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MIT Scientists Show Simple Climate Models Can Outperform AI In Predicting Global Warming

MIT researchers found that simpler, physics-based climate models can outperform deep-learning AI in predicting regional surface temperatures, while deep learning works better for local rainfall. Their study highlights the importance of robust benchmarking to guide climate policy decisions.

29 Aug 2025

AI Can Support Diplomacy, But Only Human Empathy Builds Lasting Peace

AI is reshaping diplomacy by streamlining communication and boosting global collaboration, but it cannot replace human empathy, intuition, and cultural understanding. Dr. Donald Kilburg urges policymakers to adopt AI responsibly to complement, not replace, human judgment in statecraft.

28 Aug 2025

New AI-Powered Dataset Speeds Up Building Damage Assessments After Disasters

Researchers from Zhejiang University and RIKEN have developed the Extensible Building Damage (EBD) dataset, a semi-automated deep learning framework that reduces manual labeling by 80%. With over 175,000 labeled buildings from 12 major disasters, it accelerates and improves accuracy in post-disaster recovery.

22 Aug 2025

AI’s Climate Promise And Peril: Why Developers And Advocates See Different Futures

Researchers from the University of Washington found that while both AI developers and climate advocates care about sustainability, their values and perspectives differ sharply, especially on ethics and community engagement.

20 Aug 2025

Algorithms Uncork the Secrets of Fine Wine Evaluation

AI-driven models are transforming wine evaluation by matching expert ratings, generating human-like reviews, and offering personalised taste profiling, while also improving transparency in decision-making. This body of work highlights how AI can augment—but not replace—the sensory and cultural dimensions of wine appreciation.

4 Jun 2025

Aaron Courville Champions Collaborative AI To Solve Society’s Biggest Challenges

Aaron Courville, incoming director of IVADO and co-founder of Mila, champions an optimistic and pragmatic vision for artificial intelligence, emphasizing its potential to solve societal challenges. Rather than fearing AI, Courville advocates for responsible, collaborative development to maximize its benefits across fields from climate action to public policy.

28 May 2025

AI Turns Surveillance Cameras Into Precision Rainfall Sensors for Smarter Cities

Researchers from Tianjin University have developed an AI-based system that uses everyday surveillance cameras to accurately estimate rainfall in real time. The system achieved high precision across day and night conditions, offering a cost-effective and scalable solution for urban rainfall monitoring.

13 May 2025

AI System Reveals How Tiny Doses of Pesticides Disrupt Entire Honeybee Colonies

Researchers have developed an AI-powered monitoring system that links individual honeybee exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides with colony-wide health effects. Even low-level exposure was shown to reduce pollen foraging efficiency, impacting the entire hive.

22 Apr 2025

AI-Powered Canopy Maps Revolutionize Wildfire Prediction Across Europe

Researchers developed the first high-resolution, pan-European maps of canopy fuels using satellite data and AI, addressing a critical gap in wildfire prediction and management.

16 Apr 2025

BCG X Launches AI Science Institute To Fast-Track Global Breakthroughs

BCG X has launched the AI Science Institute to revolutionize scientific discovery by integrating artificial intelligence with domain expertise. This global initiative aims to accelerate breakthroughs in areas like quantum computing, health care, and climate science.

15 Apr 2025

AI-Enhanced Wood Splitting Unlocks Stronger, Greener Building Materials

Researchers at Empa and ETH Zurich have developed a novel method to create strong, resource-efficient wood panels from split hardwood sticks using traditional shingle-splitting techniques enhanced with AI. This approach maximizes material yield and enables the use of lower-quality, climate-resilient wood species.

14 Apr 2025

Machine Learning Unlocks Secrets of Crab Seismic Courtship Dances

Male fiddler crabs use vibrational signals during courtship that honestly reflect their physical size, allowing females to assess mate quality from a distance. Oxford researchers used geophones and machine learning to decode over 8,000 seismic signals, revealing clear behavioural patterns.

10 Apr 2025

AI Model Predicts Lightning Wildfires With 90% Accuracy, Transforming Global Fire Response

Israeli researchers have developed an AI model that predicts lightning-induced wildfires with over 90% accuracy, using seven years of satellite and environmental data. This breakthrough significantly outperforms current methods and could revolutionize global wildfire forecasting.

3 Apr 2025

AI Diagnoses Urban Tree Health from Video in Breakthrough Plant Monitoring System

AI researchers in Japan have developed ‘Plant Doctor,’ an automated system that uses video footage and hybrid AI to accurately assess the health of urban plants without harming them. This scalable, non-invasive tool could revolutionize both urban forestry and agriculture.

2 Apr 2025

Snap, Scan, and Know: AI Turns Meal Photos into Instant Nutrition Facts

NYU Tandon researchers have developed an AI-powered food recognition system that accurately estimates calories and macronutrients from meal photos, eliminating the need for manual food tracking.

19 Mar 2025

AI Tool Identifies Species and Maps Ecosystems Using Multimodal Data

TaxaBind is a multimodal AI tool that combines images, audio, text, and satellite data to classify species, map distributions, and support ecological modeling, outperforming state-of-the-art methods in zero-shot classification and cross-modal retrieval.

4 Mar 2025

AI Rewrites Social Media Posts but Subtly Changes Their Emotional Tone

Large language models subtly shift the sentiment of text they rephrase, making content more neutral and altering conclusions drawn from sentiment-based research.

25 Feb 2025

AI-Powered Weather Model AIFS Improves Forecast Accuracy and Reduces Energy Use

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) has launched the Artificial Intelligence Forecasting System (AIFS), a cutting-edge AI-driven model that improves weather prediction accuracy by up to 20% while reducing energy consumption by 1,000 times compared to traditional methods.