Kathryn Hulick

Freelance Writer

Kathryn Hulick is a freelance science journalist and author. Her book Welcome to the Future: Robot Friends, Fusion Energy, Pet Dinosaurs and More explores how technology could change the world in the future. Strange But True: 10 of the World's Greatest Mysteries Explained reveals the real science behind paranormal mysteries, including ghosts, aliens and sea monsters. Hulick also writes regularly for Science News Explores, Muse magazine and Front Vision magazine. Her favorite part of writing about science is getting to speak with researchers in many different fields. She especially loves learning about plants and animals, artificial intelligence, outer space, new energy sources and robots. Once, she spoke with an expert on parallel universes while he was shoveling snow from his driveway. Hulick lives in Massachusetts with her family and many house plants. She enjoys hiking and exploring nature as well as drawing and painting.

All Stories by Kathryn Hulick

  1. Computing

    A new frontier awaits — computing with light

    Today’s computers process using electrical signals. But light shows promise as a new means of computing, especially for AI.

  2. Artificial Intelligence

    Google now adds watermarks to all its AI-generated content

    Google’s AI-created content now hosts an invisible “signature.” A mathematical key can reveal the presence of this digital watermark, called SynthID.

  3. Artificial Intelligence

    Explainer: What is generative AI?

    New bots are emerging all the time that can create — at your direction — images, computer code, articles, ads, songs and more.

  4. Artificial Intelligence

    The brain of a tiny worm inspired a new type of AI

    A liquid neural network mimics how neurons interact in the brain of a worm. This type of AI can better adapt to new situations.

  5. Artificial Intelligence

    AI image generators tend to exaggerate stereotypes

    The racism, sexism, ableism and other biases common in bot-made images may lead to harm and discrimination in the real world.

  6. Artificial Intelligence

    Does AI steal art or help create it? It depends on who you ask

    With AI image generators on the scene, artists see both power and peril ahead.

  7. A new test could help weed out AI-generated text

    AI text generators can help people cheat and spread false information. A clever yet simple technique may help separate bot-talk from real-talk.

  8. Artificial Intelligence

    How to design artificial intelligence that acts nice — and only nice

    Today’s bots can’t turn against us, but they can cause harm. “AI safety” aims to train this tech so it will always be honest, harmless and helpful.

  9. Artificial Intelligence

    ‘Jailbreaks’ bring out the evil side of chatbots

    Researchers break chatbots in order to fix them. This so-called red-teaming is an important way to improve AI’s behavior.

  10. Artificial Intelligence

    A new tool could guard against deepfake voice scams

    Scammers can use AI to create deepfake mimics of people’s voices. AntiFake could make that type of trick much harder to pull off.

  11. Artificial Intelligence

    To ‘green’ AI, scientists are making it less resource-hungry

    Energy demands of ChatGPT and similar AI tools can threaten Earth’s climate. So researchers have begun redesigning how to run data centers and build AI.

  12. Tech

    Talking through a tube can trick AI into mistaking one voice for another

    Researchers crafted tubes that can trick AI into mistaking one person’s voice for another’s. Bad guys could use such tricks to hack into accounts.