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Updated 2025-04-03 06:47
How UPS uses AI to outsmart bad weather
The delivery giant’s new machine-learning app aims to reroute packages away from snow and other trouble spots in its global network.
Online censorship in Saudi Arabia soared after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder
The main targets were foreign media websites, says a new service that automates censorship-tracking in countries governed by repressive regimes.
Blockchain smart contracts are finally good for something in the real world
A startup says it has tackled a long-standing problem that has kept smart contracts from responding to actual events.
One of the fathers of AI is worried about its future
Yoshua Bengio wants to stop talk of an AI arms race and make the technology more accessible to the developing world.
Ford wants to launch a fleet of thousands of self-driving cars in 2021
The automaker believes sponsorship and ride-sharing will be key to making its nascent autonomous-car business take off.
The US military is testing stratospheric balloons that ride the wind so they never have to come down
A sensor that can spot the wind direction from miles away will let DARPA’s surveillance balloons hover at the very edge of space in one spot indefinitely.
Brazil’s presidential election could mean billions of tons of additional greenhouse gases
Policies leading to more destruction of the Amazon and Cerrado would have a huge impact on climate change.
United Nations considers a test ban on evolution-warping gene drives
Debate over a new idea for stopping malaria is pitting some environmental groups against Bill Gates.
China’s giant transmission grid could be the key to cutting climate emissions
But are the country’s next-generation power lines a clean-power play or a global power move?
A robot scientist will dream up new materials to advance computing and fight pollution
Kebotix is using AI and robotics to brainstorm—and then test—novel compounds.
Google has enlisted NASA to help it prove quantum supremacy within months
The firm will pit its Bristlecone quantum processor against a classical supercomputer early next year and see which comes out on top.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin says his creation can’t succeed unless he takes a step back
At Ethereum’s annual developer conference, its founder tells us why his technology can only be truly decentralized if it stops depending on him.
You can now hire a video game coach to turn you into a Fortnite expert
With the growth in e-sports, more gamers are investing in some personal tutoring to help them progress. We paid a Fortnite coach to teach us his top tips.
The internet is taking over a person’s life for Halloween. And you can be a part of it.
An MIT experiment is handing a single person’s free will to the crowd to test how the digital hive mind works.
A powerful new battery could give us electric planes that don’t pollute
A manufacturing trick with magnetic fields produces a battery that may discharge fast enough to get an aircraft off the ground.
The US pushes to build unhackable quantum networks
The fiber-optic cables carrying data across the internet are vulnerable to hacking. Two US initiatives aim to fix that by creating super-secure quantum transmissions.
Should a self-driving car kill the baby or the grandma? Depends on where you’re from
The infamous “trolley problem” was put to millions of people in a global study, revealing how much ethics diverge across cultures.
Two sick children and a $1.5 million bill: One family’s race for a gene therapy cure
One day, gene therapy may help with the rarest of diseases. Some parents aren’t waiting.
Designer babies aren’t futuristic. They’re already here.
Are we designing inequality into our genes?
Video doorbell firm Ring says its devices slash crime—but the evidence looks flimsy
Amazon paid $1 billion for the security company. Our data analysis questions the claims that purchase was based on.
Want to know when you’re going to die?
Your life span is written in your DNA, and we’re learning to read the code.
Digital immortality: How your life’s data means a version of you could live forever
Your family and friends will be able to interact with a digital “you” that doles out advice—even when you’re gone.
We can now customize cancer treatments, tumor by tumor
But can any company afford to manufacture one-off medical care?
Your next doctor’s appointment might be with an AI
A new wave of chatbots are replacing physicians and providing frontline medical advice—but are they as good as the real thing?
The smartphone app that can tell you’re depressed before you know it yourself
Analyzing the way you type and scroll can reveal as much as a psychological test.
Why we can’t quit the QWERTY keyboard
We’ve been using it to type for 144 years. Here’s why it works, and what it would take for us to give it up.
The US military wants to teach AI some basic common sense
Even the best AI programs still make stupid mistakes. So DARPA is launching a competition to remedy the field’s most glaring flaw.
Waymo’s cars drive 10 million miles a day in a perilous virtual world
A simulation lets autonomous cars experience situations that are too dangerous to try in reality.
NASA is using HoloLens AR headsets to build its new spacecraft faster
Lockheed Martin engineers wear the goggles to help them assemble the crew capsule Orion—without having to read thousands of pages of paper instructions.
There’s no Google Maps for self-driving cars, so this startup is building it
In as little as 24 hours, Mapper will deliver a machine-readable map of any place on earth with public roads.
Even the best AI for spotting fake news is still terrible
It should be possible to automatically identify dubious news sources—but we’ll need a lot more data.
The US is hastening its own decline in AI, says a top Chinese investor
The White House should worry less about China’s progress and invest heavily in artificial intelligence breakthroughs, according to Kai-Fu Lee.
We need a cyber arms control treaty to keep hospitals and power grids safe from hackers
A fresh diplomatic push could help put vital public services off limits to nation-state cyberattacks.
Three robot advances that’ll be needed for DARPA’s new underground challenge
What kind of robot could handle this impossible-seeming cave mission?
The secret data collected by dockless bikes is helping cities map your movement
Lime and other companies are gathering masses of location-based information that some cities are leveraging to improve their streets.
I attended an Oculus conference in virtual reality, and all I got was eyestrain
Facebook’s VR unit revealed the new Quest headset at its conference for developers, but I couldn’t try it from my couch.
Why Alibaba is betting big on AI chips and quantum computing
Meet the man behind Alibaba’s gamble on emerging tech.
A stretchy stick-on patch can take blood pressure readings from deep inside your body
The flexible stamp can collect data that usually requires bulky, invasive equipment.
Clearing out old cells might help the brain
A popular anti-aging strategy keeps mice from getting senile.
California wants to stop hackers from taking control of smart gadgets
A proposed state law would help bolster the security of internet-connected devices, but what’s really needed is federal action.
Future robo-taxis could charge themselves and help balance the electric grid
Wireless startup WiTricity wants cars to power up without human help and feed utilities energy during peak demand.
IKEA designs future autonomous cars that work as hotels, stores, and meeting rooms
The furniture store’s design agency has dreamed up seven ways we might use autonomous vehicles if we don’t actually have to focus on driving.
Artificial intelligence is often overhyped—and here’s why that’s dangerous
AI has huge potential to transform our lives, but the term itself is being abused in very worrying ways, says Zachary Lipton, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
How to hack an election—and what states should do to prevent fake votes
Two speakers at this year’s EmTech MIT conference addressed voting vulnerabilities.
Soon your doctor will be able to wirelessly track your health—even through walls
MIT professor Dina Katabi is building a gadget that can sit in one spot and track everything from breathing to walking, no wearables required.
Curbing emissions isn’t enough—we need emergency solutions for climate change
Top energy scientist Daniel Schrag says we have to adapt and innovate, because we’re already signed up for centuries of higher global temperatures.
A plan to advance AI by exploring the minds of children
Cognitive science and neuroscience could inspire the next big innovations in artificial intelligence, says the head of an ambitious new MIT-led research project.
Why lithium-ion may rule batteries for a long time to come
Materials scientist Gerd Ceder is overseeing a research effort to extend the capabilities of the dominant form of energy storage, using a new class of compounds.
Wall Street’s embrace could break Bitcoin
Going mainstream could be disastrous for the currency, if traders treat it like a conventional asset.
Running quantum algorithms in the cloud just got a lot faster
A startup called Rigetti Computing is linking quantum computers with classical ones in a new cloud service
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