Topic description and stories

From the climate crisis to personalised medicine, we are applying AI to the world’s major challenges, exploring its ethical dimensions and collaborating with industry to ensure that our research has the greatest impact.

Cambridge launches Institute for Technology and Humanity

21 November 2023

A major interdisciplinary initiative has been launched that aims to meet the challenges and opportunities of new technologies as they emerge, today and far into the future.

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Opinion: Aliens, very strange universes and Brexit – Martin Rees

03 Apr 2017

Martin Rees is Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, the Astronomer Royal, a member of Britain’s House of...

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DeepMind acquired the data for software that could send clinicians alerts about patients at risk of Acute Kidney Injury, but the agreement also gave it access to a substantial number of records about unaffected patients.

DeepMind-Royal Free deal is “cautionary tale” for healthcare in the algorithmic age

16 Mar 2017

A study of a deal which has allowed Google DeepMind access to millions of healthcare records argues that more needs to be done to regulate such...

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Opinion: Robots and AI could soon have feelings, hopes and rights … we must prepare for the reckoning

28 Feb 2017

Is artificial intelligence a benign and liberating influence on our lives – or should we fear an impending rise of the machines? And what rights...

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Large house spider on kitchen floor

Reconditioning the brain to overcome fear

21 Nov 2016

Researchers have discovered a way to remove specific fears from the brain, using a combination of artificial intelligence and brain scanning...

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Still from Pain in the Machine

Pain in the machine: a Cambridge Shorts film

02 Nov 2016

The pain we experience as humans has physical and emotional components. Could we develop a machine that feels pain a similar way – and would we want...

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Artificial intelligence: computer says YES (but is it right?)

20 Oct 2016

Computers that learn for themselves are with us now. As they become more common in ‘high-stakes’ applications like robotic surgery, terrorism...

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“The best or worst thing to happen to humanity” - Stephen Hawking launches Centre for the Future of Intelligence

19 Oct 2016

Artificial intelligence has the power to eradicate poverty and disease or hasten the end of human civilisation as we know it – according to a speech...

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World travel and communications recorded on Twitter

Talkin' 'bout a revolution: how to make the digital world work for us

03 Oct 2016

The digital revolution is one of the great social transformations of our time. How can we make the most of it, and also minimise and manage its risks...

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Crossword

AI crossword-solving application could make machines better at understanding language

07 Mar 2016

A web-based machine language system solves crossword puzzles far better than commercially-available products, and may help machines better understand...

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EyeWire Candy Neurons

Modelling how the brain makes complex decisions

04 Feb 2016

Researchers have built the first biologically realistic mathematical model of how the brain plans and learns when faced with a complex decision-...

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Circuit city

Artificial intelligence and rise of the machines: Cambridge Science Festival 2016

21 Jan 2016

The annual two-week Festival, which runs from 7 – 20 March and stages more than 300 events, examines the growing interaction between humans and...

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SegNet demonstration

Teaching machines to see: new smartphone-based system could accelerate development of driverless cars

21 Dec 2015

Two technologies which use deep learning techniques to help machines to see and recognise their location and surroundings could be used for the...

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