The Download: A “dire wolf” revival, and safeguarding AI companions

“No longer do I have to drive a symbol of racism, greed and ignorance! Life is suddenly so much better!” —Actor Bette Middler expresses her joy at selling her Tesla, Insider reports. The big story Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why. Two years ago, Yuri Burda and Harri Edwards, […]

The Download: How the US is meeting China’s technological rise, and Trump’s tariff war intensifies

And that had opened the door to the possibility of hacking into the body’s circuitry and thereby controlling a host of chronic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, and diabetes, as if the immune system were as reprogrammable as a computer. To do that you’d need a new class of implant: an “electroceutical.” These devices would […]

The Download: What Trump’s tariffs mean for climate tech

US president Donald Trump’s massive, sweeping tariffs sent global stock markets tumbling yesterday, setting the stage for a worldwide trade war and ratcheting up the dangers of a punishing recession. Experts fear that the US cleantech sector is especially vulnerable to a deep downturn, which would undermine progress on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Read the full […]

Cyberattacks by AI agents are coming

Agents are also significantly smarter than the kinds of bots that are typically used to hack into systems. Bots are simple automated programs that run through scripts, so they struggle to adapt to unexpected scenarios. Agents, on the other hand, are able not only to adapt the way they engage with a hacking target but […]

Trump’s tariffs will deliver a big blow to climate tech

The growing policy uncertainty and weakening economic conditions alone may already be causing some of this to occur. Since Trump took office, companies have canceled, delayed, or scaled back at least nine US “clean energy supply chain” developments or operations, according to the Big Green Machine, a database maintained by Jay Turner, a professor of […]

The Download: Dethroning SpaceX, and air-conditioning’s energy demands

SpaceX is a space launch juggernaut. In just two decades, the company has managed to edge out former aerospace heavyweights Boeing, Lockheed, and Northrop Grumman to gain near-monopoly status over rocket launches in the US. It is now also the go-to launch provider for commercial customers, having lofted numerous satellites and five private crewed spaceflights, […]

The machines are rising — but developers still hold the keys

This means software developers are going to become more important to how the world builds and maintains software. Yes, there are many ways their practices will evolve thanks to AI coding assistance, but in a world of proliferating machine-generated code, developer judgment and experience will be vital. The dangers of AI-generated code are already here […]

The Download: Brain-computer interfaces, and teaching an AI model to give therapy

The big story The quest to protect farmworkers from extreme heat October 2024 On July 21, 2024, temperatures soared in many parts of the world, breaking the record for the hottest day ever recorded on the planet. The following day—July 22—the record was broken again. But even as the heat index rises each summer, the […]

The Download: Generative AI therapy, and the future of 23andMe’s genetic data

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Meet the online activists fighting back against ICE raidsTheir networks are warning migrants about ICE officer hotspots in major cities. (WP $)+ Noncitizens are growing increasingly anxious. (NPR) 2 US health experts were ordered to bury a measles forecastThe assessment warned […]

The first trial of generative AI therapy shows it might help with depression

Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shared the vision, noting that fewer than half of people with a mental disorder receive therapy, and those who do might get only 45 minutes per week. Researchers have tried to build tech so that more people can access therapy, but they have been held back by two things.  One, […]