For decades, many scientists have relied on the "hard steps" model to suggest that intelligent life is rare — the improbable result of a series of unlikely evolutionary leaps. But new research by ...

"Consciousness," although challenging to define, can be thought of as a first-person awareness of one's surroundings and oneself. You sense the world through your eyes, nose, ears and hands, and track ...

Ten years ago, I would have turned my nose up at the idea that we already understood how to get machines to think. In the 2010s, my team at Google Research was working on a wide variety of ...