Recent years have seen a boom in biometric security systems—identification measures based on a person’s individual biology—from unlocking smartphones, to automating border controls. As this technology becomes more prevalent, some cybersecurity researchers are worried about how secure biometric data is—and the risk of spoofs. If generative AI becomes so powerful and easy-to-use that deepfake audio and video could hack into our security systems, what can be done?  Bruce Schneier, a security technologist at Harvard University and the author of “A Hacker’s Mind”, explores the cybersecurity r ..read more

Clinical trials are the gold standard for testing the safety and efficacy of a treatment or drug, and a keystone in modern medicine. But their grinding timelines and skyrocketing price tags are hindering development and, ultimately, costing lives. Natasha Loder, The Economist’s health editor, asks Sir Martin Landray, the boss of Protas, a clinical-trial organisation, what can be learned from his pioneering RECOVERY covid-19 trial. Euan Ashley, a cardiologist at Stanford University, explains how to use wearable technology to conduct wholly digital clinical trials. Plus, Alejandro Frangi of the ..read more

Antimicrobial resistance killed over a million people in 2019. That figure is expected to rise to ten million by 2050. Antibiotics remain vital to modern medicine, but this hidden pandemic of drug-resistant superbugs is driving scientists to explore possible alternatives. One type of therapy in particular is attracting serious scientific interest: bacteriophages.  Phages are viruses that can destroy bacteria. In the 1920s, phage therapies were used widely against infections, but much of the world abandoned the idea following the discovery of penicillin. Some parts of the former Soviet Un ..read more

The use of drones in the war in Ukraine has been increasing. Unmanned vehicles capture battlefield images, relay co-ordinates, and strike targets in Ukraine and even Russia. Whether purpose-built military devices or off-the-shelf civilian technology, the drones are having an outsized impact. How are they influencing battles? And what do they mean for the future of warfare? Oliver Carroll, our correspondent in Ukraine, explores the purpose and effectiveness of drones in the war. Ulrike Franke of the European Council on Foreign Relations explains the potential that drone technology offers to ar ..read more

Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT almost six months ago, little else has occupied the minds of technologists. Generative artificial intelligence—capable of producing media like text, images and audio in response to prompts—seems to be improving every day, with many technology companies developing and releasing their own competing systems. As the AI revolution accelerates, the technology is being used in ever more creative ways, companies are discovering its potential, causing unease among many content-creators and white-collar professionals, whose jobs seem to be at risk. The story of auto ..read more

Twenty years ago, the Human Genome Project was completed. It unveiled a mostly complete sequence of the 3 billion pairs of building blocks that make up the code within every set of human chromosomes. These are the instructions that create humans. Almost all of human biology research uses the Human Genome Project’s findings in some way, from understanding why some people are more likely to develop diseases than others, to uncovering the secrets of our ancestors and evolution. But for genomics to become a part of everyday medicine, paving the way for personalised medicines, the hard work is stil ..read more

On April 13th, the European Space Agency will launch a spacecraft towards Jupiter and three of its icy moons—Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. The JUICE mission will carry ten instruments to the outer solar system and will hunt for water, a heat source and organic material—the ingredients that scientists think are needed for life. It is hoped the results that come from JUICE, and a similar NASA mission, Europa Clipper, will give us scientists a clearer view of whether life exists beyond planet Earth.  Tim Cross, The Economist’s deputy science editor, explains why missions to the Jovian syst ..read more

As they stare up into the night sky, astronomers have long wondered whether life exists elsewhere in the universe. For decades, the hunt for extraterrestrial life has focused on Mars, Venus and even on the various moons of our solar system. But in 1995, that search entered a new phase, when Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor found the first clear evidence of a planet orbiting another star: 51 Pegasi b. Since then, more than 5,000 exoplanets have been found. This week, Alok Jha asks Nobel laureate Dider Queloz, how the “exoplanet revolution” has influenced the search for life elsewhere. Dider Quel ..read more

Imagine a power source that produces hardly any waste and is carbon-free. That’s the tantalising promise of controlled nuclear fusion, which physicists have been trying to achieve for 70 years. It is a simulacrum of the process that powers the sun, colliding atomic nuclei of various sorts to release huge amounts of energy.  Fusion research was once the provenance of governments and national laboratories, but now private companies are getting in on the act. Dozens of them are exploring different ways to create the extreme conditions needed to achieve fusion here on Earth. And, contrary to ..read more

OpenAI's Chat GPT, an advanced chatbot, has taken the world by storm, amassing over 100 million monthly active users and exhibiting unprecedented capabilities. From crafting essays and fiction to designing websites and writing code. You’d be forgiven for thinking there’s little it can’t do.  Now it’s had an upgrade. GPT-4 has even more incredible abilities, it can take in photos as an input, and deliver smoother, more natural writing to the user. But it also hallucinates, throws up false answers, and remains unable to reference any world events that happened after September 2021. Seekin ..read more