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The debate over artificial superintelligence (ASI) can tend toward extremes, with predictions that it will either save humanity or destroy it. E. Glen Weyl has a different perspective: Superintelligence is already here, and it has been for thousands of years.

Speaking Nov. 19 at the Berkman…

Brace yourself for a hot story about plant sex.

Harvard researchers have discovered that cycads — an ancient lineage of seed plants — heat their reproductive organs to attract beetle pollinators, which in turn evolved specialized infrared sensors. First male cycads warm their pollen…

In the movies, a comatose patient can be unreachable one moment, just fine the next.

“That suggests there’s a clearly demarcated border between unconsciousness and consciousness,” said Joseph Giacino, a professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School…

Picture a scientist with a provocative hypothesis — something that defies conventional wisdom or verges on the outlandish.

Supporting the pursuit of that big, bold claim is the goal of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science’s new Extraordinary Claims, Extraordinary Evidence (ECEE)…

Partying the night before a big exam. Preparing last-minute for a work presentation. Running a 5K in a 10-pound Halloween costume. All are examples of what psychologists call “self-handicapping” — creating obstacles to success to order to bolster or protect one’s own…

Venki Murthy: Memory is just not something that’s stored on a tape and it just sits around, right? It’s really astonishing how you can remember anything at all. So for me, this now really brings to the point — where is the stability in the face of this constant onslaught? And that almost…

Long before modern pharmaceuticals, our ancestors turned to plants to find cures for ailments from infections to parasites to fevers. A new study by Harvard researchers reveals the deep roots of that relationship: Several hot spots of medicinal plant diversity correspond to regions with long…

A San Francisco pedestrian was severely injured in 2023 when a driver struck her, throwing her in the path of a self-driving car that dragged her 20 feet while attempting to pull over. In the complex circumstances and legal fallout of the crash, educators saw a learning opportunity for future…