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The Surprising Relativism of the Brain’s GPS

How new data is transforming our understanding of place cells.

March 20, 2018

Machine Behavior Needs to Be an Academic Discipline

Why should studying AI behavior be restricted to those who make AI?

Why Do So Many Scientists Want to be Filmmakers?

The problem with C.P. Snow’s famous two-cultures hypothesis.

March 20, 2018

Robert Langlands, Mathematical Visionary, Wins the Abel Prize

Generations of researchers have pursued his “Langlands program,” which seeks to create a grand unified theory of mathematics.

March 20, 2018

Why Stephen Hawking’s Black Hole Puzzle Keeps Puzzling

The renowned British physicist, who died at 76, left behind a riddle that could eventually lead his successors to the theory of quantum gravity.

March 19, 2018

How Einstein Lost His Bearings, and With Them, General Relativity

By 1913, Albert Einstein had nearly completed general relativity. But a simple mistake set him on a tortured, two-year reconsideration of his theory. Today, mathematicians still grapple with the issues he confronted.

March 19, 2018

Why Doing Good Makes It Easier to Be Bad

Oscar Wilde wouldn’t have been surprised to hear of a series of recent scandals in the U.K.

March 12, 2018

Scary AI Is More “Fantasia” Than “Terminator”

Ex-Googler Nate Soares on AI’s alignment problem.

March 12, 2018

Al Gore Does His Best Ralph Waldo Emerson

The former vice president reads the transcendentalist poet—and reminds us of one.

March 12, 2018

Unhappiness Is a Palate-Cleanser

Why it’s impossible to always be happy.

March 12, 2018