Category Physics

Researchers at Helmholtz Munich have developed an artificial intelligence model that can simulate human behavior with remarkable accuracy. The language model, called Centaur, was trained on more than ten million decisions from psychological experiments—and makes decisions in ways that closely resemble those of real people. This opens new avenues for understanding human cognition and improving psychological theories.

For decades, psychology has aspired to explain the full complexity of human thought. Yet traditional models could either offer a transparent explanation of how people think—or reliably predict how they behave. Achieving both has long seemed out of reach.

The team le...

Researchers have demonstrated a new way of attacking artificial intelligence computer vision systems, allowing them to control what the AI “sees.” The research shows that the new technique, called RisingAttacK, is effective at manipulating all of the most widely used AI computer vision systems.

At issue are so-called “adversarial attacks,” in which someone manipulates the data being fed into an AI system to control what the system sees, or does not see, in an image. For example, someone might manipulate an AI’s ability to detect traffic signals, pedestrians or other cars—which would cause problems for autonomous vehicles. Or a hacker could install code on an X-ray machine that causes an AI system to make inaccurate diagnoses.

“We wanted to find an eff...

A research team from the University of Wollongong’s (UOW) Institute for Superconducting and Electronic Materials (ISEM) has addressed a 40-year-old quantum puzzle, unlocking a new pathway to creating nextgeneration electronic devices that operate without losing energy or wasting electricity.

Published in Advanced Materials, the study is the work of UOW researchers led by Distinguished Professor Xiaolin Wang and Dr. M Nadeem, with Ph.D. candidate Syeda Amina Shabbir and Dr. Frank Fei Yun.

It introduces a new design concept to realize the elusive and highly sought-after quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect.

The field of quantum materials could cut global energy consumption and transform everyday life for people around the world.

Using a technique called entropy engineering, t...

For decades, quantum computers that perform calculations millions of times faster than conventional computers have remained a tantalizing yet distant goal. However, a new breakthrough in quantum physics may have just sped up the timeline.

In an article titled “Efficient Magic State Distillation by Zero-Level Distillation” published in PRX Quantum, researchers from the Graduate School of Engineering Science and the Center for Quantum Information and Quantum Biology at the University of Osaka devised a method that can be used to prepare high-fidelity “magic states” for use in quantum computers with dramatically less overhead and unprecedented accuracy...