New York Times (January 3)
“Researchers at M.I.T. concluded last summer that while organizations had invested from $30 billion to $40 billion into A.I., they had basically nothing to show for it. Ninety-five percent of organizations were getting zero return.” 2026 may be the year that “more disruptive uses of A.I. will make it out of the R&D stage. And we may get a better understanding of what this sort of advancement means across professions and industries.”
Tags: $40 billion, 2026, A.I., Advancement, Disruptive uses, Industries, Invested, M.I.T., Organizations, Professions, R&D stage, Researchers, Understanding, Zero return
Futurism (September 14)
AI hallucinations are “a major problem plaguing the entire industry, greatly undercutting the usefulness of the tech.” The problem appears to be “getting worse as AI models get more capable.” Some experts argue there is no way around the problem as “hallucinations are intrinsic to the tech itself” and that large language models (LLMs) have hit their limits. However, OpenAI believes it has stumbled on the problem and a relatively easy fix. Its researchers posit that LLMs “hallucinate because when they’re being created, they’re incentivized to guess rather than admit they simply don’t know the answer,” as conventional scoring is binary, which rewards correct guesses and penalizes honest admissions of uncertainty. Instead, they believe you can “penalize confident errors more than you penalize uncertainty, and give partial credit for appropriate expressions of uncertainty.”
Tags: AI, AI models, Binary, Capable, Conventional, Experts, Guess, Hallucinations, Incentivized, Intrinsic, LLMs, Researchers, Rewards, Scoring, Tech, Undercutting, Usefulness
Popular Mechanics (July 26)
Researchers have concluded that “the pumping of as much as 2,150 gigatons of groundwater has caused a change in the Earth’s tilt of roughly 31.5 inches. The pumping is largely for irrigation and human use, with the groundwater eventually relocating to the oceans.” The findings may “help conservationists understand how to work toward staving off continued sea level rise and other climate issues.”
Tags: 31.5 inches, Climate issues, Conservationists, Earth, Groundwater, Human use, Irrigation, Oceans, Pumping, Researchers, Sea level rise, Tilt
The Guardian (June 9)
“Apple researchers have found ‘fundamental limitations’ in cutting-edge artificial intelligence models, in a paper raising doubts about the technology industry’s race to develop ever more powerful systems.” The researchers “found that standard AI models outperformed LRMs in low-complexity tasks, while both types of model suffered ‘complete collapse’ with high-complexity tasks.”
Tags: Apple, Complete collapse, Complexity, Cutting edge, Doubts, Fundamental limitations, LRMs, Race, Researchers, Standard AI models Outperformed, Tasks, Technology
Los Angeles Times (April 22)
“California has entered another drought.” But some researchers now suspect “the last one may never have really ended.” They posit “California and other Western states are actually more than two decades into an emerging ‘megadrought’—a hydrological event on par with the worst dry spells of the last millennium. Except this time, they say, human-caused climate change is driving its severity—and will make it that much harder to climb back out of.”
Tags: California, Climate change, Drought, Emerging, Human-caused, Megadrought, Millennium, Researchers
Institutional Investor (January 4)
Researchers have uncovered “striking evidence of pre-disclosure spikes in options trading.” They “investigated informed trading activity in equity options prior to firms’ cybersecurity breach disclosures. We found pervasive directional options activity, consistent with strategies that yield abnormal returns to investors with private information.” There is a clear “cost of disclosure, and delayed reporting of breaches creates informed trading opportunities.”
Tags: Breach, Cybersecurity, Equity, Evidence, Options, Options trading, Pre-disclosure, Researchers, Spikes
San Francisco Chronicle (July 13)
“A vaccine may not be enough to end the coronavirus pandemic and restore society to some semblance of normalcy.” Effective treatments may prove just as important. “Researchers across the globe are racing to find drugs that can keep more people alive and out of the hospital—and any one of those treatments may ultimately work just as well as a vaccine.”
Tags: Alive, Coronavirus, Drugs, Effective, Hospital, Normalcy, Pandemic, Researchers, Restore, Society, Treatments, Vaccine
Bloomberg (December 27, 2013)
Medical implants have cleared another hurdle with a successful surgery to implant “an artificial heart that is expected to last five years.” The new heart was developed by the French startup Carmat. “Europe often leads the U.S. in bringing replacement body parts to the market — not because its researchers have much of an edge but because its health-care regulations are less cumbersome.”
Tags: Artificial heart, Carmat, Europe, France, Health care, Implant, Market, Regulations, Replacement body parts, Researchers, Surgery, U.S.
Financial Times (October 3)
“Not only does poor sleep dent productivity, it also causes impulsivity and poor decision-making, according to sleep researchers. Sleep deprivation has been indicated as a cause in 7.8 per cent of all the US Air Force’s Class A accidents, defined as costing $1m or more). Sleep-deprived US workers cost their employers $63bn in lost productivity, according to a 2011 Harvard Medical School study.”
Tags: Accidents, Decision-making, Employers, Harvard, Productivity, Researchers, Sleep deprivation, U.S., Workers
Bloomberg (August 2)
“Earth’s atmosphere seems to have found a way to get back at the human race. For almost three centuries, we humans have been filling the air with carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. Now, it turns out, the climate change these emissions have wrought is turning people against one another.” Researchers have found “a surprisingly close link between climate change and civil wars, riots, invasions and even personal violence such as murder, assault and rape.”
Tags: Air, Atmosphere, Civil wars, Climate change, CO2, Earth, Emissions, Greenhouse gases, Human race, Methane, Researchers, Violence
