A More Human Way to Train AI

Xiang, A., Andrews, J.T.A., Bourke, R.L. et al. Fair human-centric image dataset for ethical AI benchmarking. Nature, November 2025

A new study introduces FHIBE, the Fair Human-Centric Image Benchmark, the first large-scale, publicly available image dataset designed with ethical AI development in mind. Unlike most existing computer-vision datasets, which are often scraped from the internet without consent, FHIBE contains more than 10,000 images from nearly 2,000 volunteers across 81 countries, all collected with informed consent, privacy protection, and fair compensation.

FHIBE stands out for its global diversity and its exceptionally rich, self-reported demographic details, including age, pronouns, ancestry, and skin tone. Each image is also paired with detailed pixel-level annotations, environmental conditions, and camera metadata. This makes FHIBE the most comprehensive tool to date for evaluating bias in human-focused AI systems—from face detection and pose estimation to visual question answering.

When researchers tested popular computer-vision models on FHIBE, they uncovered both well-known and newly identified biases. For example, models tended to perform better on younger, lighter-skinned individuals and struggled with older adults, darker skin tones, baldness, and even hairstyle variability. These insights show why ethically sourced, diverse datasets are essential: they allow scientists to detect subtle biases that would otherwise remain hidden. FHIBE not only raises the bar for fairness benchmarks but also offers a practical roadmap for how to responsibly build the next generation of AI datasets.

A New Way to Sense Smell—Without Smelling at All

Halina B. Stanley et al. Substitution of human olfaction by the trigeminal system. Sci. Adv., November 2025

Scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind device that helps people who have lost their sense of smell “sense” odors again, without actually restoring real smell. The device works by pairing an electronic nose (a sensor that detects odor molecules in the air) with a tiny electrical stimulator placed inside the nose.

Instead of activating the damaged olfactory system, the device stimulates the trigeminal nerve, another nerve inside the nose that normally senses tingling, irritation, or temperature from things like menthol or chili peppers. The question was: Can the brain learn to use these trigeminal signals as a substitute for smell?

Across four experiments with over 60 volunteers (including people with complete and partial smell loss), the researchers found that participants could reliably detect when an odor was present based on the electrical stimulation pattern. Some could also tell the difference between different stimulation patterns, though this was harder and improved when participants were trained first. The ability to detect the signal did not depend on having a working sense of smell, meaning even anosmic individuals could use the system.

The device does not recreate real smells. But it shows, for the first time, that it may be possible to give patients a practical way to recognize odor categories, like food vs. danger odors, through another nerve pathway. This could be an early step toward a future “smell prosthesis” for people living with permanent smell loss.

Can Positive Memories Help Heal the Brain?

Steve Ramirez. Memories change. But can we change them on purpose? Science Friday, November 2025.

Neuroscientist Dr. Steve Ramirez explains that memories are not fixed snapshots of the past; they are dynamic reconstructions that change slightly each time we recall them. Instead of functioning like recordings, memories behave more like malleable building blocks, which the brain continually updates. This flexibility may even help us imagine the future by combining elements of past experiences.

New research shows that scientists can activate specific memories in mice by stimulating the exact brain cells involved in those experiences. In mice that show depression-like behavior, artificially turning on their positive memories can lift their mood and reduce symptoms, sometimes even long-term. This suggests that memory manipulation could one day support new treatments for mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.

Humans already experience a natural form of this effect. Simply recalling a joyful or painful memory can change our biology within seconds, altering mood, heart rate, stress hormones, and attention. This natural responsiveness points to the possibility of developing therapies that intentionally harness positive memories.

Future treatments could also target traumatic memories. Instead of erasing them, scientists may be able to reduce their emotional weight, offering new hope for people living with PTSD while preserving the factual memory.

Looking ahead, the field is moving toward a deeper map of memory in the brain, identifying the specific cells involved in certain memories and finding ways to support or restore them. Such work could eventually help treat memory loss in disorders like Alzheimer’s.

Breakthroughs and innovations start with a very radical idea. They don’t try to improve a process or product; they often disrupt an existing solution or approach or displace an existing technology. This is a lesson to us: You don’t need to wait for others to shape your future.

Ideas can come from anywhere. Sometimes a conversation, or reading a book, or even a dream [1] can be the source of innovation. Our daily activities are all part of the inventive process. In fact, the internet provides many sources of information and inspiration. One can easily search for related patents and research on how to improve the idea. An average internet user can easily access new tools and platforms to take courses online, ask questions, and get answers from experts. New online platforms like Coursera, Udacity, and edX [2] provide free and high quality educational content and tools. One can easily take courses from these platforms, educating themselves and developing new ideas and technologies.

Crowdsourcing is another alternative for finding an innovative solution to a problem. Many companies and organizations are now organizing innovation challenges, seeking ideas and products for problems in many scientific and engineering fields. This approach allows companies to access the world’s smartest people to help solve important technical, social, policy, and scientific challenges. Governments and large corporations are also offering incentives for large scale scientific and technological projects. A well-known example of this approach are XPRIZE challenges [3]. The XPRIZE Foundation is organizing challenges to help solve difficult future problems. One of the challenges from XPRIZE is to build and launch a spacecraft that can carry three people 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface – and can do so twice in two weeks. Another space related challenge is to land safely on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters on the Lunar surface, and communicate two times with the Earth. These challenges are not only allowing companies to push the limits of science and technology, but also generating commercial and applied projects.

But back to you and your great new idea… Once you have your innovative idea on solid ground, the next step is to attract funding to bring your idea to life. There are many funding mechanisms today, including loans from banks, borrowing money from friends and family, angel investors, startup competitions, venture capital funding, and a new approach called “crowdfunding.” Crowdfunding is the process of collecting financing for a project or idea from a large number of (often anonymous) investors, each donating small amounts. The crowdfunding industry is expected to grow to $90 billion by 2020. There are many successful crowdfunding campaigns that raised over $1 million in less than 24 hours, for art pieces, movies, technological products, and video games. The highest reported funding campaign was for a project called Star Citizen, an online space video game that raised over $37 million [4]. The crowdfunding platforms also help with the marketing, advertising, and social media reach for the ideas and products.

While it is possible to explain and attract funding with just the idea or concept of your innovation, it is important to have a functioning prototype to prove that the idea is real and it is possible to bring it to life. Prototyping is an important step for demonstrating your idea to others. With the developments in manufacturing and 3D printing, it is easier than ever to produce a prototype. Low cost 3D printing allows local manufacturing and prototyping. While 3D printing has existed for quite some time, it was for many years an expensive technology available only to larger companies. New technological developments make it available and affordable for personal use. One can easily design or download a 3D model of a product, and print at home for testing and everyday use. Many printing stores now accept online orders for 3D print jobs [5]. 3D printing can make easy for innovators to produce a prototype of their products and test before starting fundraising process and mass production.

The current level of 3D printer technology allows printing mostly for non-electronic components of a product. For electronic components and computing units of prototypes, open source electronics platforms are useful. There are many platforms that allow hardware developers to prototype their projects using electronics, sensors, actuators, and motors. Hackers, artists, designers, and hobbyists have produced many interactive and interesting projects. Would you like to have your coffee pot send you a tweet when the coffee is ready? Receive an SMS when there is mail in your physical mailbox? What about an auto-lacing shoe? These are all made possible using open source electronic projects. What is great about all of these projects is that the developers share all necessary steps and details of the their projects for easy replication by interested users.

Innovation is not limited to physical products and hardware. One can easily develop a mobile app to improve a traditional business or disrupt an industry. Smartphones and innovative app ideas are changing the way we get a taxi (Uber), book a room (Airbnb), check the price of a product (Amazon), and share-a-ride (Lyft). Uber introduced a smartphone app to allow passengers to book the nearest “taxi” and track the vehicle on a map. Users can make payments with their preloaded credit card information. The Lyft mobile app facilitates ride-sharing by enabling passengers to request a ride from other users nearby who have a car, in exchange for a small fee. Airbnb allows people to rent their private rooms, apartments, homes, and other properties to other users seeking lodging. The Amazon price check app disrupts the retail business by allowing consumers to scan bar codes in local stores and compare prices and order directly from Amazon.

Most of these new approaches were made available by the introduction of smart phones and mobile technologies. The total number of smartphones in the world is over 2 billion. One can develop a small game and reach 20 million users, a relatively small percentage of the worldwide smartphone users, in a single day. For a product or a service, reaching 20 million customers in one day is a great achievement. With new software platforms, it is easier to develop a smartphone application that works on many platforms. These software tools even allow developers to use easier web technologies to program the app. It is becoming a straightforward process to bring an idea to life, especially in software products and services. With all these new tools and services, innovation is getting easier than ever.

While having a novel idea is an important step for innovation, education and hard work are critical for success. Through education, we can inspire new generations to come up with innovative ideas that can change the world. Thomas Edison, famous inventor with over 1000 patents, regarded success as “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Through dedication, failure can be viewed as another opportunity to learn something new. As Edison said, “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”

References

1. Halil I. Demir, ‘Religious Inspirations and Scientific Inventions’, Fountain Magazine, Issue 89 / September – October 2012.
2. Alex Usher, ‘The Future of MOOCs: Coursera and EdX’, Higher Education Strategy Associates, November 19, 2013.
3. XPRIZE Scientific and Technological Challenges, http://xprize.org
4. Ryan Fleming, ‘Star Citizen destroys all crowdfunding records, hits $37 million’, Digital Trends, January 22, 2014.
5. Dominic Basulto, ‘How 3D printing could transform Amazon and online shopping’, March 13, 2014.

It is the collaborative work of the mind and heart that will yield the desired spiritual and behavioral education of gifted people. But, how is it possible to satisfy the mind and the heart both at the same time? Traditionally, the heart is associated with religion and the mind is associated with science. So, cooperation between the mind and heart means cooperation between science and religion. Unfortunately, some religious subjects that solely depend on acceptance rather than investigation have been overemphasized during the course of many centuries for various reasons. As a result of this overemphasis and other incentives, Western society has broken the ties between science and religion, leading to an unbalanced relation between the mind and heart. In this imbalance, the mind is united with the ego and oppresses the heart; hearts are suffocated in the name of rationalism, and science is used as a means to deny religion.

It is true that religion is a way that eventually recourses to submission and acceptance rather than questioning. However, a correct perception of religion will never contradict the requirements of the mind, because of the fact that both religion and the mind originate from God. Therefore, a true religion will accept information about the universe that is arrived at by intellectual questioning as a way of acquiring knowledge of God; this consequently links the mind to the heart. A true religion will feed the heart in such a way that the love that sparks therein will give momentum to the investigations of the mind, enabling greater knowledge of God to be acquired, which will in turn increase the love of God and thus, link the heart to mind. It is the lack of this true cyclic relationship between the mind and the heart that has yielded uncontrolled, uneducated, self-idolized minds that boost the ego, creating a vicious circle in which the ego propels the mind. Therefore, the question is “how is one to achieve a unity between the mind and heart so that the education of gifted people yields humble servants to the community and to God?”

The solution to this problem lies partially in what can be called “ego education.” Although it may sound new, this concept is deeply rooted in Muslim cultures, and is called “adab.” In the context of this article, adab can be briefly described as knowing the ideal function and limits of the ego in order to be a good servant of God and a faithful member of society. Adab is traditionally learned from people who are already practicing it. This is referred to as education through the language of disposition (hal). Therefore, teachers who are already adorned with adab are needed to educate the egos of gifted people. It can be easily understood from a short reflection that the prophets and the saints throughout history and the sages in different cultures are those who represent the mission of ego education at different levels. For Muslims, adab is primarily learned from Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, who is the person that practiced and taught the way that leads to the point where the mind and heart are united under submission to God. Even according to the eyes of an outside viewer, Prophet Muhammad was an excellent and a distinguished person as a teacher, as a leader, as a servant of God, as a family man, as a commander, as a strategist . . . a person who came up with a totally new understanding of life and religion. In our context, we can take this as a model where a new approach to religion can be seen as an innovation introduced by a gifted person. Based on this model, it can be said that by learning the good behavior of Prophet Muhammad, who was a gifted person in many aspects, a method can be developed for the education of the ego of gifted people. Here, some of the conclusions from such an analysis are presented.

Ownership of the innovation

Although it is Prophet Muhammad who announced and taught Islam, it is God who taught him the religion and sent the Qur’an. Therefore, it is the Prophet who is the fountain through which the water of Islam flows, but the Prophet himself is neither the owner nor the originator of Islam. Similarly, any invention, be it a theory or a machine or a social system or a strategy, is only owned, originated, and inspired by God. The inventor is only the fountain through which God sends the innovation(1) as a blessing to humanity.

This point is important in many aspects. In terms of society, this way of consideration prevents the idolization of certain people and opens the door of thanksgiving and praise of God. For the inventor, it saves them from becoming an arrogant person and also leads them to thanksgiving and praising God. From another aspect, an invention is a gift from God to the inventor and society. Therefore, especially for the inventor, who, in this case, plays a role similar to that of a mother, this gift quickly leads to love of God.

Innovation as a unit of comparison

One of the purposes for the creation of the ego and the apparent potential it is given is that the individual can use these as a unit of comparison to learn about his Creator.(2) In other words, it is to humbly say “how beautifully created am I and how beautiful is my Creator” instead of arrogantly saying “how beautiful am I.” In a hadith, Prophet Muhammad is related as saying, “My Lord educated me, and how beautifully He has educated me.”(3) In the original text of this saying, the word adab is used for education. Based on this model, both being gifted in any area and the innovation that follows this potential are great units of comparison. A person who is gifted in any area can see God as the ultimate source of his own talents and as the omnipresent Lord who exercises His attributes in the universe on all scales.

Superiority versus neediness

Without the appropriate ego education, it is dangerously easy for a gifted person to indulge in the conviction that they can do things better than others and that they, not someone else, can invent something because they are superior to others. Such a conviction is powered by the ego and is also at the same time a means of feedback for further strengthening the ego in a vicious cycle. A gifted person can very easily fall into the deep and dark pit of arrogance with such thoughts, and will suffer in their social life due to this conviction.

An educated ego, on the other hand, knows that it owns nothing and it has no real creative power. It knows that it can only receive good things from its Creator.(4) What falls to its lot is only awareness of its poverty and neediness and praying to the Almighty for the satisfaction of its needs. This way of understanding leads to the result that it is the inventor who is needy of the invention, because of the way they have been created, because of the potential they have; in other words because of the “hunger” they have been given.(5) These needs can only be met by God, Who is the All-Rich, the All-Beneficent. Contemplation and experimenting in several ways must be considered both as conscious prayers and awareness of the neediness to reach the result of an effort.

Prior to the start of the prophethood, Prophet Muhammad used to seclude himself in a cave on a nearby mountain and contemplate the problems of society, the oppression, the unfortunate state of the women, the absurdity of the idolatry . . . Distressed by these factors, he wished for a salvation that would extinguish the fire within him and eventually deliver society from its wretchedness. This was the way in which the Prophet felt his neediness, and God replied to his conscious and unconscious prayers by choosing him as His Messenger.

So, what is so important about being gifted?

The special thing about being gifted is that the gifted person’s prayers are answered quickly in the way in which they are gifted. This is why certain people can do something or learn things very quickly and others cannot. A parallel to this is the acceptance of the prayers of the saints and the prophets. According to the Risale-i Nur, the prayers made in the language of natural need, innate potential, and in intense difficulty are quickly accepted and responded to(6) and such is the case with gifted people. The potential of the gifted person builds the foundation for the acceptance of their prayers, which are made in the language of their neediness in order to fulfill and develop their potential.

Servanthood as a gift

Every person is a creation of God on which different combinations of His names are manifested. This means that every person has a different and unique gift from others. In daily life, we usually recognize gifts of the people who achieve outstanding things. However, every person can realize the particular gifts given to them. The best of these gifts is the belief and love of God. Every person is given a potential to discover the existence of God and a potential to make an acquaintance with God that leads to His love. For every single human being, this discovery is unique; it is a discovery that nobody else can make for another. 

References

1. Nursi, S., The Words, Kaynak A.S., Izmir, 1997, First Word, pp. 4-5.
2. ibid, Thirtieth Word, pp. 228-229.
3. Al-Ajluni, Kashf al-Khafa, 1/72.
4. Nursi, S., The Words, Thirtieth Word, pp. 229-230.
5. ibid, Eighteenth Word, pp. 296.
6. ibid, Twenty-third Word, pp. 412-415.