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Game theory

Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics and economics that studies situations where players choose different actions in an attempt to maximize their returns. First developed as a tool for understanding economic behavior and then by the RAND Corporation to define nuclear strategies, game theory is now used in many diverse academic fields, ranging from biology and psychology to sociology and philosophy. Beginning in the 1970s, game theory has been applied to animal behavior, including species' development by natural selection. Because of games like the prisoner's dilemma, in which rational self-interest hurts everyone, game theory has been used in political science, ethics and philosophy. Finally, game theory has recently drawn attention from computer scientists because of its use in artificial intelligence and cybernetics.

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Computers & Math News

February 2, 2026

NASA’s Perseverance rover has just made history by driving across Mars using routes planned by artificial intelligence instead of human operators. A vision-capable AI analyzed the same images and terrain data normally used by rover planners, ...
A new light-based breakthrough could help quantum computers finally scale up. Stanford researchers created miniature optical cavities that efficiently collect light from individual atoms, allowing many qubits to be read at once. The team has already ...
Scientists warn that rapid advances in AI and neurotechnology are outpacing our understanding of consciousness, creating serious ethical risks. New research argues that developing scientific tests ...
Dinosaur footprints have always been mysterious, but a new AI app is cracking their secrets. DinoTracker analyzes photos of fossil tracks and predicts which dinosaur made them, with accuracy rivaling human experts. Along the way, it uncovered ...
Researchers have discovered a hidden quantum geometry inside materials that subtly steers electrons, echoing how gravity warps light in space. Once thought to exist only on paper, this effect has now been observed experimentally in a popular quantum ...
Order doesn’t always form perfectly—and those imperfections can be surprisingly powerful. In materials like liquid crystals, tiny “defects” emerge when symmetry breaks, shaping everything ...
Quantum computers need extreme cold to work, but the very systems that keep them cold also create noise that can destroy fragile quantum information. Scientists in Sweden have now flipped that problem on its head by building a tiny quantum ...
AI may learn better when it’s allowed to talk to itself. Researchers showed that internal “mumbling,” combined with short-term memory, helps AI adapt to new tasks, switch goals, and handle complex challenges more easily. This approach boosts ...
Quantum technology has reached a turning point, echoing the early days of modern computing. Researchers say functional quantum systems now exist, but scaling them into truly powerful machines will require major advances in engineering and ...
Researchers have demonstrated that quantum entanglement can link atoms across space to improve measurement accuracy. By splitting an entangled group of atoms into separate clouds, they were able to measure electromagnetic fields more precisely than ...
A massive new study comparing more than 100,000 people with today’s most advanced AI systems delivers a surprising result: generative AI can now beat the average human on certain creativity tests. Models like GPT-4 showed strong performance on ...
Blockchain could make smart devices far more secure, but sluggish data sharing has held it back. Researchers found that messy network connections cause massive slowdowns by flooding systems with duplicate data. Their new “Dual Perigee” method ...

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