The most powerful AI stories right now are not chatbots. They are the quiet algorithms reading burnt Roman scrolls, trawling through millions of galaxies, and finding things hidden in data no human team could ever finish searching.

The artificial intelligence that holds the public’s attention writes essays, answers questions and holds a conversation. The artificial intelligence that is changing what scientists can actually do tends to be narrower, quieter and far less talkative. It reads charred scrolls no one can physically open, ranks a million galaxies to pull out the rare ones, [...] The post The most powerful AI stories right now are not chatbots. They are the quiet algorithms reading burnt Roman scrolls, trawling thr