Latest Articles
Two Students Unravel a Widely Believed Math Conjecture
Mathematicians thought they were on the cusp of proving a conjecture about the ancient structures known as Apollonian circles. But a summer project would lead to its downfall.
Chatbots Don’t Know What Stuff Isn’t
Today’s language models are more sophisticated than ever, but they still struggle with the concept of negation. That’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
Machines Learn Better if We Teach Them the Basics
A wave of research improves reinforcement learning algorithms by pre-training them as if they were human.
The AI Researcher Giving Her Field Its Bitter Medicine
Anima Anandkumar wants computer scientists to move beyond the matrix, among other challenges.
Machine Learning Gets a Quantum Speedup
Two teams have shown how quantum approaches can solve problems faster than classical computers, bringing physics and computer science closer together.
Surprising Limits Discovered in Quest for Optimal Solutions
Algorithms that zero in on solutions to optimization problems are the beating heart of machine reasoning. New results reveal surprising limits.
Banach-Tarski and the Paradox of Infinite Cloning
One of the strangest results in mathematics explains how it’s possible to turn one sphere into two identical copies, simply by rearranging its pieces.
The Coach Who Led the U.S. Math Team Back to the Top
Po-Shen Loh has harnessed his competitive impulses and iconoclastic tendencies to reinvigorate the U.S. Math Olympiad program.
New Quantum Algorithms Finally Crack Nonlinear Equations
Two teams found different ways for quantum computers to process nonlinear systems by first disguising them as linear ones.