A new essay explores which conditions must be met for consciousness to exist. At least one of them can't be found in a computer. Would it be desirable for artificial intelligence to develop ...

The notion that we live as characters in someone else’s video game is irresistible to many, even outside of science fiction bookshelves. Googling the term “simulation hypothesis” returns numerous ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. “Obviously” is a dangerous word, even in scenarios that seem simple. Suppose, for instance, you need to do an important computation. You ...

In a pitch to investors last spring, Anthropic said it intended to build AI to power virtual assistants that could perform research, answer emails, and handle other back-office jobs on their own. The ...

People who have lost the ability to move or speak may soon have a new option: surgically implanted devices that link the brain to a computer. More than two decades after researchers first demonstrated ...

A quantum computer has demonstrated that it can solve a problem more efficiently than a conventional computer. This achievement comes from being able to unlock a vast memory resource that classical ...