serve up witty conversation and decent hot drinks. Colourful and highly stylised, it is a thoughtful study of burnout and recovery. An attempted-murder mystery set in an a 1920s all-girls private school reveals itself to also be an eviscerating takedown of British class politics. Witty and beautifully drawn, it is full of amusing boarding-school stereotypes, from self-interested prefects to a terrifying matron, whose motivations and personal grievances must be slowly unpicked.

The widespread adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is likely to displace people from jobs in a similar way seen during the Industrial Revolution, the governor of the Bank of England has said. Andrew Bailey said the UK needed to have the training, education, [and] skills in place so workers could shift into jobs that use AI. He told the BBC Radio 4's Today programme people looking for a job would find securing employment a lot easier if they had such skills. However, he warned that there was an issue with younger, inexperienced professionals finding it difficult to secure entry-level roles due to AI. We do have to think about, what is it doing to the pipeline of people?

Data is a critical asset for training large language models (LLMs), alongside compute resources and skilled workers. While some training data is publicly available, substantial investment is required to generate proprietary datasets, such as human preference annotations or to curate new ones from existing sources. As larger datasets generally yield better model performance, two natural questions arise. First, how can data owners make informed decisions about curation strategies and data sources investment? Second, how can multiple data owners collaboratively pool their resources to train superior models while fairly distributing the benefits? This problem, data valuation, which is not specific to large language models, has been addressed by the machine learning community through the lens of cooperative game theory, with the Shapley value being the prevalent solution concept. However, computing Shapley values is notoriously expensive for data valuation, typically requiring numerous model retrainings, which can become prohibitive for large machine learning models. In this work, we demonstrate that this computational challenge is dramatically simplified for LLMs trained with Direct Preference Optimization (DPO). We show how the specific mathematical structure of DPO enables scalable Shapley value computation. We believe this observation unlocks many applications at the intersection of data valuation and large language models.

Aston Villa have won nine games in a row in all competitions, but can they reach double figures by beating Manchester United on Sunday? Villa have gone behind in three of those games and haven't kept a clean sheet in their past four matches, said BBC Sport football expert Chris Sutton. But they have been so attacking and Morgan Rogers is absolutely flying. They just never seem to lie down. Sutton is making predictions for all 380 Premier League games this season, against AI, BBC Sport readers and a variety of guests. For week 17, he takes on Zambian musician and rapper Sampa the Great. Sampa the Great's new single, Can't Hold Us, is out now and is included in the EAFC 26 video game. Do you agree with their scores?