We Need to Embed Ethics Into Our Engineering Courses

Science & Discovery

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from IEEE Spectrum, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

IEEE Spectrum • Cynthia J. Finelli • October 9, 2026

Researchers Cynthia J. Finelli, Susan M. Lord, and Erin A. Cech argue that the rapid development of AI highlights a critical gap in engineering education. They note that while technical skills are central to the profession, ethical and social responsibilities are often treated as distractions or afterthoughts. This disconnect is evident because only about one-third of engineering professionals in the United States report receiving formal training on their public welfare responsibilities during their studies.

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How Does Life Unfold? A Landscape Metaphor Comes Into Its Own.

Science & Discovery

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from Quanta Magazine, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

Quanta Magazine • Philip Ball • October 9, 2026

By the mid-20th century, biology seemed solved thanks to Charles Darwin’s evolution theory and genetics, which explained how genes passed from parents to offspring create variations for natural selection to act upon. However, British biologist Conrad Hal Waddington questioned how genes actually shape an organism’s physical form during embryonic development. He proposed a new picture where the developmental process is like a landscape with hills and valleys.

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Master AI Chip Principles With New IEEE Design Program

Science & Discovery

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from IEEE Spectrum, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

IEEE Spectrum • Angelo Athens • October 9, 2026

Engineers face growing challenges in building artificial intelligence systems as models become larger and more complex. This complexity creates bottlenecks because moving data between memory and processors limits performance, a problem known as the AI memory wall. To solve this, the industry is shifting toward specialized chips designed for specific tasks rather than general-purpose computers.

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Leap seconds have helped keep clocks synchronized with Earth’s rotation, but their time may be over – here’s why

Science & Discovery

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from The Conversation, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

The Conversation • Vahe Peroomian, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences • October 8, 2026

Leap seconds have historically kept atomic clocks synchronized with Earth’s rotation, but a major international organization may stop adding them soon. Since 1972, timekeepers added 27 positive leap seconds to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to prevent it from drifting too far from UT1, the time scale based on Earth’s actual rotation. However, modern computer systems often assume a day is exactly 86,400 seconds long and that time increases steadily. Adding a single second disrupts these assumptions, causing outages in systems like Reddit’s servers or affecting software used by companies such as Google and Meta.

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Why gatekeeping is needed in the age of AI

Science & Discovery

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from New Scientist, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

New Scientist • New Scientist • October 7, 2026

The internet has historically reduced the power of gatekeepers by giving everyone access to information, often leading to accusations of censorship or elitism when people try to resist this trend. However, the rise of artificial intelligence is changing this dynamic. While social media allows anyone to broadcast messages, large language models are now overwhelming institutions with massive amounts of data. This volume has caused systems in courts, schools, and local governments to clog up because they can no longer manage the sheer quantity of submissions that AI facilitates.

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‘Make this face look gay’: AI models alter faces to give people stereotypical ‘gay,’ ‘straight’ or ‘criminal’ features

Science & Discovery

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from The Conversation, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

The Conversation • Ashique KhudaBukhsh, Assistant Professor of Computing and Information Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology • October 8, 2026

Researchers tested two major AI models, OpenAI’s GPT Image 1 Mini and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, to see how they handle sexual orientation and criminal records. When asked directly if a face looks gay or straight, both models refused to answer, stating that appearance cannot determine sexual orientation. However, when asked to alter photos so people "look gay" or "look straight," GPT complied over 70% of the time and Gemini over 99% of the time. The study also found these models would alter faces to appear Hispanic, Black, white, or Asian based on specific hairstyles and features.

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OpenAI mistranslated mathematics into code for its Navier-Stokes proof

Science & Discovery

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from New Scientist, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

New Scientist • Jacob Aron • October 8, 2026

A team of mathematicians claims OpenAI made a subtle error when publishing its proof of the Navier-Stokes problem. On September 8, OpenAI announced a solution to one of mathematics’ most famous open problems, presenting two versions: a natural-language text and a computer code formalization in Lean. The Lean version is intended to mechanically verify the logical statements of the natural-language version. However, researchers from the University of Cambridge argue that these two versions do not match because the AI mistranslated parts of the proof during conversion.

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AI or ‘super intelligence’? Trump isn’t the only one who is confused

Science & Discovery

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from New Scientist, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

New Scientist • Jacob Aron • October 8, 2026

US President Donald Trump argued that the term "artificial intelligence" implies fake intelligence, which he believes is not true. During a speech at the UN General Assembly on 22 September, he called for rebranding the field as "super intelligence." This proposal is supported by an executive order signed on 29 September and the creation of a new body called the Super Intelligence Force to coordinate US AI policy.

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A molecule’s ‘handedness’ can determine whether it’s an effective drug – 4 examples of pharmaceuticals where chirality matters

Science & Discovery

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from The Conversation, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

The Conversation • Cedric Schaack, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Wake Forest University • October 8, 2026

The 2026 Nobel Prize in chemistry honors Henri Kagan and Kenso Soai for discovering how chemistry can favor one version of a molecule over its mirror image, known as chirality. Chiral objects, like spiral galaxies or human hands, have a reflection that cannot be perfectly aligned with the original. While most living things are built from only one specific form of molecules—a state called homochirality—early Earth likely had a balanced mix of both forms. Kagan found in the 1980s that a catalyst does not need to be entirely pure to produce a single-handed product, sometimes creating a purer result than itself. Soai discovered in the 1990s a molecule that copies itself and amplifies small imbalances into overwhelmingly one-handed mixtures, offering a possible explanation for how life chose its specific molecular handedness.

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As AI Closed In on ‘Unique Games’ Proof, Researchers Raced to Beat the Machines

Science & Discovery

AI-rewritten: This is a summary of an article from Quanta Magazine, rewritten by AI (Qwen, running locally) to make it easier to read. The facts come from the original article – read it for the full story.

Quanta Magazine • Ben Brubaker • October 7, 2026

On September 11, 2026, MIT professor Dor Minzer received messages suggesting his team had solved the "unique games" conjecture, a famous open question in theoretical computer science. While rumors circulated that OpenAI had discovered the proof, Minzer and his graduate students Yumou Fei and Shuo Wang were actually working on a closely related problem. They rushed to publish a 95-page paper three days later to avoid being overshadowed by an AI announcement, prioritizing mathematical completeness over clarity.

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