The fledgling democracy under the German Weimar Republic after World War I soon collapsed into Nazi authoritarianism.

A chair can still look like a chair even when its surface is reduced to a sparse cloud of points. Humans are remarkably good ...

In the last decade, a phenomenon in artificial intelligence known as “double descent” has surprised researchers who study learning. The expectation was that the best AI models were neither too simple ...

The built and natural worlds around us are full of examples of diversity from small, incremental evolutionary changes. Keyboard designs offer slightly different key spacing and press stiffness; two ...

The brain runs on about 15 to 20 watts, less than most light bulbs, but has still managed to evolve a voracious appetite for energy. In humans, it accounts for only about one-fiftieth of weight but ...

The race to develop a virtual scientist — an AI creation that conducts every stage of research, from idea to publication — has consumed researchers, start-up founders, and tech juggernauts alike. It ...

Think of the economy as a giant web where every person, company, and country is linked. When something big happens — a pandemic, the rise of artificial intelligence, or a climate-driven disaster — it ...

Whenever an authority has influence over a population — be it a social media platform moderating user comments, a government imposing laws on its citizens, or an employer placing restrictions on ...

In a recent paper, SFI Professor David Wolpert, SFI Fractal Faculty member Carlo Rovelli, and physicist Jordan Scharnhorst examine a long-standing, paradoxical thought experiment in statistical ...

The human brain is astonishingly efficient. It runs on about 20 watts, roughly the power required to keep a dim bulb lit. Over the last three decades, computer scientists in a field called ...

The simulation hypothesis — the idea that our universe might be an artificial construct running on some advanced alien computer — has long captured the public imagination. Yet most arguments about it ...

From Beowulf to Pride and Prejudice to the classic sitcom Friends, all stories share a common purpose: to convey knowledge about how to navigate the world. “Stories are everywhere,” says SFI External ...