Category Technology/Electronics

You’re running late at the airport and need to urgently access your account, only to be greeted by one of those frustrating tests—”Select all images with traffic lights” or “Type the letters you see in this box.” You squint, you guess, but somehow you’re wrong. You complete another test but still the site isn’t satisfied.

“Your flight is boarding now,” the tannoy announces as the website gives you yet another puzzle. You swear at the screen, close your laptop and rush towards the gate.

Now, here’s a thought to cheer you up: Bots are now solving these puzzles in milliseconds using artificial intelligence (AI). How ironic. The tools designed to prove we’re human are now obstructing us more than the machines they’re supposed to be keeping at bay.

Welcome to the strange battle ...

A new artificial intelligence (AI) model has just achieved human-level results on a test designed to measure “general intelligence.”

On December 20, OpenAI’s o3 system scored 85% on the ARC-AGI benchmark, well above the previous AI best score of 55% and on par with the average human score. It also scored well on a very difficult mathematics test.

Creating artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is the stated goal of all the major AI research labs. At first glance, OpenAI appears to have at least made a significant step towards this goal.

While skepticism remains, many AI researchers and developers feel something just changed. For many, the prospect of AGI now seems more real, urgent and closer than anticipated. Are they right?

Generalization and intelligence
To understand ...

Bright, twisted light can be produced with technology similar to an Edison light bulb, researchers at the University of Michigan have shown. The finding adds nuance to fundamental physics while offering a new avenue for robotic vision systems and other applications for light that traces out a helix in space.

“It’s hard to generate enough brightness when producing twisted light with traditional ways like electron or photon luminescence,” said Jun Lu, an adjunct research i...

Discovery could advance renewable energy technologies, molecular electronics and quantum computing. Researchers at Rice University have made a meaningful advance in the simulation of molecular electron transfer — a fundamental process underpinning countless physical, chemical and biological processes...