The science of human touch - and why it's so hard to replicate in robots Robots now see the world with an ease that once belonged only to science fiction. They can recognise objects, navigate cluttered spaces and sort thousands of parcels an hour. But ask a robot to touch something gently, safely or meaningfully, and the limits appear instantly. As a researcher in soft robotics working on artificial skin and sensorised bodies, I've found that trying to give robots a sense of touch forces us to confront just how astonishingly sophisticated human touch really is. My work began with the seemingly simple question of how robots might sense the world through their bodies.

Why we should be skeptical of the hasty global push to test 15-year-olds' AI literacy in 2029 If 2022 was the year OpenAI knocked our world off course with the launch of ChatGPT, 2025 will be remembered for the frenzied embrace of AI as the solution to everything. And, yes, this includes teaching and schoolwork. In today's breakneck AI innovation race, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), along with the European Commission, have called for the development of unified AI literacy strategies in kindergarten to Grade 12 education. They have done this through an AI Literacy Framework developed with Code.org, and a range of experts in computational thinking, neuroscience, AI, educational technology and innovation -- and with "valuable insights" from the "TeachAI community ." The "TeachAI community" refers to a larger umbrella project providing web resources targeting teachers, education leaders and "solution providers" .

How does AI affect how we learn? When OpenAI released " study mode " in July 2025, the company touted ChatGPT's educational benefits. "When ChatGPT is prompted to teach or tutor, it can significantly improve academic performance," the company's vice president of education told reporters at the product's launch. But any dedicated teacher would be right to wonder: Is this just marketing, or does scholarly research really support such claims? While generative AI tools are moving into classrooms at lightning speed, robust research on the question at hand hasn't moved nearly as fast.

Mars rovers serve as scientists' eyes and ears from millions of miles away - here are the tools Perseverance used to spot a potential sign of ancient life NASA's search for evidence of past life on Mars just produced an exciting update. On Sept. 10, 2025, a team of scientists published a paper detailing the Perseverance rover's investigation of a distinctive rock outcrop called Bright Angel on the edge of Mars' Jezero Crater . This outcrop is notable for its light-toned rocks with striking mineral nodules and multicolored, leopard print-like splotches. By combining data from five scientific instruments, the team determined that these nodules formed through processes that could have involved microorganisms. While this finding is not direct evidence of life, it's a compelling discovery that planetary scientists hope to look into more closely.

In 1770, after Captain Cook's Endeavour struck the Great Barrier Reef and was held up for repairs, botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander collected hundreds of plants. One of those pressed plants is among 170,000 specimens in the herbarium at the University of Melbourne. Worldwide, more than 395 million specimens are housed in herbaria. Together they comprise an unparalleled record of Earth's plant and fungal life over time. We wanted to find a better, faster way to tap into this wealth of information.

It's been hard recently to think about anything other than the wars and humanitarian crises raging around the world. Climate change has left its mark in what was almost certainly the hottest year in human history--there were unprecedented heat waves, intensified forest fires, torrential rain, and floods like those in Libya that caused devastation after two dams burst. But this has not stopped scientists, innovators, and decisionmakers from working on solutions to our biggest societal challenges--with success. Here is a collection of uplifting news to come out of 2023. In an instant, millions of volts can damage buildings, spark fires, and harm people--unless the lightning can be redirected.

"There is no shortage of commentary on what artificial intelligence will do to human jobs. It's easy to find a multiplicity of predictions, prescriptions, or denunciations," says Thomas H. Davenport, one of the co-authors of the book. "It is not so easy, however, to find descriptions of how people work day-to-day with smart machines." Davenport joined a Conversation That Matters about our emerging and ever-expanding relationship with a technology that scares a wide range of people including, Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

Google has made a crucial tweak to its AI assistant to make interactions more conversational. The company has ditched the need to use the wake phrase'OK, Google' or'Hey Google' to signal the start of a follow-up voice command for the talkative personal assistant. After an initial request, Google Assistant can now use artificial intelligence to try to discern whether you are addressing the smart speaker with a fresh query, or simply talking to someone else nearby. However, to do this, the assistant has to send the audio recording to its servers for analysis, which could threaten your privacy, according to security experts. The optional feature, dubbed Continued Conversations, can now be enabled for Google Home, Home Mini, and Home Max owners in the United States.

"Artificial intelligence" (AI) is an opaque term with no commonly agreed definition and a disputed scope. We routinely use it to represent a range of diverse technologies that have the power to bring disruptive changes around the world. Whether businesses understand the complexities or not, many are scrambling to incorporate "AI" into their practices and their branding. Given the current buzz around the term, surely it makes sense to capitalize on the interest. Why wouldn't you want people looking at your company to immediately think "AI"?

Ten years ago, at the first AAAI conference, Alan Newell (1982), in his presidential address, focused on understanding the then dominant paradigm for artificial intelligence: the writing of symbolic reasoning programs for an agent that would act rationally to achieve a goal. He distinguished the "knowledge level" from the "symbol level" description of a system. The former encompasses the knowledge and conditions necessary for an agent to solve a problem. It is only when the knowledge level is reduced to a symbol level description that issues of implementation get considered. Newell's analysis postulated a single agent, with fixed knowledge and a specified goal.