The Download
What's up in emerging technology
Watch a harpoon successfully spear a piece of space junk
Facebook is set to pay a multibillion-dollar fine to settle a US privacy probe
NASA’s new telescope will investigate the evolution of the universe
JPMorgan is launching its own cryptocurrency—but it’s nothing like Bitcoin
An insect-bot mimics desert ants by looking at the sky to navigate
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Connectivity
Explainer: What is quantum communication?
Researchers and companies are creating ultra-secure communication networks that could form the basis of a quantum internet. This is how it works.
Connectivity
Why the future of satellite internet might be decided in rural Alaska
Service in the rural areas of the state is abysmal, which makes it the perfect place to test next-generation satellite internet.
Intelligent Machines
Police across the US are training crime-predicting AIs on falsified data
A new report shows how supposedly objective systems can perpetuate corrupt policing practices.
Business Impact
It’s official. NASA has finally called the end of the Opportunity Mars rover mission.
NASA has ended its attempts to communicate with the robot, which has been on Mars for 15 years.
Rewriting Life
A cell-killing strategy to slow aging passed its first test this year
Are tired-out cells what make people old? A new generation of drugs is designed to wipe them out.
Business Impact
When will we have flying cars? Maybe sooner than you think.
After decades of promises, personal air vehicles are finally getting close to commercial reality—but you still probably won’t own one
View from the Marketplace
For data-savvy marketers, there’s a new keyword: Intent
As more companies look to machine learning for insights, marketers need to use new tools and technology to engage potential customers at the right time and place.
View from the Marketplace
The state of artificial intelligence
AI technologies are coming into mainstream business usage—but a host of challenges remains. An interactive infographic illustrates the opportunities and the hurdles.
In association with Oracle, Intel
View from the Marketplace
Anticipating cloud work’s most common side effects
The right technology choices can minimize complexity and help workers stay focused.
View from the Marketplace
Self-driving cars take the wheel
Watch Video
More videos
AI in Industry: Intelligent Health Care 29:27
Next-Generation Robots Need Your Help 27:36
Access to broadband is as important as access to water and electricity 01:15
We shouldn't preserve "willy nilly" the cost of production 01:00
Coffee-fetching robots 02:08
Automating things on wheels 00:50
Humans versus machines: Chopin edition 02:06
Teaching systems to dance 01:44
3-D printed potato chips 01:15
Robots as nurses' assistants 00:36
AI in Industry: Intelligent Health Care 29:27
MIT professor Dina Katabi is building a gadget that can sit in one spot and track everything from breathing to walking, no wearables required.
Rewriting Life
Reprogramming our bodies to make us healthier.
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We should gene-sequence cave paintings to find out more about who made them
Standard archeological techniques can’t determine whether the prehistoric artists were hunter-gatherers or farmers. Analyzing the paintings’ surfaces with techniques from biology offers much more information about how they worked and when they lived.
by Emerging Technology from the arXiv
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A cell-killing strategy to slow aging passed its first test this year
Are tired-out cells what make people old? A new generation of drugs is designed to wipe them out.
by Karen Weintraub
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More than 26 million people have taken an at-home ancestry test
The genetic genie is out of the bottle. And it’s not going back.
by Antonio Regalado
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SPONSORED
Reality regained: An inquiry into the data age
The explosion of data and advances in computing power are radically transforming daily life.
by Jannis Kallinikos
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SPONSORED
The crisis of social reproduction and the end of work
High-income societies are facing the rise of precarious employment.
by Helen Hester and Nick Snircek
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SPONSORED
Advanced tech, but growth slow and unequal: paradoxes and policies
Slowing productivity growth in major economies amid seemingly booming technology presents a paradox.
by Zia Qureshi
Features
Intelligent Machines
AI is reinventing the way we invent
The biggest impact of artificial intelligence will be to help humans make discoveries we couldn’t make on our own.
Intelligent Machines
Artificial intelligence and robots are transforming how we work and live.
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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.
by Karen Hao
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The technology behind OpenAI’s fiction-writing, fake-news-spewing AI, explained
The language model can write like a human, but it doesn’t have a clue what it’s saying.
by Karen Hao
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AI is reinventing the way we invent
The biggest impact of artificial intelligence will be to help humans make discoveries we couldn’t make on our own.
by David Rotman