Machine learning could vastly speed up the search for new metalsTammy Xu
Machine learning could help develop new types of metals with useful properties, such as resistance to extreme temperatures and rust, according to new research. This could be useful in a range of sectors—for example, metals that perform well at lower temperatures could improve spacecraft, while metals that resist corrosion could be used for boats and submarines. Currently, scientists typically run experiments in the lab to look for ways to combine metals to create new ones. Usually they start off with one well-known element, like iron, which is cheap and malleable, and add one or two others to see the effect […]
Do AI systems need to come with safety warnings?Melissa Heikkilä
To receive The Algorithm in your inbox every Monday, sign up here. Welcome to The Algorithm! Considering how powerful AI systems are, and the roles they increasingly play in helping to make high-stakes decisions about our lives, homes, and societies, they receive surprisingly little formal scrutiny. That’s starting to change, thanks to the blossoming field of AI audits. When they work well, these audits allow us to reliably check how well a system is working and figure out how to mitigate any possible bias or harm. Famously, a 2018 audit of commercial facial recognition systems by AI researchers Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru found that […]
The Download: US Navy drone swarms, and inside animals’ mindsRhiannon Williams
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The US Navy wants swarms of thousands of small drones The US Navy is working on ways to build, deploy, and control thousands of small drones that are able to flock together to overwhelm anti-aircraft defenses with sheer numbers, budget documents reveal. The conflict in Ukraine has proved the worth of small drones, which have carried out reconnaissance, guided artillery fire, and destroyed tanks. Such drones are currently limited by the fact that each one needs its own […]
Inside the enigmatic minds of animalsMatthew Ponsford
The emerald jewel wasp’s unusual arrival into the world—bursting from the body of a zombified cockroach it has eaten from the inside—ranks among nature’s most gruesome miracles. To give her larvae the best start in life, the mother wasp, an inch-long parasite clad in oil-slick iridescent armor, attacks her prey, spearing it once with her two-millimeter stinger and injecting sedative chemicals into the roach’s thorax. She stabs a second time, into her victim’s head, carving through muscle and digestive tubes to inject a potion of venom in the exact location of the cockroach’s tiny brain. This turns her victim into […]
The US Navy wants swarms of thousands of small dronesDavid Hambling
The US Navy is working on ways to build, deploy, and control thousands of small drones that are able to flock together to overwhelm anti-aircraft defenses with sheer numbers, budget documents reveal. The conflict in Ukraine has proved the worth of small drones, including consumer quadcopters, which have carried out reconnaissance, guided artillery fire, and destroyed tanks. Such drones are currently limited by the fact that each one needs its own operator. In a swarm, however, hundreds or thousands of drones are controlled as a single unit. “The significance of drone swarms is that they can be conceivably applied to […]
The Download: Starlink’s satellite signals, and joyless techRhiannon Williams
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Starlink signals can be reverse-engineered to work like GPS—whether SpaceX likes it or not For years, Todd Humphreys has been trying to persuade SpaceX to tweak its Starlink constellation to also offer ultra-precise position, navigation, and timing—creating a new system that could act as a backup to the US Army’s vulnerable GPS system. Despite Elon Musk’s insistence that the company avoid distractions by assisting Humphreys’ proposal, Humphreys persisted. Now, without Starlink’s help, Humphreys claims to have provided the […]
Starlink signals can be reverse-engineered to work like GPS—whether SpaceX likes it or notMark Harris
Todd Humphreys’s offer to SpaceX was simple. With a few software tweaks, its rapidly growing Starlink constellation could also offer ultra-precise position, navigation, and timing. The US Army, which funds Humphreys’s work at the University of Texas at Austin, wanted a backup to its venerable, and vulnerable, GPS system. Could Starlink fill that role? When the idea was first proposed in 2020, executives at SpaceX were open to the idea, says Humphreys. Then word came from on high. “Elon told the leaders we spoke to: every other LEO [low Earth orbit] communications network has gone into bankruptcy,” Humphreys told MIT […]
We used to get excited about technology. What happened?Shannon Vallor
This piece is from our forthcoming mortality-themed issue, available from 26 October. If you want to read it when it comes out, you can subscribe to MIT Technology Review for as little as $80 a year. On a recent evening, I sat at home scrolling through my Twitter feed, which—since I’m a philosopher who studies AI and data—is always filled with the latest tech news. After a while, I noticed a heaviness growing in the pit of my stomach, that telltale sign that you are not having a good time. But why? I wasn’t reading news about politics, or the climate crisis, […]
How reproductive technology is changing what it means to be a parentJessica Hamzelou
This article is from The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, sign up here. Hello, and welcome back to the Checkup! This week I found myself back in the classroom, sitting on a small plastic chair and carefully noting down what the teacher told me. It was my first parent’s evening. By coincidence, just a few days earlier I had been listening to scientists and ethicists at a meeting in Amsterdam discuss what it means to be a parent. It’s a huge question—and one that is changing in light of new reproductive […]
Billions in funding could kick-start the US battery materials industryCasey Crownhart
The US federal government is spending big on batteries and electric vehicles. As part of that spending spree, President Joe Biden and the Department of Energy have just announced $2.8 billion in awards to companies involved in producing the minerals and other materials that go into the batteries. The funding will go to 20 projects, ranging from lithium processing and electrode manufacturing to battery recycling. Both public and private funding for battery manufacturing in the US have exploded, sped by the passage earlier this year of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides incentives for electric vehicles. Under the requirements in […]