AI for Humans with Sandy Pentland 

AI for Humans

Alex Pentland. Stanford HAI Fellow and MIT Toshiba Professor

Current AI is designed as a rough emulation of human intelligence. If instead we designed AI to complement human intelligence, we can achieve much more useful performance. I will show examples from finance, science, health, patents, and policy.

Watch at: www.youtube.com

Dynamics between Energy and Information: Infodynamics and the Economics of Life by Klaus Jaffe

Information, along with energy, matter, and spacetime, is one of the fundamental elements of nature that underpins all known phenomena. While our knowledge of the universe is expanding exponentially—particularly regarding energy, spacetime, and matter—our understanding of information progresses at a much slower pace. The amount of information is increasing exponentially, but not our comprehension of its dynamics. Advancements in artificial intelligence, genetic research, natural intelligence, cyber governance, and global ecological phenomena hinge on our ability to enhance our understanding of information dynamics. Without improved access to and understanding of information, we risk succumbing to the entropic forces that threaten humanity’s survival.

Read the full book at: papers.ssrn.com

Is Science Inevitable?

Linzhuo Li, Yiling Lin, Lingfei Wu

Using large-scale citation data and a breakthrough metric, the study systematically evaluates the inevitability of scientific breakthroughs. We find that scientific breakthroughs emerge as multiple discoveries rather than singular events. Through analysis of over 40 million journal articles, we identify multiple discoveries as papers that independently displace the same reference using the Disruption Index (D-index), suggesting functional equivalence. Our findings support Merton’s core argument that scientific discoveries arise from historical context rather than individual genius. The results reveal a long-tail distribution pattern of multiple discoveries across various datasets, challenging Merton’s Poisson model while reinforcing the structural inevitability of scientific progress.

Read the full article at: arxiv.org

Science, Promise and Peril in the Age of AI

It started as a fantasy, then a promise — inspired by biology and animated by the ideas of physicists — and grew to become a powerful research tool. Now artificial intelligence has evolved into something else: a junior colleague, a partner in creativity, an impressive if unreliable wish-granting genie. It has changed everything, from how we relate to data and truth, to how researchers devise experiments and mathematicians think about proofs. In this special series, we explore how AI is changing what it means to do science and math, and what it means to be a scientist.

Read the full article at: www.quantamagazine.org