Do Commercial Chatbots Need Conversational AI?

Alain Hamel caught the largest Atlantic halibut ever recorded in the Saguenay Fjord on Saturday. Working with the local Fjord Museum, the ice fishing was part of a scientific project aiming to gain more information about the species.

Microsoft on Wednesday said it built a lightweight scanner that it said can detect backdoors in open-weight large language models (LLMs) and improve the overall trust in artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The tech giant's AI Security team said the scanner leverages three observable signals that can be used to reliably flag the presence of backdoors while maintaining a low false positive

Swinburne researchers have turned old, unwanted mattresses into safe and sustainable building insulation materials using fungi. The team grew a common fungus together with shredded mattress foam to create a new material that is solid and lightweight. Their research is published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Chris Boyd, a software engineer, began tinkering with a digital personal assistant called OpenClaw at the end of January, while he was snowed in at his North Carolina home. He used it to create a daily digest of relevant news stories and send them to his inbox every morning at 5:30 a.m.

Threat hunters have disclosed details of a new, stealthy malware campaign dubbed DEAD#VAX that employs a mix of "disciplined tradecraft and clever abuse of legitimate system features" to bypass traditional detection mechanisms and deploy a remote access trojan (RAT) known as AsyncRAT. "The attack leverages IPFS-hosted VHD files, extreme script obfuscation, runtime decryption, and in-memory

Solar flares are sudden releases of energy from the Sun’s surface. Scientists categorise them based on strength, beginning with A, B and C, followed by M and finally X.

The N.F.L. claims Guardian Caps reduce the risk of concussions. The company that makes them says, “It has nothing to do with concussions.”

Caltech scientists have developed a way to guide light on silicon wafers with low signal loss approaching that of optical fiber at visible wavelengths. This accomplishment paves the way for a new generation of ultra-coherent and efficient photonic integrated circuits (PICs), which will have a profound impact in a variety of on-chip applications, including precision measurements, such as optical clocks for timing and gyroscopes for rotation, as well as AI data-center communications and even quantum computing.

From autonomous cars to video games, reinforcement learning (machine learning through interaction with environments) can have an important impact. That may feel especially true, for example, when you're a passenger late for dinner in an autonomous car that has learned the efficient way home. Work in Jr-Shin Li's lab develops mathematically rigorous and computationally efficient techniques to transform extremely complex reinforcement learning problems into a manageable domain.

Experts at Imperial College London suggest homosexuality might help forge strong bonds that allow groups to stay together to survive harsh conditions.

A quick scroll through TikTok reveals thousands of people taking on the 'chia seeds challenge' blissfully unaware that their lives could be at risk.

Armageddon might not have a reputation as a scientifically accurate film. But scientists now say the Hollywood blockbuster got one thing right - we really could nuke an asteroid if it were heading for Earth.

The aviation industry accounts for a significant share of global carbon emissions. In response, the international community is expanding mandatory use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), which is produced from organic waste or biomass and is expected to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional fossil-based jet fuel. However, high production costs remain a major challenge, leading some airlines in Europe and Japan to pass SAF-related costs on to consumers.

Since joining Instagram just two months ago, Valeria and Camila have gained more than 288,000 followers on the social media platform.

Transgender women possess no physical advantage over those who were born female, a controversial study claims.

Instagram is one of Australia's most popular social media platforms. Almost two in three Aussies have an account.

TECH-AI-AMAZON:Exclusive-Amazon plans to use AI to speed up TV and film production

US chipmaker Texas Instruments has signed a deal to acquire chip designer Silicon Labs, both companies said Wednesday, in a transaction worth around $7.5 billion.

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing and artificial intelligence arm of Alibaba Group Holding, has unveiled a suite of AI-powered tools for the Milano Cortina Winter Games, marking the first time a large language model (LLM) will be embedded into the Olympics’ digital infrastructure. The partnership between Alibaba Cloud, Olympic Broadcasting Services and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) was announced on Wednesday. Alibaba’s Qwen model will power “Olympic AI Assistants”, a digital system...

NASA's bosses have been grilled after the Artemis II moon mission was pushed back yet again following a failed wet dress rehearsal.

Empirical research is being carried out for revolutionary air conditioning technology that will contribute to solving environmental issues. At the forefront of these endeavors is Nagahiro Tsuyoshi, project professor and director of the Center for Smarttech System Co-creation in the Carbon Neutral Promotion Headquarters.

Threat actors affiliated with China have been attributed to a fresh set of cyber espionage campaigns targeting government and law enforcement agencies across Southeast Asia throughout 2025. Check Point Research is tracking the previously undocumented activity cluster under the moniker Amaranth-Dragon, which it said shares links to the APT 41 ecosystem. Targeted countries include Cambodia,

Chemicals brought in to help protect the ozone layer have inadvertently spread huge quantities of toxic 'forever chemicals' around the globe, a new study reveals.

After NASA postponed the launch of Artemis II, a decades old conspiracy has resurfaced, revealing what astronauts may find on the lunar surface.

Prized for its beauty, teak is in short supply, forcing the yacht industry to look for alternatives.

There’s a corner of the internet where the bots gather without us. A social network named Moltbook, modeled on Reddit, is designed for AI “agents” to engage in discussions with one another. Some of the hot topics so far are purging humans, creating a language we can’t understand and, sigh, investing in crypto.

Moore Threads – one of China’s domestic artificial intelligence chip champions – has entered the intensifying race for AI coding tools with the launch of a new service built on its latest graphics processing unit (GPU). The Beijing-based company on Tuesday unveiled its “AI Coding Plan”, a vertically integrated development suite that runs on a fully domestic hardware-to-model stack, marking a strategic push beyond chipmaking into developer-facing software services. AI coding has emerged as a key...

Is this the year the internet changes forever?

An innovative approach to discovering, analyzing, and governing identity usage beyond traditional IAM controls. The Challenge: Identity Lives Outside the Identity Stack Identity and access management tools were built to govern users and directories. Modern enterprises run on applications. Over time, identity logic has moved into application code, APIs, service accounts, and custom authentication

Social media has been flooded with fake, AI-generated images and videos. But will the majority of users actually care?

Rare deep-sea discovery: ‘School bus-size’ phantom jellyfish spotted in ArgentinaScientists in a rare deep-sea discovery have found “school bus-size” phantom jellyfish off the coast of Argentina during the expedition. Researchers from the Schmidt Ocean Institute have...