Photo of Anil Ananthaswamy

Anil Ananthaswamy

Contributing Writer

Latest Articles

In the Quantum World, Even Points of View Are Uncertain

November 22, 2024

The reference frames from which observers view quantum events can themselves have multiple possible locations at once — an insight with potentially major ramifications.

How Do Machines ‘Grok’ Data?

April 12, 2024

By apparently overtraining them, researchers have seen neural networks discover novel solutions to problems.

New Theory Suggests Chatbots Can Understand Text

January 22, 2024

Far from being “stochastic parrots,” the biggest large language models seem to learn enough skills to understand the words they’re processing.

A New Approach to Computation Reimagines Artificial Intelligence

April 13, 2023

By imbuing enormous vectors with semantic meaning, we can get machines to reason more abstractly — and efficiently — than before.

The Physics Principle That Inspired Modern AI Art

January 5, 2023

Diffusion models generate incredible images by learning to reverse the process that, among other things, causes ink to spread through water.

Self-Taught AI Shows Similarities to How the Brain Works

August 11, 2022

Self-supervised learning allows a neural network to figure out for itself what matters. The process might be what makes our own brains so successful.

Researchers Build AI That Builds AI

January 25, 2022

By using hypernetworks, researchers can now preemptively fine-tune artificial neural networks, saving some of the time and expense of training.

To Be Energy-Efficient, Brains Predict Their Perceptions

November 15, 2021

Results from neural networks support the idea that brains are “prediction machines” — and that they work that way to conserve energy.

A New Link to an Old Model Could Crack the Mystery of Deep Learning

October 11, 2021

To help them explain the shocking success of deep neural networks, researchers are turning to older but better-understood models of machine learning.

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