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Artificial Intelligence

Will A.I. Ever Be Smarter Than a Four-Year-Old?

Looking at how children process information may give programmers useful hints about directions for computer learning

The complicated tree of human evolution could include extinct species that have not yet been discovered.

Artificial Intelligence Study of Human Genome Finds Unknown Human Ancestor

The genetic footprint of a “ghost population” may match that of a Neanderthal and Denisovan hybrid fossil found in Siberia

Neuroscientists Have Converted Brain Waves Into Verbal Speech

Researchers tracked participants’ neural activity as they listened to recorded speech, then translated brain patterns into synthesized speech

The majority of the AI's language draws on real quotes from the artist, but the resurrected Dali will also comment on current events

This Spring, Dalí Museum Visitors Will Be Welcomed by AI Version of the Artist Himself

A surreal(ist) encounter, indeed

New Research

Scientists Use AI to Decode the Ultrasonic Language of Rodents

The DeepSqueak software translates the high-pitched communication into sonograms, which can be analyzed to determine what mice and rats are saying

When TrailGuard spots unknown persons or vehicles entering a nature reserve, it immediately alerts nearby rangers

New AI Camera Helps Conservationists Spot Elephant Poachers

TrailGuard AI uses machine learning to sort through images in real-time and identify relevant threats

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates in its 2017 Infrastructure Report Card that 240,000 water main breaks occur yearly in the U.S., with 2 trillion gallons of treated drinking water escaping.

These Technologies Could Put an End to Leaky Water Mains

Two inventors have come up with radically different approaches to try to solve the widespread problem of aging water infrastructure

These new songs will not be performed by a children's Christmas choir.

Trending Today

The Titles of These AI-Generated Christmas Carols Are Pure Cinnamon Hollybells

🎶 We wish you a Merry Jinglelog 🎶

The resin-based 3D printer layers ink much like the chocolate and wafer combination seen in Kit-Kat bars

Art Meets Science

This New Technique Could Revolutionize the Future of Art Reproduction

RePaint renders reproductions in color four times closer to the original than the next-best tool

Google's new artificial intelligence program, AlphaZero, taught itself to play chess, shogi, and Go in a matter of hours, and outperforms the top-ranking AIs in the gameplay arena.

Google’s New AI Is a Master of Games, but How Does It Compare to the Human Mind?

After building AlphaGo to beat the world’s best Go players, Google DeepMind built AlphaZero to take on the world’s best machine players

The Georgia aster is one of many threatened plant species

Thousands of Little-Known Plant Species Are at Risk of Extinction

When researchers used machine learning to evaluate 150,000 plant species, they found that 10 percent were likely to qualify for the IUCN Red List

Smithsonian.com’s Chief Digital Officer Shares His Favorite Books of the Year

Our own William Allman describes the 2018 titles he found to be the most enjoyable and eye-opening reads

Hurricane Harvey unexpectedly flooded large parts of Houston despite abating wind speeds.

How Satellites and Big Data Are Predicting the Behavior of Hurricanes and Other Natural Disasters

Leveraging machine learning could help diminish the damages of storms and wildfires

John Krafcik (left) and Dmitri Dolgov

2018 Smithsonian Ingenuity Awards

Why Waymo’s Fleet of Self-Driving Cars Is Finally Ready for Prime Time

Your driverless car is already here, thanks to the visionary engineers behind a bold experiment

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Ingenious Minds

The Future Is Bright If More Teens Could Think About High School the Way Kavya Kopparapu Does

Cellist Yo-Yo Ma talks with the founder of the Girls Computing League about the promise of her generation

The new research is geared to helping clinicians, not replacing them.

Can Artificial Intelligence Detect Depression in a Person’s Voice?

MIT scientists have trained an AI model to spot the condition through how people speak rather than what they tell a doctor

Celebrate the spookiest night of the year by participating in a "game" that lets you guide a real person's actions

This Halloween, a Social Experiment Will Allow Internet Users to Control the Actions of a Real Person

MIT Media Laboratory’s BeeMe is the love child of ‘Black Mirror’ and psychologist Stanley Milgram’s notorious experiments on free will and obedience

The dozen or so cameras watching the musicians sent live video from the performance to a rack of computers, which used off-the-shelf artificial intelligence algorithms to create the eerie visuals.

The Musical Performance “Sight Machine” Reveals What Artificial Intelligence Is “Thinking” About Us

Like artist Trevor Paglen’s other work, the show asked viewers to reexamine the human relationship to technology

Obvious' "Portrait of Edmond Belamy" exceeded expectations at Thursday's sale

Christie’s Is First to Sell Art Made by Artificial Intelligence, But What Does That Mean?

Paris-based art collective Obvious’ ‘Portrait of Edmond Belamy’ sold for $432,500, nearly 45 times its initial estimate

Mario Klingemann’s ‘Neural Glitch Portrait 153552770’ was created using a generative adversarial network.

With AI Art, Process Is More Important Than the Product

Christie’s just auctioned its first piece of AI art—a portrait created via machine learning

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