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"If we assume that these developments continue, and with them our interest in creating simulations of the world, then at some point in the future - 1,000 years, 100,000 years - it's reasonable to assume that the difference between reality and simulation will become indistinguishable. At which point it will mean we will have created simulated beings with their own consciousness. Advertisement But if that is the inevitable outcome of continued technological advancement, unless nuclear war or some other catastrophe intervenes, then it's quite possible - some would say an overwhelming certainty - that it's already happened, and we are the ancestor simulations created by an advanced post-human civilisation."

"In a simulated test staged by the US military, an air force drone controlled by AI killed its operator to prevent it from interfering with its efforts to achieve its mission, an official said last month. AI used "highly unexpected strategies to achieve its goal" in the simulated test, said Col Tucker 'Cinco' Hamilton, the chief of AI test and operations with the US air force, during the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London in May. Hamilton described a simulated test in which a drone powered by artificial intelligence was advised to destroy enemy's air defense systems, and attacked anyone who interfered with that order."

"An artificially intelligent fighter pilot system has defeated two attacking jets in a combat simulation. The AI, known as Alpha, used four virtual jets to successfully defend a coastline against two attacking aircraft - and did not suffer any losses. Alpha, which was developed by a US team, also triumphed in simulation against a retired human fighter pilot."

"Proponents say that it's more than just a matter of probability. The laws of physics don't seem that different from code in a program, according to some, and it's likely that with enough time, a sufficiently advanced civilization could crunch the numbers and produce a simulation that mimics the existence and behavior of every particle in our universe."

"Japanese supercomputer simulations showed that wearing two masks gave limited benefit in blocking viral spread compared with one properly fitted mask. The findings in part contradict recent recommendations from the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that two masks were better than one at reducing a person's exposure to the coronavirus. Researchers used the Fugaku supercomputer to model the flow of virus particles from people wearing different types and combinations of masks, according to a study released on Thursday by research giant Riken and Kobe University."

Much of current science deals with even more complicated systems, and similarly lacks exact solutions. Such models have to be "computational" - describing how a system changes from one instant to the next. But there is no way to determine the exact state at some time in the future other than by "simulating" its evolution in this way. Weather forecasting is a familiar example; until the advent of computers in the 1950s, it was impossible to predict future weather faster than it actually happened.

"Cybersecurity researchers say the My2022 mobile app - the official app of the Beijing Winter Olympics - has serious security vulnerabilities and that "all Olympian audio is being collected, analyzed and saved on Chinese servers." Why This Matters: The Chinese government is mandating all Olympic athletes, coaches, and attendees use the My2022 app and, as of Thursday morning, the app is still available in the Apple and Android U.S. app stores where Americans can download it too."

"This is the dystopian nightmare that Russell fears if his discipline continues on its current path and succeeds in creating super-intelligent machines. It's the scenario implicit in the philosopher Nick Bostrom's "paperclip apocalypse" thought-experiment and entertainingly simulated in the Universal Paperclips computer game. It is also, of course, heartily derided as implausible and alarmist by both the tech industry and AI researchers. One expert in the field famously joked that he worried about super-intelligent machines in the same way that he fretted about overpopulation on Mars."

"But, as he and other modellers warn, much information about how SARS-CoV-2 spreads is still unknown and must be estimated or assumed - and that limits the precision of forecasts. An earlier version of the Imperial model, for instance, estimated that SARS-CoV-2 would be about as severe as influenza in necessitating the hospitalization of those infected. That turned out to be incorrect."

"West Midlands Trains emailed about 2,500 employees with a message saying its managing director, Julian Edwards, wanted to thank them for their hard work over the past year under Covid-19. The email said they would get a one-off payment as a thank you after "huge strain was placed upon a large number of our workforce". However, those who clicked through on the link to read Edwards' thank you were instead emailed back with a message telling them it was a company-designed "phishing simulation test" and there was to be no bonus. It warned: "This was a test designed by our IT team to entice you to click the link and used both the promise of thanks and financial reward.""

""History sniffing" promises a nose full of dust or, you're talking about web browsers, a whiff of the websites you've visited. And that may be enough to compromise your privacy and expose data that allows miscreants to target you more effectively with tailored attacks. For example, a phishing gambit that attempts to simulate your bank login page has a better chance of success if it presents the web page for a bank where you actually have an account."

"Eventually, we will reach a point of full saturation, a period in our evolution in which digital bits will outnumber atoms on Earth, a world "mostly computer simulated and dominated by digital bits and computer code," according to an article published in AIP Advances, by AIP Publishing."

"Performance of AMIE In this setting, we observed that AMIE performed simulated diagnostic conversations at least as well as PCPs when both were evaluated along multiple clinically-meaningful axes of consultation quality. AMIE had greater diagnostic accuracy and superior performance for 28 of 32 axes from the perspective of specialist physicians, and 24 of 26 axes from the perspective of patient actors. "

"Ellie may be a computer simulation, but she's incredibly perceptive. By reading the body language and vocal inflections of real live humans, she can engage in surprisingly meaningful exchanges, and even evoke emotional openness from her conversation partners. Her creators believe her receptivity to human emotional cues could revolutionize the field of mental health. Watching Ellie in action, it's not hard to see why."

"The computers are connected into a kind of hive mind via a downloadable software, allowing the system to run calculations with greater speed and efficiency than any individual device. This is necessary to do the complex work of simulating how the proteins that make up the novel coronavirus behave and where there could be potential binding sites for drugs to latch on to."

"is an experimental service from Carnegie Mellon University that stores images of old processors, as well as the old operating systems that ran on top of them, along with software packages for those old OSes; this allows users to access old data from obsolete systems inside simulations of the computers that originally ran that data, using the original operating systems and applications."

"Improbable's technology SpatialOS, which enables the creation of massive simulations - "virtual worlds" - is still in beta mode and has not been publicly launched. "

"The model takes a two-pronged approach. First, it focuses on trends present in the region, looking at geostatistics and historical data from Prodes, the annual government monitoring system for deforestation in the Amazon. Understanding what has happened can help make predictions more precise. When already deforested areas are recent, this indicates gangs are operating in the area, so there's a higher risk that nearby forest will soon be wiped out. Second, it looks at variables that put the brakes on deforestation - land protected by Indigenous and quilombola (descendent of rebel slaves) communities, and areas with bodies of water, or other terrain that doesn't lend itself to agricultural expansion, for instance - and variables that make deforestation more likely, including higher population density, the presence of settlements and rural properties, and higher density of road infrastructure, both legal and illegal."