The world’s biggest space-based radar will measure Earth’s forests from orbit

These indirect systems rely on a combination of field sampling—foresters roaming among the trees to measure their height and diameter—and remote sensing technologies like lidar scanners, which can be flown over the forests on airplanes or drones and used to measure treetop height along lines of flight. This approach has worked well in North America […]

A Google Gemini model now has a “dial” to adjust how much it reasons

“We’ve been really pushing on ‘thinking,’” says Jack Rae, a principal research scientist at DeepMind. Such models, which are built to work through problems logically and spend more time arriving at an answer, rose to prominence earlier this year with the launch of the DeepSeek R1 model. They’re attractive to AI companies because they can […]

The State Department office countering foreign disinformation is being eliminated, officials say

The Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub is a small office in the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy that tracks and counters foreign disinformation campaigns.  In shutting R/FIMI, the department’s controversial acting undersecretary, Darren Beattie, is delivering a major win to conservative critics who have alleged that it censors conservative voices. Created […]

A small US city experiments with AI to find out what residents want

The volunteers running the experiment were not completely hands-off. Submitted ideas were screened according to a moderation policy, and redundant ideas were not posted. Ford says that 51% of ideas were published, and 31% were deemed redundant. About 6% of ideas were not posted because they were either completely off-topic or contained a personal attack. […]

A vision for the future of automation

Yet, broad adoption of this advanced automation has lagged. “That’s not necessarily or just a technology gap,” says John Hart, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Advanced Production Technologies at MIT. “It relates to workforce capabilities and financial commitments and risk required.” For small and medium enterprises, and those with brownfield […]

The Download: How the military is using AI, and AI’s climate promises

For much of last year, US Marines conducting training exercises in the waters off South Korea, the Philippines, India, and Indonesia were also running an experiment. The service members in the unit responsible for sorting through foreign intelligence and making their superiors aware of possible local threats were for the first time using generative AI […]

Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military

“We still need to validate the sources,” says Lowdon. But the unit’s commanders encouraged the use of large language models, he says, “because they provide a lot more efficiency during a dynamic situation.” The generative AI tools they used were built by the defense-tech company Vannevar Labs, which in November was granted a production contract […]

The Download: AI co-creativity, and what Trump’s tariffs mean for batteries

Existing generative tools can automate a striking range of creative tasks and offer near-instant gratification—but at what cost? Some artists and researchers fear that such technology could turn us into passive consumers of yet more AI slop. And so they are looking for ways to inject human creativity back into the process: working on what’s […]