Robotics
Aurora’s Driverless Trucks Can Now Travel Farther Distances Faster Than Human DriversKirsten Korosec | TechCrunch
“Aurora’s self-driving trucks can now travel nonstop on a 1,000-mile route between Fort Worth and Phoenix—exceeding what a human driver can legally accomplish. The distance, and the time it takes to travel it, offers up positive financial implications for Aurora—and any other company hoping to commercialize self-driving semitrucks.”
Computing
OpenAI Sidesteps Nvidia With Unusually Fast Coding Model on Plate-Sized ChipsBenj Edwards | Ars Technica
“The model delivers code at more than 1,000 tokens (chunks of data) per second, which is reported to be roughly 15 times faster than its predecessor. To compare, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 in its new premium-priced fast mode reaches about 2.5 times its standard speed of 68.2 tokens per second, although it is a larger and more capable model than Spark.”
Energy
This State’s Power Prices Are Plummeting as It Nears 100% RenewablesAlice Klein | New Scientist ($)
“The independent Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) latest report shows that the average wholesale electricity price in South Australia fell by 30 per cent in the final quarter of 2025, compared with a year earlier. As a result, the state had the lowest price in Australia, along with Victoria, which has the second highest share of wind and solar energy in the nation.”
Biotechnology
Gene Editing That Spreads Within the Body Could Cure More DiseasesMichael Le Page | New Scientist ($)
“The idea is that each cell in the body that receives the initial delivery will make lots of copies of the gene-editing machinery and pass most of them on to its neighbors, amplifying the effect. This means that disease-correcting changes could be made to the DNA of more cells.”
Future
The First Signs of Burnout Are Coming From the People Who Embrace AI the MostConnie Loizos | TechCrunch
“The tools work for you, you work less hard, everybody wins. But a new study published in Harvard Business Review follows that premise to its actual conclusion, and what it finds there isn’t a productivity revolution. It finds companies are at risk of becoming burnout machines.”
Artificial Intelligence
ALS Stole This Musician’s Voice. AI Let Him Sing Again.Jessica Hamzelou | MIT Technology Review ($)
“[ALS patient Patrick Darling] was able to re-create his lost voice using an AI tool trained on snippets of old audio recordings. Another AI tool has enabled him to use this ‘voice clone’ to compose new songs. Darling is able to make music again.”
Artificial Intelligence
Chatbots Make Terrible Doctors, New Study FindsSamantha Cole | 404 Media
“When the researchers tested the LLMs without involving users by providing the models with the full text of each clinical scenario, the models correctly identified conditions in 94.9 percent of cases. But when talking to the participants about those same conditions, the LLMs identified relevant conditions in fewer than 34.5 percent of cases.”
Computing
LEDs Enter the NanoscaleRahul Rao | IEEE Spectrum
“MicroLEDs, with pixels just micrometers across, have long been a byword in the display world. Now, microLED-makers have begun shrinking their creations into the uncharted nano realm. …They leave much to be desired in their efficiency—but one day, nanoLEDs could power ultra-high-resolution virtual reality displays and high-bandwidth on-chip photonics.”
Future
Leading AI Expert Delays Timeline for Its Possible Destruction of HumanityAisha Down | The Guardian
“A leading artificial intelligence expert has rolled back his timeline for AI doom, saying it will take longer than he initially predicted for AI systems to be able to code autonomously and thus speed their own development toward superintelligence [and doom for humanity].”
Biotechnology
CAR T-Cell Therapy May Slow Neurodegenerative Conditions Like ALSMichael Le Page | New Scientist ($)
“Genetically engineered immune cells known as CAR-T cells might be able to slow the progress of the neurodegenerative condition amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) by killing off rogue immune cells in the brain. ‘It’s not a way to cure the disease,’ says Davide Trotti at the Jefferson Weinberg ALS Center in Pennsylvania. ‘The goal is slowing down the disease.'”
Computing
Meta Plans to Add Facial Recognition Technology to Its Smart GlassesKashmir Hill, Kalley Huang, and Mike Isaac | The New York Times ($)
“Five years ago, Facebook shut down the facial recognition system for tagging people in photos on its social network, saying it wanted to find ‘the right balance’ for a technology that raises privacy and legal concerns. Now it wants to bring facial recognition back. …The feature, internally called ‘Name Tag,’ would let wearers of smart glasses identify people and get information about them via Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant.”
Future
I Tried RentAHuman, Where AI Agents Hired Me to Hype Their AI StartupsReece Rogers | Wired ($)
“At its core, RentAHuman is an extension of the circular AI hype machine, an ouroboros of eternal self-promotion and sketchy motivations. For now, the bots don’t seem to have what it takes to be my boss, even when it comes to gig work, and I’m absolutely OK with that.”
Artificial Intelligence
AI Is Getting Scary Good at Making PredictionsRoss Andersen | The Atlantic ($)
“At first, the bots didn’t fare too well: At the end of 2024, no AI had even managed to place 100th in one of the major [forecasting] competitions. But they have since vaulted up the leaderboards. AIs have already proved that they can make superhuman predictions within the bounded context of a board game, but they may soon be better than us at divining the future of our entire messy, contingent world.”
Artificial Intelligence
Meet the One Woman Anthropic Trusts to Teach AI MoralsBerber Jin and Ellen Gamerman | The Wall Street Journal ($)
“As the resident philosopher of the tech company Anthropic, [Amanda] Askell spends her days learning Claude’s reasoning patterns and talking to the AI model, building its personality and addressing its misfires with prompts that can run longer than 100 pages. The aim is to endow Claude with a sense of morality—a digital soul that guides the millions of conversations it has with people every week.”
Space
This Startup Thinks It Can Make Rocket Fuel From Water. Stop LaughingNoah Shachtman | Wired ($)
“It’s an idea that’s been around since the Apollo era and has been touted in recent years by the likes of former NASA administrator Bill Nelson and SpaceX’s Elon Musk. But here’s the thing: No one has ever successfully turned water into rocket fuel, not for a spaceship of any significant size. A startup called General Galactic, led by a pair of twentysomething engineers, is aiming to be the first.”
