Research

It all started with some exasperated emails. Back in 2009, a group of researchers began venting their frustration with the programming languages designed to help scientists and other researchers perform complex mathematical operations and statistical simulations without learning how to code. These programming languages were rigid and slow. If scientists built something that really worked, they’d need to rewrite the entire program in another language just to run it more quickly.

When an AI image generator produces a portrait, whose work went into it? The question sits at the center of lawsuits, licensing deals, and proposed regulations worldwide. Artists want credit. Companies want clarity. Policymakers want a way to assign responsibility.

In the last decade, scientists have shown that fusion energy can work, as a physical process. Next question: Can it work economically? 

Artificial intelligence models are jacks of many trades, including writing, generating images, and creating 3D models. But they aren’t as helpful when it comes to testing robots or designs for vehicles in diverse environments, since they don’t understand physics as well as they do pixels or text.