Archive: February 2018

In-context learning has enabled pretrained language models to achieve impressive zero- and few-shot learning performance without parameter updates. Most conventional in-context learning techniques however restrict the number of training examples, which limits their effectiveness when a large number of examples are available. In the new paper Structured Prompting: Scaling In-Context Learning to 1,000 Examples, a Microsoft Research team proposes structured p

Credit: University of Waterloo As automation and artificial intelligence (AI) continue to reshape the workforce, the University of Waterloo is at the forefront of finding solutions to this challenge. With the increasing value placed on hands-on data analytics training, the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) at Waterloo recently hired a new faculty member to specifically lead a new project-based AI course. This means that students won't just learn about

This latest agentic capability operates through the user interface of ChatGPT; users simply select the “Deep Research” option in the message composer and type their query. Supporting files or spreadsheets can also be uploaded for additional context.Once initiated, the AI embarks on a rigorous multi-step process, which may take 5-30 minutes to complete. A sidebar provides updates on the actions taken and the sources consulted. Users can carry on with other

Memristors can be fabricated on a large scale and with high throughput by assembling 2D nanosheets from the dispersion into a resistive switching layer using solution processing techniques. Credit: Adapted from International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing (2025). DOI: 10.1088/2631-7990/add634 As the demand for data-intensive computing grows, so too does the need for next-generation memory technologies capable of delivering speed, energy efficiency, and s

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain From electric cars to artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, the technologies people use every day require a growing need for electricity. In theory, nuclear fusion—a process that fuses atoms together, releasing heat to turn generators—could provide vast energy supplies with minimal emissions. But nuclear fusion is an expensive prospect because one of its main fuels is a rare version of hydrogen called tritium. Now, re

Privacy-preserving AI can protect your heart data, the bill is the problem A heart monitor used to be a box beside a hospital bed. Electrodes fed a cable, the cable fed a screen, and a nurse watched the screen. The threat model fit on a sticky note. Cardiac care doesn’t work like that anymore. A patch or smartwatch records the electrocardiogram (ECG). A phone or gateway relays it. A cloud service stores and analyzes it, and a cardiologist reviews it from s

Cheng Xin/Getty Images Earlier this week, OpenAI unveiled an AI browser, dubbed Atlas, which is built around its blockbuster AI product, ChatGPT. “A browser built with ChatGPT takes us closer to a true super-assistant that understands your world and helps you achieve your goals,” the company boasted in its announcement. Thanks to an “agent mode,” the browser can complete entire tasks, such as booking flights or buying groceries online, a process OpenAI eng

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Yui Mok / Pool / AFP via Getty Images On Wednesday night, Nvidia released its highly anticipated-slashed-dreaded quarterly earnings report — and Wall Street let out a sigh of relief, at least initially. The multitrillion dollar chipmaker at the center of the AI boom reported a ludicrous $57 billion in quarterly revenue, netting it nearly $32 billion in profit. Compared to the same quarter from the yea

Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on much. But a U.S. Senate hearing on Tuesday seemed to be a rare point of bipartisan agreement. Surveillance pricing, the practice of companies using personal data to adjust the prices of goods, is really bad. But the question remains: Will Congress actually do anything to regulate it? The hearing was held by the Senate Judiciary Committee and titled, “Your Data, Their Profit: the Consumer Cost of AI Surveillance Pric

Schematic of horizontal elongation in an optimized cell cluster. (a) Left: the final configuration of a simulation with randomly initialized parameters; right: the final simulation state after learning. Source cells, in red, secrete the growth factor and cannot divide. Proliferating cells, in gray, sense the growth factor and divide in response to it. (b) The learned gene network. The receptor gene is activated only by the presence of the external chemical

Dell The tech industry’s insistence on cramming AI into virtually every aspect of their consumer-facing offerings, from AI apps you can’t uninstall to hallucinating assistants that nobody asked for, has been nothing short of insufferable. Tech enthusiasts and average consumers alike have watched helplessly as software and hardware they rely on to research, work, game, and keep in touch have turned into testing grounds for unproven AI tech — often without t

OpenAI’s data suggests that frontier models are hiding their thoughts because developers optimize for capability and compute View the LinkedIn Profile of Maximilian Schreiner Nov 12, 2026 Nano Banana Pro prompted by THE DECODER AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Su

Google's Gemini 4 Hydrogen outscores the bigger Argon just four weeks after its launch View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian Nov 12, 2026 Key Points Google has released Gemini 4 Hydrogen, an AI model for everyday coding and agentic workflows that is meant to replace Gemini 3.8 Flash and outperforms the larger Argon in benchmarks. The model offers four reasoning levels, a one-million-token context window for both input and output, and costs $1.50 pe

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images Bosses being severely disconnected from the needs of their employees is a tale as old as time. But it sure feels like the AI craze has driven them to lock themselves in ever taller ivory towers, as employees are told that the tech is going to make their jobs easier at the same time it’s being used to replace them. Now, a new survey highlighted by the Wall Street Journal illustrates this g

Getty Images In December, Anthropic red teamers and business journalists at the Wall Street Journal teamed up in a bold test of the company’s AI model, Claude. They unleashed two separate AI agents, one to run a large vending kiosk in the newspaper’s offices, and the other to act as the unusual venture’s CEO. The experiment didn’t exactly go as planned. After being put in control of a starting balance of $1,000, the AI ended up ordering a PlayStation 5, se

Getty Images / Trevor Williams The question that’s stumping top AI researchers isn’t about consciousness or doomsday scenarios. After interviewing dozens of developers at companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, Amelia Miller found it was this: should AI “simulate emotional intimacy?” One chatty researcher at one of the top AI labs “suddenly went quiet,” recalled Miller, who studies AI-human relations, in an essay for The New York Times — and then,

Getty / Futurism In an age when more and more young children are hooked on digital devices, YouTube is bombarding them with AI slop. After investigating over 1,000 YouTube shorts recommended to young children by the video platform, The New York Times found that the algorithm is heavily pushing AI-generated content that explicitly targets “toddlers” and “preschoolers.” On top of being nonsensical, the videos are often presented under the guise of being educ

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Josh Edelson / AFP via Getty Images; NVIDIA via YouTube Think Nvidia’s new feature that slaps an AI filter onto your favorite games looks like garbage? Well, the company’s CEO Jensen Huang says you’re “completely wrong,” Tom’s Hardware reports. On Monday, the multitrillion dollar gaming hardware and AI chipmaker announced a new AI-powered software feature called DLSS 5, which immediately drew widespre