Assessing political bias in language models

The language models behind ChatGPT and other generative AI are trained on written words that have been culled from libraries, scraped from websites and social media, and pulled from news reports and speech transcripts from across the world. There are 250 billion such words behind GPT-3.5, the model fueling ChatGPT, for instance, and GPT-4 is …

Robot centipedes go for a walk

Researchers show how their multilegged walking robot can be steered by inducing a dynamic instability. By making the couplings between segments more flexible, the robot changes from walking straight to moving in a curved path. This work can lead to more energy-efficient and reliable robotic navigation of terrain.

Research team designs brain-inspired device for optoelectronic computing

Perfect recall, computational wizardry and rapier wit: That’s the brain we all want, but how does one design such a brain? The real thing is comprised of ~80 billion neurons that coordinate with one another through tens of thousands of connections in the form of synapses. The human brain has no centralized processor, the way …

Effective as a collective: Researchers investigate the swarming behavior of microrobots

Miniaturization is progressing rapidly in just any field and the trend towards the creation of ever smaller units is also prevalent in the world of robot technology. In the future, minuscule robots used in medical and pharmaceutical applications might be able to transport medication to targeted sites in the body. Statistical physics can contribute to …