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As Israel’s air campaign in Gaza enters its sixth month after Hamas’s terrorist attacks on October 7, it has been described by experts as one of the most relentless and deadliest campaigns in recent history. It is also one of the first being coordinated, in part, by algorithms. Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to assist with everything from identifying and prioritising targets to assigning the weapons to be used against those targets. Academic commentators have long focused on the potential of algorithms in war to highlight how they will increase the speed and scale of fighting. But as recent revelations show, algorithms are...... Read Full article on GretAi

A report by Jerusalem-based investigative journalists published in +972 magazine finds that AI targeting systems have played a key role in identifying – and potentially misidentifying – tens of thousands of targets in Gaza. This suggests that autonomous warfare is no longer a future scenario. It is already here and the consequences are horrifying. There are two technologies in question. The first, “Lavender”, is an AI recommendation system designed to use algorithms to identify Hamas operatives as targets. The second, the grotesquely named “Where’s Daddy?”, is a system which tracks targets geographically so that they can be followed in...... Read Full article on GretAi

Separate teams of Chinese and American scientists are reported to be developing body armour using the silk from genetically modified silkworms. The researchers modified the genes of silkworms to make them produce spider silk instead of their own silk. Harnessing the properties of spider silk has been a longstanding aim because the material is as strong as steel, yet also highly elastic. However, the idea of using silk to make bulletproof vests is not a new idea. Instead, it goes back centuries. The invention of the silk bulletproof vest is often credited to the American physician George Emory Goodfellow (1855–1910), following his obs...... Read Full article on GretAi

A multi-billion pound criminal enterprise lurks amid our supermarket shelves. Food crime not only harms our wallets but threatens public health. It includes activities such as mislabelling a product, replacing a food or ingredient with another substance that is inferior, and even poisoning. This is a global concern because of how food crime is evolving. The complexity of food supply chains, the globalisation of food markets, and a lack of transparency heightens the vulnerability of the food sector. So, rethinking how we combat food crime by using technology is imperative. Food crimes now inflict an estimated US$40 billion (£31 billion...... Read Full article on GretAi

You may think of dust as an annoyance to be vacuumed and disposed of, but actually, on a grander scale, it is far more important than most people realise. Globally, dust plays a critical role in regulating our climate, radiation balance, nutrient cycles, soil formation, air quality and even human health. But our understanding of it has been hampered by limitations in current mathematical models. These models, built on methods developed decades ago, struggle to accurately simulate the properties and quantities of dust. The latest research by my colleagues and I sheds light on these limitations and suggests a more nuanced picture of dus...... Read Full article on GretAi

The island of Jersey is known for its picturesque scenery and mild climate. However, its proximity to the European continent has placed it in the path of an invasive predator: the Asian hornet, Vespa velutina. This is bad news for the island’s wildlife, but makes Jersey an ideal location for testing new methods to combat the hornets. Using the island as a testbed, our team of biologists and data scientists have developed an AI system that can automatically detect Asian hornet invasions into new regions, enabling their eradication before they can gain a foothold. The system, VespAI, identifies Asian hornets with over 99% accuracy, as d...... Read Full article on GretAi

In the largest study of its kind, scientists have discovered that a blood test detecting specific proteins could predict dementia up to 15 years before a person receives an official diagnosis. The researchers found 11 proteins that have a remarkable 90% accuracy in predicting future dementia. Dementia is the UK’s biggest killer. Over 900,000 people in the UK are living with the memory-robbing condition, yet less than two-thirds of people receive a formal diagnosis. Diagnosing dementia is tricky and relies on various methods. These include lumbar punctures (to look for certain telltale proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid), PET scans ...... Read Full article on GretAi

Otter populations crashed in Britain around the 1960s from the lethal effects of chemical pollution in rivers and lakes – or so we thought. Our research has looked more closely at what happened to otters in Britain over the last 800 years and has revealed a more complex picture. Since Eurasian otters (Lutra lutra) are at the top of the aquatic food chain in Britain, any contamination consumed by their prey, and by the prey of their prey, accumulates in otters. So otters are particularly susceptible to any toxic chemicals in their environment. Following the banning of many chemical pollutants, otter populations began to recover, and ...... Read Full article on GretAi