How AI Knows Things No One Told It

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May 12, 2023

Artificial Intelligence How AI Knows Things No One Told It Researchers are still struggling to understand how AI models trained to parrot internet text can perform advanced tasks such as running code, playing games and trying to break up a marriage By George Musser

Mathematics What Is Benford's Law? Why This Unexpected Pattern of Numbers Is Everywhere A curious mathematical phenomenon called Benford’s law governs the numbers all around us By Jack Murtagh

Drug Use Heavy Cannabis Use Linked to Schizophrenia, Especially among Young Men A huge Danish study shows that up to 30 percent of psychosis diagnoses in young men could have been prevented if these individuals hadn’t used marijuana heavily By Gary Stix

Animals This $600-Million Room Contains the World's Largest Collection of These Tiny Endangered Animals Inside a vault at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles lies a microscopic population of immense value—the repository for vernal pool fairy shrimp. By Christopher Intagliata | 08:16

Sponsor Content Provided by Ocean Conservancy Join Ocean Conservancy's Trivia Tuesday Looking for a challenge? Put your ocean knowledge to the test with a new trivia question delivered straight to your phone every week! Join our Trivia Tuesday challenge by texting "TRIVIA" to 52551.

Public Health Masks Work. Distorting Science to Dispute the Evidence Doesn't New mask studies relying on a medical paradigm do not erase decades of engineering and occupational science that show they work By Matthew Oliver,Mark Ungrin,Joe Vipond

Planetary Science NASA's Interplanetary Plans May Be Lurching toward Disaster Delays and budgetary overruns are causing many to worry that NASA’s ambitious planetary science program is at a breaking point By Shannon Hall

Sleep Should You Give Your Kid Melatonin? Young children are taking melatonin gummy supplements, but experts say they should be a last resort to help with sleep By Elana Spivack

Astronomy Did JWST Just Find Water on a Rocky Exoplanet? Hints of water vapor on a world called GJ 486 b could just as well come from the planet’s host star By Allison Gasparini

Quantum Physics Physicists Create Long-Sought Topological Quantum States Exotic particles called nonabelions could fix quantum computers’ error problem By Davide Castelvecchi,Nature magazine

Climate Change Heat Waves Fueled by Climate Change Topple Records around the Globe High temperature records have been set from Portugal to Thailand as heat waves fueled by climate change have arrived early this spring By Chelsea Harvey,E&E News

Animals This Frog May Be the First Amphibian Known to Pollinate Flowers A tiny, orange Brazilian tree frog may be the first known amphibian pollinator, further broadening our understanding of which animals perform this crucial biological function By Asher Elbein

Weather Watch Out: Tornado Alley Is Migrating Eastward Tornado outbreaks are moving from Texas and Oklahoma toward Tennessee and Kentucky, where people may not be prepared By Mark Fischetti,Matthew Twombly,Daniel P. Huffman

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Volume 328, Issue 5

BRING SCIENCE HOME Fire-Fighting Foam Extinguish fire with a chemical reaction! Credit: George Retseck Do you have a fire extinguisher at home? Hopefully, yes! It can save your life in case there is a fire. But have you ever wondered how these extinguishers work? Some of them don’t even contain water, which is what you probably think of first when it comes to stopping a fire from spreading. What else other than water can extinguish a flame? Do this activity to find out—and put out a candle as if by magic!

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