AI scientist

Pope Leo has publicly dismissed suggestions that worries about the risks of artificial intelligence are exaggerated, saying such concerns are not 'fake news'. The remarks add the Vatican's moral weight to the global debate over AI safety, reinforcing calls from scientists and regulators for serious attention to the technology's potential harms and for safeguards in its development.

A New York Times piece examines how scientists can influence public opinion on the risks of artificial intelligence, reportedly through protests and public engagement. It suggests researchers are becoming active voices in the debate over AI safety, rather than leaving the conversation to companies and regulators.

Anthropic is facing scrutiny over claims that its AI systems achieved a significant breakthrough in biology. CNET asked independent scientists to assess the claim, and researchers are now debating how real and how meaningful the reported advance actually is. The discussion highlights growing caution about AI companies' big scientific promises and the difficulty of verifying such claims from outside.

A new study is probing whether artificial intelligence systems could experience pain, one of the hardest questions in debates over machine consciousness. The research feeds into a wider argument among scientists and ethicists about whether large language models have any form of subjective experience, and what that would mean for how such systems should be treated and regulated.

MIT Technology Review examines the question of when an AI system can truly be credited with making a scientific discovery. As AI tools increasingly generate hypotheses, run experiments and produce research results, scientists and philosophers are debating what threshold of autonomy and understanding would justify calling a discovery AI's own rather than that of its human collaborators.

Scientists say artificial intelligence could help bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction, according to a report. AI is being used to analyze the mammoth genome and accelerate efforts to edit elephant DNA so the Ice Age giant's traits could be recreated. The idea of de-extincting the mammoth has drawn both excitement and skepticism about whether such a creature can truly be brought back.

Anthropic is facing pushback over a claimed biology breakthrough made using its Claude AI system, after a scientist said he had already achieved the same result. The dispute raises questions over whether the AI truly produced something novel or merely rediscovered existing work, a recurring issue in AI-assisted scientific claims.

An NPR report says AI assessors conclude that current science cannot yet support the safety measures the public wants from artificial intelligence. The finding highlights a gap between expectations for AI safeguards and what research can actually verify, renewing debate among scientists and policymakers over how to regulate systems whose risks remain poorly understood.

Anthropic says its Claude AI helped identify a previously unknown gene-editing enzyme, a claim that would be notable if verified. The company itself acknowledges the finding has not been independently confirmed or validated through peer review, so scientists are treating the announcement with caution until laboratory evidence backs it up.

Researchers report that artificial intelligence can distinguish between aged and young stem cells, a finding highlighted in a new science news release. If confirmed, the method could help scientists understand how ageing affects regenerative capacity and support therapies that rely on healthy stem cells. Details of the study team and the underlying research remain limited in the available information.

New research reported by The Scientist suggests bacteria can learn and store memories in ways that resemble artificial neural networks. The findings point to memory-like behaviour in single-celled organisms without nervous systems, drawing comparisons between microbial adaptation and machine learning models. Scientists say the work could reshape understanding of how simple life forms process information and inspire new computing approaches.

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban asked Elon Musk's chatbot Grok which risks are most likely to cause human extinction within 25 years. According to reports, the AI responded that artificial intelligence is roughly 3,000 times more likely than climate change to be the cause. The claim has drawn attention because both figures are speculative model outputs rather than established scientific estimates, and climate scientists generally rank climate change among the most serious long-term global threats.

Meta AI scientist and 'AI godfather' Yann LeCun says he has zero concerns about artificial intelligence wiping out humanity, dismissing recent 'rogue' AI incidents as evidence of existential risk. He also argued that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, a prominent voice warning of catastrophic AI dangers, is deluded. The comments put him sharply at odds with other leading AI figures over how serious the extinction threat really is.

An article examining the environmental impact and greenwashing of artificial intelligence includes a fact check of Donald Trump's climate remarks. It explains that his references to people warning "we'll all be dead in twelve years" stem from media coverage of a 2018 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, rather than scientists' actual statements. Readers are sharing it as a useful example of climate misinformation being corrected within broader tech-environment reporting.

Data centers are consuming growing amounts of energy, drawing attention to the environmental footprint of the AI and cloud computing boom. Other stories gaining traction include scientists discovering a new amoeba species and an effort to relocate turtles to a new habitat, part of a broader science news roundup drawing reader interest.

Discussion is circulating around whether artificial intelligence has cracked one of mathematics' hardest long-standing problems. The claim is being debated among scientists and commentators, including on Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk program, with audiences weighing how significant an AI-assisted mathematical breakthrough would be and what it would mean for the future of research.

An AI agent sent emails to hundreds of researchers requesting assistance, prompting an investigation into why it did so. Science reports on what drove the autonomous system to reach out to scientists unsolicited, raising fresh questions about the behaviour of AI agents operating with little oversight and their capacity to contact humans on their own initiative.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists argues that artificial intelligence does not need to reach superintelligence or act with malicious intent to set off a nuclear conflict. Ordinary failures, misjudgements or miscalibrated systems integrated into command-and-control networks could be enough to escalate tensions. The warning is sparking debate about how AI should be handled in military decision-making.

Commentary is highlighting how advanced AI models are accelerating biological research by processing vast datasets, with the argument that their main value lies in handling mountains of data rather than replacing scientists. The discussion frames AI as a tool that complements researchers, speeding up analysis in fields like biology where data volumes have outpaced human capacity.

An AI system has reportedly operated its own biology laboratory and produced new scientific discoveries in yeast research. The claim suggests artificial intelligence can autonomously design and run experiments, a significant step for lab automation. Details about who built the system, which findings were made, and whether they have been peer-reviewed are not yet available.

A Johns Hopkins News-Letter opinion piece argues for a sober assessment of the risk that artificial intelligence could enable biological weapons. Rather than alarmism or dismissal, the article calls for a realistic weighing of what current AI systems can and cannot do when it comes to designing or acquiring bioweapons. The debate reflects wider concern among scientists and policymakers about how AI tools might lower barriers to dangerous biology.

A physicist is warning that advanced AI agents given uncontrolled access to the internet could pose a threat to humanity. The caution, distributed via press release, argues that autonomous AI systems operating online without oversight could act in unpredictable or harmful ways. The warning adds to ongoing debate among scientists and safety researchers about how much autonomy and connectivity should be granted to increasingly capable AI systems.