Mathematics and computing articles from across Nature Portfolio

The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy may only ever increase during the conversion of one physical state into another. Finding an analogous quantity to characterize the conversion of entangled quantum states has been a rollercoaster ride.

A new benchmark, KaBLE (knowledge and belief language evaluation), indicates that some large language models are unable to accurately distinguish belief from knowledge and fact, calling into question their use in real-word applications such as medicine and law.

Catastrophic forgetting is a common problem for artificial learning systems, but whether it occurs in humans is unclear. We revealed that both humans and neural networks show similar patterns of forgetting, which reflect a fundamental trade-off: reusing prior knowledge speeds up new learning but can corrupt old memories. Individuals differed in how they navigate this balance.

Medicaid serves over 70 million Americans, yet barriers to consistent, high-quality care endure due to workforce shortages, fragmented service delivery, and administrative burden. Artificial intelligence (AI) offers not just operational efficiency but the potential to transform the Medicaid care experience. AI-powered digital assistants can deliver 24/7 multilingual voice or text support, expanding access to personalized, emotionally-intelligent assistance. Under existing workforce supervision, these agents can bridge critical gaps in behavioral health and community coordination through tools like therapy chatbots that reduce loneliness and improve engagement. As “embedded staff” in provider offices and community organizations, digital assistants can create a unified infrastructure for whole-person care. We introduce the concept of Precision Benefits: delivering the right support to the right person at the right time to prevent avoidable health and social deterioration. This aligns with administrative and eligibility reforms in H.R.1, which require states to improve efficiency and verification while fostering innovation and preserving state authority over AI regulation. Realizing this vision demands responsible AI development – addressing safety, bias, privacy, and trust – and modernization of infrastructure and payment models. Yet the opportunity is clear: AI can power a smarter and more equitable Medicaid system, one that puts everyone on an upward life trajectory.

Despite advances, AI models continue to be geared towards the needs of English-speaking people in high-income countries.

Controversy has erupted after 21% of manuscript reviews for an international AI conference were found to be generated by artificial intelligence.

National laboratories have been instructed to broaden access to their data sets to accelerate research as part of the federal government’s AI platform. But who stands to benefit?

Since it was unveiled in 2020, Google DeepMind’s game-changing AI tool has helped researchers all over the world to predict the 3D structures of hundreds of millions of proteins.

Blending ‘old-fashioned’ logic systems with the neural networks that power large language models is one of the hottest trends in artificial intelligence.