The Download
What's up in emerging technology
Russia is going to ban soldiers from using smartphones and social media on duty
President Trump has signed a directive to establish Space Force
Lab-grown meat could be worse for the environment than beef
Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is about to fire bullets into an asteroid
Russian hackers are eight times faster than North Korean groups
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Rewriting Life
What if you could diagnose diseases with a tampon?
Women’s health care is often treated as all about reproduction. Some “femtech” startups are exploring the innovations that get overlooked as a result.
Intelligent Machines
An AI that writes convincing prose risks mass-producing fake news
Fed with billions of words, this algorithm creates convincing articles and shows how AI could be used to fool people on a mass scale.
Business Impact
A “second skin” for fruit and veg could make them last twice as long
We throw away a third of all our fruit and vegetables. California-based firm Apeel wants to change that with a natural coating that keeps produce fresher for longer.
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.
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.
Sustainable Energy
This alarmingly simple hack could let anyone tinker with the climate
The possibility poses troubling new questions about the ability to regulate the technology.
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
View from the Marketplace
The next “Deep Blue” moment: Self-flying drone racing
Spoiler: coders wanted! And a chance to win more than $2 million in cash prizes
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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In China, some parents seek an edge with genetic testing for tots
Questionable DNA “talent” tests find a market in up-and-coming Shenzhen.
by Michael Standaert
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What if you could diagnose diseases with a tampon?
Women’s health care is often treated as all about reproduction. Some “femtech” startups are exploring the innovations that get overlooked as a result.
by Dayna Evans
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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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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
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.
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