New Scientist - The Essential Guides

The Essential Guide series brings together the best recent coverage from New Scientist specially curated into beautiful compendiums about the most exciting themes in science and technology today. Written and edited by some of the world’s best science writers, these guides will leave you with everything you need to know about subjects from nutrition to the solar system and more.

NEW SCIENTIST ESSENTIAL GUIDE THE AI REVOLUTION

New Scientist - The Essential Guides

CHAPTER 1 THIS AI MOMENT

AI ENTERS THE MAINSTREAM • Artificial intelligence research is often accompanied by hype around the technology’s potential and risks. But those pushing the boundaries of what is possible and those calling for restraint all seem to agree on one thing: this new breed of generative AIs are affecting society more than any AI tool that came before.

WHAT IS A NEURAL NETWORK?

WHY IS CHATGPT SO GOOD?

HOW SMART IS CHATGPT REALLY? • Generative AI has captured the public’s attention, but how intelligent is it, and what does its rise mean for us? Few are better placed to answer those questions than complexity scientist Melanie Mitchell, who spoke to New Scientist in 2023 about the wave of attention AI is getting, the challenges in evaluating how smart GPT-4 really is and why AI is constantly forcing us to rethink intelligence.

A TIMELINE OF AI • The idea of AI has been around for the best part of 70 years, but progress was halting and slow in the first few decades. It was only in the late 1980s with the discovery of a new, bottom-up paradigm of machine learning, based on algorithms capable of drawing statistical inference from large amounts of data, that AI began to find its way. Just a few years later, the advent of the world wide web began to provide a ready, ever-growing source of that data.

CHAPTER 2 UNDER THE HOOD

HOW AI CHATBOTS WORK • The large language models behind the new chatbots are trained to predict which words are most likely to appear together – but “emergent abilities” suggest they might be doing more than that.

THE LANGUAGE OF LLMS

SUPERSIZED AIS • Gigantic neural networks that write with remarkable fluency have led some experts to suggest that scaling up current technology will lead to human-level language abilities – and ultimately true machine intelligence.

DOING MORE WITH LESS

THERE’S MORE TO INTELLIGENCE THAN TEXT • Typing and reading text has been the primary interface with AI in the current revolution, but more immersive methods of training and interacting with AI systems are now being developed.

MIND AND BODY • As well as enhancing AIs using immersive virtual worlds, researchers are now extending their capabilities by giving them robot bodies that interact with the physical world.

A NEW KIND OF COMPUTER

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL GENERAL INTELLIGENCE? • The world’s biggest AI companies have made artificial general intelligence, or AGI, their goal. But it isn’t always clear what AGI means, and there is debate about whether it is a valuable idea.

CHAPTER 3 HOW AI CAN HELP YOU

WHAT AI MEANS FOR OUR JOBS • Anyone with an internet connection now has access to tools that can answer almost every question under the sun, write everything from university essays to computer code and produce art or photorealistic images. These kinds of capabilities could profoundly affect the economy, jobs, education, culture and more.

USING AI IN YOUR DAILY LIFE • From helping you craft the perfect email to providing personal training and meal planning, a whole host of generative AI tools – which produce text, video, images and other content in response to prompts – are here to help streamline your daily grind.

NOW WE’RE TALKING • Humans have an uncanny ability to deduce the goals, desires and beliefs of others, a...