Stephen Ornes

Contributing Writer

Latest Articles

How Base 3 Computing Beats Binary

August 9, 2024

Long explored but infrequently embraced, base 3 computing may yet find a home in cybersecurity.

Avi Wigderson, Complexity Theory Pioneer, Wins Turing Award

April 10, 2024

The prolific researcher found deep connections between randomness and computation and spent a career influencing cryptographers, complexity researchers and more.

How Quickly Do Large Language Models Learn Unexpected Skills?

February 13, 2024

A new study suggests that so-called emergent abilities actually develop gradually and predictably, depending on how you measure them.

AI System Beats Chess Puzzles With ‘Artificial Brainstorming’

November 15, 2023

By bringing together disparate approaches, machines can reach a new level of creative problem-solving.

How to Build a Big Prime Number

July 13, 2023

A new algorithm brings together the advantages of randomness and deterministic processes to reliably construct large prime numbers.

Secret Messages Can Hide in AI-Generated Media

May 18, 2023

In steganography, an ordinary message masks the presence of a secret communication. Humans can never do it perfectly, but a new study shows it’s possible for machines.

The Unpredictable Abilities Emerging From Large AI Models

March 16, 2023

Large language models like ChatGPT are now big enough that they’ve started to display startling, unpredictable behaviors.

The New Math of Wrinkling

September 22, 2022

A comprehensive mathematical framework treats wrinkling patterns as elegant solutions to geometric problems.

How Transformers Seem to Mimic Parts of the Brain

September 12, 2022

Neural networks originally designed for language processing turn out to be great models of how our brains understand places.

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