America’s regional state universities are experiencing steep enrollment declines, triggering economic crises in the towns that depend on them, while flagship universities continue to thrive. At Western Illinois University in Macomb, enrollment has plummeted 47% since 2010, driving the city’s population down 23% to 14,765. Empty dorms have been repurposed Read more…
There’s a lot of matter around, which ensures that any antimatter produced experiences a very short lifespan. Studying antimatter, therefore, has been extremely difficult. But that’s changed a bit in recent years, as CERN has set up a facility that produces and traps antimatter, allowing for extensive studies of its Read more…
Chatbots are more persuasive in online debates than people — especially when they are able to personalize their arguments using information about their opponent. The finding, published in Nature Human Behaviour on 19 May, highlights how large language models (LLMs) could be used to influence people’s opinions, for example in Read more…
Germany has dropped its long-held opposition to nuclear power, in the first concrete sign of rapprochement with France by Berlin’s new government led by conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Berlin has signalled to Paris it will no longer block French efforts to ensure nuclear power is treated on par with renewable Read more…
A next-generation, chatbot version of Siri has reportedly made significant progress during testing over the past six months; some executives allegedly now see it as ‘on par’ with recent versions of ChatGPT, Apple is also apparently discussing giving Siri the ability to access the internet to gather and synthesize data Read more…
The Danish government plans to evaluate the prospect of beginning a nuclear power programme. Unlike its neighbours in Sweden and Germany, Denmark has never had a civil nuclear power programme. It has only ever had three small research reactors, the last of which closed in 2001. Most of the renewed Read more…
OpenAI CEO and Sam Altman believe Artificial General Intelligence could arrive within the next few years. But the speculations of some technologists “are getting ahead of reality, say no one will reach AGI without a new idea — something beyond the powerful neural networks that merely find patterns in data. Read more…