AI and the Prisoner’s Dilemma; Stellar cannibalism; There is evidence that EVs reduce atmospheric CO₂.

While I was gathering and formatting all these links, we had a 4.8-magnitude earthquake here on the East Coast, so apologies in advance for any typos. This week: Stars faster than gravity! AIs that exhibit both cooperative and selfish behaviors! and “Would you eat this?” Another edition of

Contributors cheated.

Japanese researchers developed an AI system that displays different personality traits and switches between selfish or cooperative behaviors depending on the context. Using the Prisoner’s Dilemma, instances of AI systems chose to cooperate or defect from an AI partner. If they cooperated during the game, both systems received four virtual dollars. If one defected while the other cooperated, the defector got $5 and the cooperator got nothing.

The researchers developed multiple AIs that evolved based on game iterations, eventually exhibiting cooperative or selfish behaviors in subsequent generations. “Our experiments provide fascinating insights into the evolutionary dynamics of personality traits in AI agents. We observed the emergence of cooperative and selfish personality traits within AI populations, reminiscent of human social dynamics.” induces,” said Reiji Suzuki, a professor at Nagoya University’s grammar school Enforce. .

However, Suzuki also notes that over time, highly cooperative groups were eventually replaced by ego-based models of generations. The researchers believe the study provides insights that could contribute to the development of beneficial AI in the future.

The air is better

Ronald Cohen, an environmental chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, reports that a widespread CO₂A monitoring network of sensors deployed around the Bay Area may have recorded a reduction in carbon emissions due to the adoption of electric vehicles. The network is a proof-of-concept for monitoring urban areas and identifying neighborhoods affected by high emissions with a granularity previously impossible.

Between 2018 and 2022, the network’s sensors recorded an overall reduction in carbon emissions of 1.8 percent per year, which translates to a 2.6 percent annual reduction in vehicle emissions. The researchers note that California has a particularly high rate of electric vehicle adoption, making it an ideal test bed for the impact of the energy transition.

“We show with environmental measurements that the adoption of electric vehicles is working, that it is having the desired effect on CO.₂ emissions,” Cohen said. He also points out that the network reports a need to double the reductions to meet California’s goal of net zero emissions by 2045.

Poor condition of the neighborhood

Sagittarius A*’s closest neighbor, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy (and my heart), has unusually heavy traffic due to the stars’ immense gravity and dense local population. Researchers at Northwestern University observed that a larger number of these stars than expected appeared to be extremely young, such as Paul Rudd, and built a model of the system to derive some deductions about this stellar population.

In their findings, they determined that stars appear smaller because they violently ate their neighbors. Closer to a black hole—within about 0.01 parsecs—stars accelerate into orbit at thousands of kilometers per second. And the sheer number of stars in the region makes collisions inevitable. Sometimes the stars just steal each other.

“They bump into each other and keep moving,” says Sanaya C. Rose, who led the research. In this scenario, stars can lose their outer layers and continue to trickle. Further outside the black hole, in more relaxed orbits, the stars do not have the momentum to escape and merge with each other, and become more massive. After a series of collisions and mergers, these stars, like Paul Rudd, may appear younger than their actual ages, but they eventually age less.