Despite a successful 2017, with reports of a genetically modified human embryo and vast improvements in machine learning, 2018 is poised to be even bigger.

The free world stands at a crossroads. Are recent technological advances such as big data, artificial intelligence and cybernetics affecting our current democratic institutions?

Doctors develop AI that diagnoses tuberculosis with 96 percent accuracy, and may lead to improved screening and better treatment success rates

Discover social science on a massive scale, powered by machine learning. Studying how people interact in communities is complex and difficult. Scale up to a community the size of the US political system, and the detail is overwhelming. Using computers that learn for themselves, Hanna Wallach is unpicking the patterns of massive social structures, crunching […]

Artificial Intelligence expert Professor Shanahan talks about the 2015 sci-fi film he helped inform, and discusses the future of AI.

A.I. Milestone Reached as Google Robot beats European Champion of the game Go, also known as Weiqi.

Anne Petzold finds that robots might help long space flights just by being good company

Tim Ellis examines how neuroimaging could lead to engineering an artificial human brain through advancing our understanding of consciousness

Rory Galloway reads his short story, “The Turing Test”

Is the world you are experiencing a mere forecast created by your brain? Research in neuroscience has suggested that you don’t see the colour of the sky but you anticipate its blueness and use your sense of vision to adjust this prediction. This radical idea explains how your brain can be one step ahead of reality, but also susceptible to placebos and illusions.

What is consciousness? Who or what is the ‘me’ that I call my ‘self’? And does that ‘self’ control what I do, or is that an illusion?

Themes of the last fortnight have included passing the Turing test and Space science …

We may soon be merging our minds with computers and the internet to create a ‘singularity’ of consciousness …

Are we really the most intelligent creatures on Earth? In at least one area, chimps have the upper hand …

Are we on the brink of a future society, or already living in one? Michael Cook looks at the relationship between human and machine. Back in 1998 Kevin Warwick, now Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, underwent an operation to have an RFID chip inserted into his own body, a small piece of […]

Watson plays Jeopardy! Horizon: The Hunt for AI BBC HD, 3 April 2012 As the stern grandfather of the BBC’s science output, Horizon is as topical as ever with its latest programme exploring the search for artificial intelligence. In reference to all things brainy, modern-day mathematician and Professor of Public Understanding of Science Marcus du […]

Cleverbot was recently judged to be 59% human, whatever that might mean. In honour of this achievement, Imogen Ogilvie, Jennifer Whyntie, and Jade Hoffman cornered him for a chat. An Audience With Cleverbot by iscience

Primitive AI or just clever tricks? And what’s the difference anyway? Sacha Thorpe and Elliot Black sit down with a Furby to ask just that. An Interview with a Furby by iscience Image: flickr | blamethecrane

As computers have become more developed and intricate they have been given responsibility for many tasks that people used to carry out. However, how close are we to them taking over everything we do, resulting in a Hollywood-esque robotic revolution? Turing intelligence Scientists have been asking this question for a very long time. The famous […]