Have you ever wanted to pick the brains of Sir Isaac Newton, Mary Shelley, or Benjamin Franklin? The project -- called AI Writer -- uses OpenAI's new text generator API to create simulated conversations with virtual historical figures. The system first works out the purpose of the message and the intended recipient by searching for patterns in the text. It then uses the API's internal knowledge of that person to guess how they would respond in their written voice. The digitized characters can answer questions about their work, explain scientific theories, or offer their opinions.

Artificial intelligence may be able to work out the maximum lifespans of extinct species and early humans. The technique relies on analysing specific regions of DNA that are linked to ageing. Benjamin Mayne at CSIRO, a research organisation in Australia, and his colleagues built an AI to predict the lifespan of different animals. To this the team first trained an AI on the known genomes of 252 species from five classes of animals, including mammals, reptiles and fish, and their maximum lifespans. The AI then narrowed down almost 30,000 DNA regions to just 42 that related to lifespan. This was then used to create a formula that can convert these 42 regions into a prediction of maximum lifespan.