The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Imagine a town with two widget merchants. Customers prefer cheaper widgets, so the merchants must compete to set the lowest price.

As the world races to build artificial superintelligence, one maverick bioengineer is testing how much unprogrammed intelligence may already be lurking in our simplest algorithms to determine whether ...

For example, 6 contributes 6 when it’s in an undoubled position, and it contributes 3 from a doubled position because 6 doubled equals 12 and 1 + 2 = 3. Messing up a single number while typing your ...

You’re at the checkout screen after an online shopping spree, ready to enter your credit card number. You type it in and instantly see a red error message ...

For centuries, we have relied on human intuition, behavioral cues, and painstaking manual analysis to determine veracity in written communications. Enter artificial intelligence. AI algorithms, ...

A few weeks ago, my ears perked up when a gaggle of middle school volleyball players in my car were talking about the teachers they don’t like; I have an unfortunate appetite for tweenage gossip, and ...

REM sleep behavior disorder, or RBD, is a condition that causes abnormal movements or brief repeated twitching during sleep, and occasional episodes of dream enactment. RBD affects more than one ...

Using a simple algorithm to recommend highly effective disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) can help make treatment fairer for all patients, and level ...