Babbage from The Economist

For half a century, the exponential increases in computing performance have powered the digital age. These gains were achieved by shrinking the components on computer chips, meaning that each new generation of semiconductor technology has been faster and more efficient than the last. But, with engineers now facing limits to how much further silicon chips can shrink, and ever-increasing demand thanks to the AI boom, chipmakers are having to get creative. What are the technical innovations they hope will keep the world’s AI ambitions on track?Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Shailesh Chitnis, The Economist’s global business correspondent; Eric Pop of Stanford University; David Patterson, professor emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley; and The Economist’s Rachana Shanbhogue.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

Seeing, smelling and being in nature can directly improve your physical and mental health. We may know this intuitively but it is now also backed up by an emerging body of scientific  research. What are the benefits of a walk in the woods? Why does the scent from certain trees enhance cancer-fighting cells in the immune system? What does birdsong have to do with pain management? And what exactly are your houseplants doing for your microbiome?Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, speaks to Kathy Willis, professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford and author of “Good Nature: The New Science of How Nature Improves Our Health”.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

Scientists and tech companies are on a quest to build AI with something closer to the general intelligence of humans. Large language models (LLMs), which power the likes of ChatGPT, can seem human-like, but they work in very different ways to the beings that created them. In order to create a superintelligent world, how can modern AI models be improved to make them better at reasoning and understanding the world? Are LLMs the right type of technology to pursue? Or do scientists need to get more creative?This is the final episode in our two-part series on artificial general intelligence. Last week, we sought to define what is a slippery concept. This week: the technological and ethical challenges that need to be solved in building the truly human-like AI models.Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Steven Pinker of Harvard University; Gary Marcus, professor emeritus at New York University; Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montréal; and The Economist’s Abby Bertics.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

For those who think about the future of AI, one of the biggest buzzwords is artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Many of the biggest tech companies in the world point to AGI as their ultimate goal when building intelligent machines. But what does that really mean, and how useful is the concept for understanding how AI is progressing? In the first of two episodes, we explore how philosophers and scientists define AGI and what companies are doing to try to build it.Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Melanie Mitchell of the Santa Fe Institute; Susan Schneider of Florida Atlantic University; Blaise Aguera y Arcas, CTO of Technology & Society at Google; and The Economist’s Tom Standage, Kenneth Cukier and Abby Bertics.Over the last five weeks, “The Intelligence”, our daily news podcast, has been answering your questions about AI. Go back and listen here.You can find The Economist’s “Schools Brief” series of articles on artificial intelligence here. Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

In the early 20th century, sound locators were dreamed up to provide early warning of incoming enemy aircraft. After the invention of radar, the technology was cast aside. But now, innovators in Ukraine have revived the idea of acoustic detection with surprising success. In this episode, we explore the history of the technology and the reasons it has recently proved so effective at helping Ukraine foil Russian aerial attacks. Will other countries follow suit?Host: Kenneth Cukier, The Economist's deputy executive editor. Contributors: Gascia Ouzounian of the University of Oxford; Tom Withington of RUSI; Ben Sutherland of The Economist; Kunal Patel, producer of “Babbage”.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

There are a growing number of hints that the universe might not have evolved in the way that cosmologists thought. If those hints are confirmed by new sky surveys, it might turn out that dark matter and dark energy are more mysterious than anyone ever conceived before. In that case, how should scientists reformulate their standard model of the universe?This is the second of two episodes that explore a looming crisis in cosmology. We examine what cracks in the standard model of cosmology could mean for the quest to understand dark matter and dark energy.Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Michael Brown, Nathan Adams, Dan Thomas, Rebecca Bowler and Erik Rosenberg of the University of Manchester; Don Lincoln of Fermilab; Subir Sarkar of the University of Oxford; Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille of DESI; and Emilie Steinmark, The Economist’s science correspondent. Listen to part one of the series, “Cosmology in crisis, part one: how to build a universe”.To learn more about how physicists are searching for dark matter, listen to our episode “Babbage: The hunt for dark matter”.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

Most of the universe is missing. Only 5% of it is normal matter, which makes up all the people, planets and stars we can see; the other 95% consists of mysterious dark matter and dark energy. Scientists have some hypotheses of what these enigmatic substances might be but recent astronomical observations have posed challenges to their ideas. Even worse, it could mean that there are cracks in the standard model of cosmology, the best scientific description of the universe’s evolution. It’s a nerve-wracking time for cosmologists—is everything they thought they knew about to come crashing down?This is the first of two episodes that explore a looming crisis in cosmology. We examine what scientists understand about the evolution of the universe, and why their best model might be under pressure.Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Mark Mcculloch, Michael Brown, Rebecca Bowler and Erik Rosenberg of the University of Manchester; Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille of DESI and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.To learn more about how physicists are searching for dark matter, listen to our episode “Babbage: The hunt for dark matter”.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

At the Olympics, athletes strive for victory, compete for medals and try to smash records. Behind those Olympic champions are teams of scientists who study every aspect of a sport, looking for anything that can provide an edge over an opponent. What’s the best lane in which to run a 400m race? What’s the best angle to throw a shot put? What’s the fastest object in sport? In this episode, we uncover the hidden mathematics behind sporting success.Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, interviews Amandine Aftalion, a professor of applied mathematics at the French National Centre of Scientific Research in Paris and the author of “Be a Champion: 40 Facts You Didn't Know About Sports and Science”.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.

In 2010, scientists achieved what had once seemed impossible: they sequenced the genome of a Neanderthal, based on tiny fragments of DNA from ancient bones. It was an astonishing feat that kicked off a new scientific discipline—palaeogenetics—and opened a new window onto the history of life on Earth. In this episode, we explore how scientists are now shedding light not only on ancient people and animals, but on some modern diseases, too. Plus: how the study of ancient DNA could be revolutionised by the recent discovery of “fossil chromosomes”, which allow scientists to peer even further into the past.Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Rory Galloway, senior podcast producer and science writer for The Economist; Pontus Skoglund, Frankie Tait, Sarah Johnston and Jérôme Nicod of the Francis Crick Institute in London; and Cynthia Perez Estrada and Erez Aiden of the Baylor College of Medicine.Transcripts of our podcasts are available via economist.com/podcasts.Listen to what matters most, from global politics and business to science and technology—subscribe to Economist Podcasts+.For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.