AI Molecular Clocks Promise Earlier Cancer Detection. Do They Deliver?
Epigenetic clocks and machine learning are being pointed at early cancer detection. We separate what the 2026 evidence shows from what the headlines imply, from breast cancer risk to the NHS-Galleri trial.
Editor's picks
See allMpox Is Still Spreading. Can AI Get Ahead of the Virus This Time?
Mpox is still circulating, and new clades are mixing. We look at what genomic surveillance has revealed, where machine learning genuinely helps, and where the evidence stops.
Can Scientists Trust AI Research Assistants? What the Evidence Shows
AI Agents Are Learning to Run the Lab. This Week They Got a Boost
Medical AI Just Hit 90% Accuracy. But Why Can't Hospitals Trust It?
AI Just Mapped 2,812 Viruses to Outrun the Next Pandemic
AI
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See allAI Scribes Are Quietly Reshaping Hospital Bills, and Insurers Are Alarmed
A new Blue Cross Blue Shield analysis links AI coding and ambient scribe tools to $942 million in added hospital costs. Here is what the evidence actually shows, and where it falls short.
Why Simple Maths Keeps Beating Billion-Parameter AI Cell Models
A run of careful benchmarks shows that huge single-cell foundation models often fail to beat plain linear methods. Here is what the reckoning means for AI in biology.
Pentagon Bets $47M That AI Can Out-Evolve the Next Bioweapon
The US Department of War has awarded Flagship Pioneering up to $47 million to build AI platforms that predict viral evolution before outbreaks happen. Here's what the ONTARGET deal means for biosecurity, pandemic readiness and the AI-bio arms race.
The World Just Built an AI Factory for the Next Pandemic
As world leaders gather at the UN for a High-Level Meeting on pandemics, a new AI-powered global infrastructure (the Pandemic Preparedness Engine and Global Pathogen Analysis Platform) is quietly being built to compress vaccine development from months to days.
AI Co-Scientists Are Here, and Nature Just Put Them to the Test
A Nature feature published this week tracks how AI co-scientist platforms from Google DeepMind, FutureHouse and others are already generating validated hypotheses in real labs, and why human judgement is becoming the scarcest resource in science.
This Open-Source AI Just Beat 23 of 26 Radiologists
Alibaba's DAMO Academy has open-sourced RADAR, a Science-published AI that outperformed 23 of 26 radiologists reading abdominal CT scans for 146 conditions, free for any hospital to run.
Biology
See allAI Molecular Clocks Promise Earlier Cancer Detection. Do They Deliver?
Epigenetic clocks and machine learning are being pointed at early cancer detection. We separate what the 2026 evidence shows from what the headlines imply, from breast cancer risk to the NHS-Galleri trial.