Robotics
Physical Intelligence, a Hot Robotics Startup, Says Its New Robot Brain Can Figure Out Tasks It Was Never TaughtConnie Loizos | TechCrunch
“Physical Intelligence, the two-year-old, San Francisco-based robotics startup that has quietly become one of the most closely watched AI companies in the Bay Area, published new research Thursday showing that its latest model can direct robots to perform tasks they were never explicitly trained on—a capability the company’s own researchers say caught them off guard.”
Artificial Intelligence
Want to Understand the Current State of AI? Check Out These Charts.Michelle Kim | MIT Technology Review ($)
“If you’re following AI news, you’re probably getting whiplash. AI is a gold rush. AI is a bubble. AI is taking your job. AI can’t even read a clock. The 2026 AI Index from Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, AI’s annual report card, comes out today and cuts through some of that noise.”
Science
Sperm Whales Speak With a Complex Alphabet and Even Have ‘Vowels,’ Study FindsMatthew Phelan | Gizmodo
“Sperm whales: They’re just like us. An international team of researchers, including marine biologists and linguists, reports that it has detected signs of a ‘highly complex’ phonetic alphabet in the calls of sperm whales—including ‘vowels’ deployed in patterns akin to their use in human languages like Mandarin, Latin, and Slovenian.”
Biotechnology
The DNA Fix for AgingRoxanne Khamsi | The Atlantic ($)
“Now that scientists have described just how much mutation happens in aging, they’re curious if DNA repair might offer a counteracting force. In other words, does fixing DNA improve longevity? Biologists are taking different tacks to find out.”
Future
Why Do We Tell Ourselves Scary Stories About AI?Amanda Gefter | Quanta Magazine
“Suddenly, I understood the racing heart of the modern AI horror genre. It’s not intelligence we fear, but desire. A machine that knows a lot doesn’t scare us. A machine that wants something does. But can it? Want things? Can it crave power? Thirst for resources? Can it acquire the will to survive?”
Robotics
You Can Soon Buy a $4,370 Humanoid Robot on AliExpressMarco Trabucchi | Wired ($)
“Unitree is bringing its R1 to international markets. It arrives with some aerobatic capabilities and an entry-level price, but the question of what you’d actually do with it remains open.”
Tech
The Battle for OpenAI’s SoulMaxwell Zeff | Wired ($)
“Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman will head to trial this month in an Oakland, California, federal courtroom, where nine jurors will settle a years-long dispute between the cofounders of OpenAI over the group’s founding mission. …Musk’s suit essentially accuses OpenAI of straying from its founding nonprofit mission: ensuring AGI, a highly capable AI system that can perform a wide range of jobs, benefits humanity.”
Tech
SpaceX Is Basically a Huge Meme StockJames Surowiecki | The Atlantic ($)
“Elon Musk likes to do everything on a grand scale. When he takes SpaceX public in the coming months, it will likely be the biggest initial public offering in history. …By conventional standards, SpaceX isn’t worth anything close to $2 trillion. The company is in fact relatively small and losing money. Yet there is little doubt that Musk will get the valuation he wants.”
Tech
43% of AI-Generated Code Changes Need Debugging in Production, Survey FindsMichael Nuñez | VentureBeat
“According to Lightrun’s 2026 State of AI-Powered Engineering Report, shared exclusively with VentureBeat ahead of its public release, 43% of AI-generated code changes require manual debugging in production environments even after passing quality assurance and staging tests. Not a single respondent said their organization could verify an AI-suggested fix with just one redeploy cycle; 88% reported needing two to three cycles, while 11% required four to six.”
