AIhub monthly digest: June 2026 – biodiversity, resource allocation, and color metaphors

Welcome to our monthly digest, where you can catch up with any AIhub stories you may have missed, peruse the latest news, recap recent events, and more. This month, we found out how foundation models are being used for conservation efforts, how AI can help with scarce resource allocation, and how color metaphors and LLMs can teach us about human cognition. We also went to ICRA and captured some footage of cutting-edge robots.

Interview with AAAI Fellow Tanya Berger-Wolf: AI for ecology, biodiversity, and conservation

In this latest interview in our AAAI Fellow series, we found out about Tanya Berger-Wolf’s research developing a foundation model for biology, the insights this model can provide for conservation and protecting ecosystems, interesting collaborations over the years, and what the future has in store.

Interview with AAAI Fellow Sanmay Das: multiagent systems

In this interview, we chat to Sanmay Das, who was elected as a Fellow “for development of multiagent interaction mechanisms and learning techniques in the public interest, and for leadership service to the profession”. He tells us about his career so far, his research in scarce resource allocation, and where he gets his best ideas.

Statistical or embodied? Comparing people and LLMs in their processing of color metaphors: an interview with Douglas Guilbeault

We found out about color metaphors, how LLMS conceptualise color, and what this can teach us about human cognition in this interview with cognitive scientist Douglas Guilbeault. The results have interesting implications for how we model human cognition, and in turn, how the concept of synaesthesia could be integrated to develop more intelligent AI models.

Congratulations to the #AAMAS2026 best paper award winners

The AAMAS 2026 best paper awards were presented at the 25th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, which took place from 25-29 May 2025 in Paphos, Cyprus.

AAAI presidential panel – AI agents

The Future of AI Research report, published in March 2025, aims to clearly identify the trajectory of AI research in a structured way. You can read more here.

The Good Robot podcast: the battle over data centres with Tara Merk

Hosted by Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney, The Good Robot is a podcast which explores the many complex intersections between gender, feminism and technology. In this episode, Eleanor Drage speaks with Tara Merk about how community-owned data centers could transform digital ownership and challenge the dominance of Big Tech.

Design tweaks promote responsible AI use for environmental protection, research shows

New research by Oregon State University suggests that AI systems that ask users to pause to consider AI’s energy consumption and environmental impacts are likely to reduce unnecessary AI use.

An AI solution to an 80‑year‑old problem has shocked mathematicians

OpenAI shocked the mathematical community by revealing that one of its internal artificial intelligence (AI) models had found a counterexample to a famous conjecture made by legendary Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős in 1946.

ICRA Robot Reels

Earlier this month, our Assistant Editor Ella Scallan headed to the IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation in Vienna. Check out our YouTube to see some of the robots dancing and somersaulting – there’s even a robot panda!

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Ella Scallan is Assistant Editor for AIhub

Ella Scallan is Assistant Editor for AIhub