Every day briefing_ A brand new Turing check for synthetic intelligence

The race is on for brand new methods to evaluate ChatGPT and different massive language fashions. Plus, controversial claims about historic people check eLife ’s revamped peer-review mannequin.

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Can you see the interloper? Eggs from two fork-tailed drongo birds have been positioned alongside matching examples from African cuckoos to point out how amazingly related they will look. (Jess Lund)

Fork-tailed drongo birds (Dicrurus adsimilis) can spot the remarkably related eggs of the parasitic African cuckoo (Cuculus gularis) with 94% accuracy. Every feminine drongo lays distinctive eggs that adjust in color and sample from different females’. Regardless of cuckoos’ wonderful mimicry of the total vary of this wealthy selection, particular person females can produce just one sort of egg look. They often don’t drop a perfectly-matched egg into the nest, so drongos aren’t fooled. Even when researchers hand-picked a near-perfect interloper, drongos nonetheless kicked it out two-thirds of the time. Would you? Within the picture above, the cuckoo eggs are those on the decrease proper.

The Guardian | 3 min learn

Reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B paper

Archaeologists wowed viewers of a documentary — launched final week — with beautiful scenes of a cave full of bone fossils that, they argue, are the stays of the earliest-known burial by people or their extinct relative Homo naledi. However days earlier, 4 scientists who peer-reviewed the paper making these claims referred to as the supporting proof “insufficient” within the open-access journal eLife. The examine is a high-profile check of the journal’s modern publishing mannequin: it now not formally accepts papers, however as a substitute publishes them alongside peer reviewers’ stories.

Nature | 6 min learn

The distinguished journal Bodily Evaluation Letters (PRL) will retract a 2021 paper by physicist Ranga Dias, who has made daring claims about discovering room-temperature superconductors — supplies that might not require any cooling to conduct electrical energy with zero resistance. The examine is just not in regards to the controversial subject (it’s in regards to the electrical properties of manganese disulfide), however the retraction is important as a result of it’s the results of an investigation that discovered obvious knowledge fabrication. PRL’s resolution follows allegations that Dias plagiarized substantial parts of his PhD thesis and the retraction of a Nature paper on room-temperature superconductivity final September. Dias denies any misconduct and says he’s dedicated to room-temperature superconductivity analysis.

Nature | 6 min learn

Options & opinion

Scientists disagree on whether or not synthetic intelligence can motive and are battling the way to assess its capabilities. GPT-4 and different massive language fashions ace tutorial exams and would most likely breeze via a conversation-based Turing check. On the identical time, they’ve evident blind spots, akin to failing an examination query when it’s barely modified, and so they appear to lack summary reasoning talents. “There’s no Geiger counter we are able to level at one thing and say ‘beep beep beep — sure, clever’,” says cognitive scientist Tomer Ullman.

Nature | 15 min learn — together with an abstract-thinking check that defeats machines to attempt your self

Andrew Robinson’s choose of the highest 5 science books to learn this week features a dialogue of fungi and their threat of triggering a pandemic, and a provocative meditation on drug use by scientists.

Nature | 3 min learn

Worldwide, one in three youngsters have harmful ranges of lead of their bloodstream. One main supply of publicity may simply be eradicated by banning the manufacture and sale of lead paints, says Nafisatou Cissé on the Lead Publicity Elimination Mission (LEEP). Gathering proof of lead ranges in a rustic’s paint can value only a few thousand {dollars} and immediate life-saving modifications. For instance, a LEEP examine in Pakistan led to 10 paint producers, together with 5 of the most well-liked manufacturers, switching to non-lead paint.

Nature | 5 min learn

The world is aware of too little about deep-sea ecosystems to guard them from the long-lasting harm of sea-floor mining, says oceanographer Beth Orcutt, who found a deep-sea octopus nursery final month. Our data gaps are immense: deep-sea corals are keystone species, but scientists don’t actually know the way they reproduce. And we do not know whether or not it’s attainable to revive broken deep sea ground. “We’d like analysis protecting a minimum of ten years for every habitat to have the ability to make evidence-based choices,” says Orcutt.

Nature | 6 min learn