Technology

The entrepreneur turned fraudster is the subject of an Oscar-tipped new documentary that takes an unusual look at her strange legacy. Margaret O'Mara, professor of history at the UW, is quoted.

Come curious. Leave inspired. The UW offers an exciting lineup of in-person and online events. From thought-provoking art and music to conversations on culture, history, and science, the UW community invites you to explore, learn, and connect across disciplines throughout the University. And you don’t have to wait until November: Take a look at everything still happening in October. Go directly to the week you’d like to view: Week 1: November 2 – 8 Week 2: November 9 – 15...

UW astronomer Emily Levesque will soon add a new role as editor-in-chief of the prestigious American Astronomical Society Journals to her ongoing work studying red supergiants and other stellar oddities.

A new University of Washington study shows that plunge-diving birds such as gannets and boobies have unique morphological adaptations that allow them to survive high speed, headfirst impact.

A University of Washington-led center for optoelectronics technologies that combine light and electronics brings researchers from 14 universities across the U.S. together with the mission to develop new materials to transform information technology with light. Founded in 2021, NSF IMOD has received a second round of funding from the NSF to continue its work for the next five years.

October offers stargazers a packed calendar plus, a conversation about colliding planets and disappearing stars with Andy Tzanidakis, a doctoral student in astronomy at the UW and student director of the planetarium.

"While so many of us were focused on fictional superintelligent machines that we were told could hypothetically cause human extinction, however, there was a more serious story being reported. A series of events almost got us to armageddon, not caused by rogue, superintelligent AI, but by government reliance on error-prone systems that are marketed by their manufacturers as being close to superintelligent," write Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, and Timnit Gebru.

The University of Washington today broke ground on a $231.1-million Chemical Sciences Building. Once completed, the state-of-the-art facility will be a nexus for collaborative research and teaching that will help the UW define the next 100 years of science education and breakthroughs.

Only 70 of 15,000 simulated stellar streams stayed smooth, and the galaxy alone bent the rest with no dark matter in the model. The UW's Nora Shipp, assistant professor; James Davenport, research assistant professor; and Arpit Arora, postdoctoral scholar all in astronomy are quoted.

New faculty books from the University of Washington include those from the Information School, bioengineering, mathematics, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, and Earth and space sciences.

The American Astronomical Society named Emily Levesque, professor of astronomy at the UW, the next editor in chief of its journals, including The Astrophysical Journal. She takes charge in August 2027.

Is it possible that AI is or might one day become trulyintelligent? We put this question to five experts working in a variety of fields, including linguistics, computer science, cognitive science and psychology. Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

"Its been a busy few months for AI hype. At the end of April, Anthropic claimed that its model Claude Mythos is better at finding software vulnerabilities than most security experts. Then we had the OpenAIHugging Face hacking incident, after which Anthropic (proudly) and Meta (reluctantly) disclosed similar incidents involving their models," write Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, and Timnit Gebru.

Coral reefs provide protection for fish, and researchers are interested in how the health of the reef affects the ability of fish to communicate with each other. This fall, Jj Milan, a UW doctoral student in the biology department, and UW research scientist Bob Oxborrow are traveling to the Maldives to study how humbug damselfish communicate with each other.

A UW-led research team has discovered the best-preserved fossil feathers from the Mesozoic era in fossilized dinosaur poop. Some of these feathers have features that look like modern birds feathers. This finding can help researchers better understand why and how some birds survived the catastrophic event 66 million years ago that killed 75% of life on the planet.