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Thunderstorms over Indonesia, seen from the International Space StationNASA Earth Observatory / International Space Station (ISS) An AI weather program running for a single second on a desktop can match the accuracy of traditional forecasts that take hours or days on powerful supercomputers, claim its creators. Weather forecasting has, since the 1950s, relied on physics-based models that extrapolate from observations made using satellites, balloons and weather stations. But these calculations, known as numerical weather prediction (NWP), are extremely intensive and rely on vast, expensive and energy-hungry supercomputers. In recent years, researchers have tried to streamline this process by applying AI. Google scientists last year created an AI tool that could rep...

The French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson is remembered for, among other things, producing three curious automata in the 18th century. A poster from the time advertised them all side by side: a figure that played a real flute, another that banged a tambourine and a duck that gobbled up corn and seemingly turned it into pellets of… well, use your imagination. For physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern, based at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland, these antiquated automata have a resonance with some of today’s most cutting-edge technology. Vaucanson’s inventions prefigured the industrial revolution, during which mechanisation went from being a quirky curiosity to a force that reshaped the globe. We may be at an analogous turning point today when it c...