Funerals of the future? Sweden sees sharp rise in burials without ceremony

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AI could revolutionise DNA evidence – but right now we can’t trust the machines

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DNA evidence often isn’t as watertight as many people think. Sensitive techniques developed over the past 20 years mean that police can now detect minute traces of DNA at a crime scene or on a piece of evidence. But traces from a perpetrator are often mixed with those from many other people that have been transferred to the sample site, for example via a handshake. And this problem has led to people being wrongly convicted . Scientists have developed algorithms to separate this DNA soup and to measure the relative amounts of each person’s DNA in a sample. These “ probabilsitic genotyping ” methods have enabled forensic investigators to indicate how likely it is that an individual’s DNA was included in a mixed sample found at the crime scene. And now, more sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) techniques are being developed in an attempt to extract DNA profiles and try to work out whether a DNA sample came directly from someone who was at the crime scene, or whether it had just ...
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AI could be a force for good – but we’re currently heading for a darker future

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already re-configuring the world in conspicuous ways. Data drives our global digital ecosystem, and AI technologies reveal patterns in data. Smartphones, smart homes, and smart cities influence how we live and interact, and AI systems are increasingly involved in recruitment decisions, medical diagnoses, and judicial verdicts. Whether this scenario is utopian or dystopian depends on your perspective. The potential risks of AI are enumerated repeatedly. Killer robots and mass unemployment are common concerns, while some people even fear human extinction . More optimistic predictions claim that AI will add US$15 trillion to the world economy by 2030, and eventually lead us to some kind of social nirvana . Read more: Artificial intelligence could reinforce society’s gender equality problems We certainly need to consider the impact that such technologies are having on our societies. One important concern is that AI systems reinforce existing social...
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Science as we know it can’t explain consciousness – but a revolution is coming

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Explaining how something as complex as consciousness can emerge from a grey, jelly-like lump of tissue in the head is arguably the greatest scientific challenge of our time. The brain is an extraordinarily complex organ , consisting of almost 100 billion cells – known as neurons – each connected to 10,000 others, yielding some ten trillion nerve connections. We have made a great deal of progress in understanding brain activity, and how it contributes to human behaviour. But what no one has so far managed to explain is how all of this results in feelings, emotions and experiences. How does the passing around of electrical and chemical signals between neurons result in a feeling of pain or an experience of red? There is growing suspicion that conventional scientific methods will never be able answer these questions. Luckily, there is an alternative approach that may ultimately be able to crack the mystery. For much of the 20th century, there was a great taboo against querying the my...
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