James Somers
A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft
Coding has always felt to me like an endlessly deep and rich domain. Now I find myself wanting to write a eulogy for it.
How Will A.I. Learn Next?
As chatbots threaten their own best sources of data, they will have to find new kinds of knowledge.
Whispers of A.I.’s Modular Future
ChatGPT is in the spotlight, but it’s Whisper—OpenAI’s open-source speech-transcription program—that shows us where machine learning is going.
How Food Powers Your Body
Metabolism, which unleashes the energy in what you eat, may be nature’s most electrifying invention.
A Journey to the Center of Our Cells
Biologists are discovering the true nature of cells—and learning to build their own.
The Science of Mind Reading
Researchers are pursuing age-old questions about the nature of thoughts—and learning how to read them.
The Pastry A.I. That Learned to Fight Cancer
In Japan, a system designed to distinguish croissants from bear claws has turned out to be capable of a whole lot more.
How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System
At a laboratory in Manhattan, researchers have discovered how SARS-CoV-2 uses our defenses against us.
The Engineers Taking on the Ventilator Shortage
The newest designs are smart, streamlined, and inexpensive. Will they be enough?
Snow Science Against the Avalanche
On slopes shallow enough to accumulate snow but steep enough for it to be unstable, chaos hides beneath the surface.
How Hackers Invented Kiteboarding
An unusual design process combining recklessness, imagination, and computers created one of the fastest-growing sports in history.
How the Artificial-Intelligence Program AlphaZero Mastered Its Games
At its core was an algorithm so powerful that you could give it the rules of humanity’s richest and most studied games and, later that day, it would become the best player there has ever been.
The Friendship That Made Google Huge
Coding together at the same computer, Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat changed the course of the company—and the Internet.
A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft
Coding has always felt to me like an endlessly deep and rich domain. Now I find myself wanting to write a eulogy for it.
How Will A.I. Learn Next?
As chatbots threaten their own best sources of data, they will have to find new kinds of knowledge.
Whispers of A.I.’s Modular Future
ChatGPT is in the spotlight, but it’s Whisper—OpenAI’s open-source speech-transcription program—that shows us where machine learning is going.
How Food Powers Your Body
Metabolism, which unleashes the energy in what you eat, may be nature’s most electrifying invention.
A Journey to the Center of Our Cells
Biologists are discovering the true nature of cells—and learning to build their own.
The Science of Mind Reading
Researchers are pursuing age-old questions about the nature of thoughts—and learning how to read them.
The Pastry A.I. That Learned to Fight Cancer
In Japan, a system designed to distinguish croissants from bear claws has turned out to be capable of a whole lot more.
How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System
At a laboratory in Manhattan, researchers have discovered how SARS-CoV-2 uses our defenses against us.
The Engineers Taking on the Ventilator Shortage
The newest designs are smart, streamlined, and inexpensive. Will they be enough?
Snow Science Against the Avalanche
On slopes shallow enough to accumulate snow but steep enough for it to be unstable, chaos hides beneath the surface.
How Hackers Invented Kiteboarding
An unusual design process combining recklessness, imagination, and computers created one of the fastest-growing sports in history.
How the Artificial-Intelligence Program AlphaZero Mastered Its Games
At its core was an algorithm so powerful that you could give it the rules of humanity’s richest and most studied games and, later that day, it would become the best player there has ever been.
The Friendship That Made Google Huge
Coding together at the same computer, Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat changed the course of the company—and the Internet.