Higgs Boson breakthrough was UK triumph, but British physics faces'catastrophic' cuts When the Nobel Prize in Physics was announced in Stockholm in October 2013, the world was watching. Among the names read out was Prof Peter Higgs, the British theorist who, nearly half a century earlier, had predicted the existence of a particle believed to hold the cosmos together - the Higgs boson. The announcement, broadcast live from Sweden, was what many scientists had hoped for since a year earlier, when experiments at CERN had finally confirmed Higgs's theory by discovering the Higgs boson - hailed as one of the biggest discoveries in a generation. At the time Higgs, who has since passed away, said in a statement: I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research. Blue-sky research asks questions to understand the universe, rather than design new products.

Patrick Vallance said technological progress was creating'new area' for robots to work in. Patrick Vallance said technological progress was creating'new area' for robots to work in. AI will transform the'human job' and enhance skills, says science minister Patrick Vallance says robots would take away'repetitive' tasks, but Sadiq Khan warns AI will usher in'new era of mass unemployment' Advances in AI and robotics will transform human jobs, starting with roles in warehouses and factories, the UK science minister has said, as the government announced plans to reduce red tape for robot and defence tech companies. Patrick Vallance said technological progress was creating a "whole new area" for robots to work in. "What's really changing now is the combination of AI and robotics. It is opening up a whole new area, particularly in the sorts of things like humanoid robotics. And that will increase productivity, it will change the human job," he told the Guardian.

Fox News correspondent Gillian Turner has the latest on the president's focus amid calls for an impeachment inquiry on'Special Report.' The deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom is speculating that the proliferation of artificial intelligence will have a bigger impact on the nation than the Industrial Revolution. "This is a total revolution that is coming," deputy PM Oliver Dowden told The Times. "It's going to totally transform almost all elements of life over the coming years, and indeed, even months, in some cases." "It is much faster than other revolutions that we've seen and much more extensive, whether that's the invention of the internal combustion engine or the Industrial Revolution," he added.

Doctors believe artificial intelligence is now saving lives after a major advancement in breast cancer screenings. AI is detecting early signs of the disease, in some cases years before doctors would find the cancer on a traditional scan. The outgoing British chief scientific adviser has warned that artificial intelligence (AI) could prove as transformational as the Industrial Revolution, urging politicians to act immediately to prevent significant job loss. "There will be a big impact on jobs, and that impact could be as big as the Industrial Revolution was," Sir Patrick Vallance told the Commons' science, innovation and technology committee. "There will be jobs that can be done by AI, which can either mean a lot of people don't have a job or a lot of people have jobs that only a human could do."

The new genre of AI could be as transformative as the Industrial Revolution, the government's outgoing chief scientific adviser has said, as he urged Britain to act immediately to prevent huge numbers of people becoming jobless. Sir Patrick Vallance, who stood down from his advisory role last month, said government should "get ahead" of the profound social and economic changes that ChatGPT-style, generative AI could usher in. However, in a wide-ranging final parliamentary hearing that also covered his reflections on the pandemic and the rise of China as a global scientific power, he suggested AI could also have considerable benefits that should not be overlooked. "There will be a big impact on jobs and that impact could be as big as the Industrial Revolution was," Vallance told the Commons science, innovation and technology committee. "There will be jobs that can be done by AI, which can either mean a lot of people don't have a job, or a lot of people have jobs that only a human could do. "In the Industrial Revolution the initial effect was a decrease in economic output as people realigned in terms of what the jobs were – and then a benefit," he added. "We need to get ahead of that." Vallance called for a national review of which sectors would be most significantly affected so plans could be drawn up "to retrain and give people their time back to do [their jobs] differently". The comments follow an announcement by IBM this week that it is suspending or reducing hiring in jobs such as human resources, with a suggestion that 30% of its back-office roles could be replaced by AI in five years. Echoing comments by the AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, who announced his departure from Google this week, Vallance said the most immediate concern posed by AI was ensuring it did not "distort the perception of truth". He added that there was also a broader question of managing the risk of "what happens with these things when they start to do things that you really didn't expect". Despite these potential existential threats, the technology also presented opportunities, Vallance argued. "In medicine, it could be that you get more time with your doctor rather than being pressurised," he said. "That could be a good outcome." "We shouldn't view this as all risk," he added. "It's already doing amazing things in terms of being able to make medical imaging better.

New Scientist Live, the world's greatest festival of science, finished yesterday after three days of mind-expanding talks and exhilarating experiences. Thousands of people attended each day, meeting robots, trying cutting-edge virtual reality set-ups and learning everything from whether science can save humanity to the design flaws in the human body. Most importantly, we had an amazing time. Here are nine incredible things we learned there. We heard Gillian Forrester explain that we may be able to shed light on the longstanding mystery of how humans evolved the ability to speak by studying these great apes.