Computer science

It’s simple enough for AI to seem to comprehend data, but devising a true test of a machine’s knowledge has proved difficult.

A new paper shows how to create longer disordered strings than mathematicians had thought possible, proving that a well-known recent conjecture is “spectacularly wrong.”

Tiny amounts of artificial noise can fool neural networks, but not humans. Some researchers are looking to neuroscience for a fix.

By carefully constructing a multidimensional and well-connected graph, a team of researchers has finally created a long-sought locally testable code that can immediately betray whether it’s been corrupted.

Quantum bits are fussy and fragile. Useful quantum computers will need to use an error-correction technique like the one that was recently demonstrated on a real machine.

The computational biologist Anne Carpenter creates software that brings the power of machine learning to researchers seeking answers in mountains of cell images.

Algorithms that zero in on solutions to optimization problems are the beating heart of machine reasoning. New results reveal surprising limits.

Today’s powerful but little-understood artificial intelligence breakthroughs echo past examples of unexpected scientific progress.

A new model of learning centers on bursts of neural activity that act as teaching signals — approximating backpropagation, the algorithm behind learning in AI.