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Received — 29 August 2026 ⏭

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 29)

✇SingularityHub
By: SingularityHub Staff
29 August 2026 at 14:00

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI Is Developing a ‘Persistent’ AI AgentMaxwell Zeff | Wired ($)

“In recently aired podcasts, interviews, and private investor meetings, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has described his desire to turn ChatGPT into a proactive, always-on AI agent. …’There’s like a single product which is: I need to ask the AI something,’ Altman said on a recent episode of David Senra’s podcast. ‘Eventually, maybe the AI should proactively offer me things.'”

Robotics

I Saw the Future of AI in a Robot That Can Learn on the SpotWill Knight | Wired ($)

“I visited the Cambridge, Massachusetts, offices of a startup called Generalist AI, where I watched robot arms perform simple chores like stacking cups, putting blocks into bowls, and the like. I was astonished by how quickly they figured things out—it was reminiscent of a flesh-and-blood person. The arms mastered a range of tasks after ingesting a short, instructional video and, most impressively, no specific training for a given task.”

Future

Fully Autonomous Russian Drone Kills Three UkrainiansBrendan Ruberry | Semafor

“Though AI has often been used in the final stages of human-planned strikes, the reported incident crosses a dangerous threshold, analysts said, leaving machines to interpret the laws of war and to determine what constitutes a legitimate target. ‘This is a risk for the whole world,’ a Ukrainian commander said. ‘In a few years, we will be living in a Terminator movie.'”

Biotechnology

Researchers Get Two Genetic Codes to Work at the Same TimeJohn Timmer | Ars Technica

“Now, researchers have found a way to operate two separate genetic codes simultaneously, avoiding the need to do any work to compensate for altering the code that every protein in a cell relies on. They didn’t test it in an actual cell, and it might cause some problems there. But it’s a creative solution that should accelerate some synthetic biology work.”

Biotechnology

An Experimental Single-Time Treatment Slashed Cholesterol for a YearCarolyn Y. Johnson | The New York Times ($)

“The results highlight the potential to treat even common diseases by altering people’s genes. In the small study, which followed only 15 patients, participants who got the highest dose saw their cholesterol levels plunge by half—and stay that way for a year. “

Space

The Floodgates Are Open After Another Chinese Company Lands a Reusable RocketStephen Clark | Ars Technica

“It has been a little more than a month since China recovered an orbital-class rocket booster for the first time. A second launch operator accomplished a similar feat Tuesday in another sign of China’s growing launch capability. It took 10 years for a second US launch company, Blue Origin, to propulsively land an orbital-class booster after SpaceX did it with the Falcon 9 rocket in 2015.”

Biotechnology

A Startup Claims It’s Found a Drug to Make Your Blood YoungAntonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review ($)

“The quest has been to find practical ways to mimic [the benefits of replacing old blood with young blood observed in lab mice].  And that is something [Irina] Conboy says she’s now achieved by hitting on a combination of two existing drugs that produce youthful effects—but without the need for any bodily fluid exchange.”

Computing

What We Still Don’t Know About OpenAI’s Hugging Face HackMaxwell Zeff | Wired ($)

“The public postmortem leaves some basic details unresolved…[which] makes it harder to know how much of what happened reflects the growing capabilities of AI agents and how much was specific to the way OpenAI designed and monitored its own systems.”

Space

SpaceX Plans to Build the World’s Biggest SpaceportEditorial Staff | The Economist ($)

“Mr. Musk’s ambition is for the site to host more than 30 rocket launches a day, to support both Starlink—the firm’s existing broadband-from-space service—and its plans to fly data centers into orbit, where they would benefit from both free solar power and an absence of NIMBYs. …If Mr. Musk hits his 30-launches-a-day target, his Louisiana purchase would allow SpaceX to fly about 2m tons of payload into orbit every year, up from about 3,800 tonnes in 2025.”

Tech

Walmart Is 3D Printing the Future of Big Box StoresPatrick Sisson | Fast Company

“For the last two years, contractors working for Walmart have used 3D-printed construction at a handful of sites across the US. …It’s the country’s largest deployment of 3D-printed architecture in the commercial sector. The retailer’s scale is catalyzing the growth and adoption of the technology, which promises to construct buildings faster and more affordably.”

Robotics

Robotaxis Are Real Now—So Is the PushbackRani Molla | The Verge

“The consequences could look very different as autonomous fleets grow from thousands of vehicles to hundreds of thousands. That’s why the battles taking shape across the country are increasingly about the terms of expansion: what companies have to prove before they grow, what they owe cities and workers, and how much control cities and states should have over their operations.”

Artificial Intelligence

Kids Outlearn AI—and We Still Don’t Know WhyElise Cutts | MIT Technology Review ($)

“‘The progress recently has been amazing,’ Michael C. Frank, a cognitive scientist at Stanford University, says of LLMs. ‘But we still have to burn down a forest and scrape the entire sum of all human knowledge to re-create this milestone that happens in our living rooms over the course of a year.’ [This yawning divide] raises a tantalizing question for cognitive scientists and a challenge for the architects of AI models: How is it that kids can still outperform the most linguistically sophisticated machines ever built?”

The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 29) appeared first on SingularityHub.

Received — 15 August 2026 ⏭

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 15)

✇SingularityHub
By: SingularityHub Staff
15 August 2026 at 14:00

Artificial Intelligence

These Startups Are Chasing the Next Big Thing in LLMsWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review ($)

“Transformers are starting to show their age. Many of the recent advances in LLMs, such as the development of so-called reasoning models and their ability to handle large amounts of input at once, are not neat extensions of that core technology but workarounds that patch over some of its fundamental flaws. A growing number of scientists and engineers are now asking what’s coming next.”

SPACE

Astronomers Discover a New Kind of Cosmic Object—a Black Hole ‘Star’Ian Sample | The Guardian

“Astronomers claim to have discovered a new kind of cosmic object, a black hole ‘star,’ which is the size of the entire solar system and glows with a brilliant red light. …Measurements of the exotic body found that while it resembles an immense star, it releases 100bn times more energy than any known star can produce. The energy output is far closer to that observed from black holes than stars.”

Biotechnology

Why Aging May Be a Program, Not a BreakdownIngrid Wickelgren | Quanta Magazine

“Far from a random but linear process of wear and tear, [cell biologist Junyue Cao] argues, aging is a stepwise, programmed, orderly affair. …Using technology that offers a systemwide view of the aging process in mice, Cao has outlined discrete stages of aging, akin to those of embryonic development, that are defined by changes in molecular signals and specific cell populations. In humans, the process likely begins before age 30.”

TECH

Why Wall Street and Nvidia Are Building an Exotic Money Pipeline for the AI BoomJack Pitcher, Anissa Gardizy, and Peter Rudegeair | The Wall Street Journal ($)

“CEO Jensen Huang is running into a problem: Many of his customers can’t afford to buy his company’s coveted AI-powering chips. That explains why Huang teamed up with an array of Wall Street firms on a $500 billion plan that will theoretically standardize chip financing, creating asset-backed pools of capital for AI companies—while leaving Nvidia partly on the hook if things go wrong.”

Future

Big Tech Wants to Harvest Your ThoughtsJames Crawford | Wired ($)

“‘[A brain-computer interface is] incredible for patients that are paralyzed. But imagine you put this on a person for other reasons. There is great responsibility,’ [said Rafael Yuste]. ‘Look what we have in our hands. We just built you a machine that can decode your language. And in 10 years, we’re going to give you a machine that can interfere with your thoughts the way we do it in mice today.'”

ROBOTICS

Self-Driving Trucks Are Officially Testing on California HighwaysKirsten Korosec | TechCrunch

“Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, two companies developing self-driving trucks, have received permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test their autonomous vehicle technology on public roads. And Kodiak has already started. Kodiak said it is starting with a handful of test trucks in California, primarily around its Mountain View office.”

Artificial Intelligence

The AI Takeover of Mathematics Has BegunRobert Hart | The Verge

“For all the fears and hopes, nobody knows where this is going. AI is moving too fast, and the mathematics it is producing is still too fresh to judge what its impact may be. Several researchers worried that the field could be reshaped for the worse by claims about what AI could become before anyone has had time to understand what it actually means.”

Biotechnology

The World’s Largest ‘Biological Datacenter’ Could Help Make Animal Testing ObsoleteAdele Peters | Fast Company ($)

“For decades, the industry has relied on animal testing. But in a laboratory south of San Francisco, a startup called Vivodyne is scaling up a different approach. Inside wardrobe-size mini labs, robots grow human tissue and run thousands of AI-designed experiments that could better predict how well a new drug will work—and whether it will be safe.”

Biotechnology

Seedless Blackberries and Cherries That Grow on Bushes Vie to Be the Future of FoodMike Grunwald | Wired ($)

“[Pairwise] is also working on peaches without pits, row crops resistant to a variety of diseases, fruit and nut trees that produce their first harvest within a year or two rather than three to eight, and a slew of other novel products, often in partnership with some of the world’s largest agribusinesses.”

Robotics

Waymo Is Growing Faster Than Ever. So Are Its Glitches.Emmy Martin | The New York Times ($)

“What Ms. Peterson experienced is what the driverless car industry calls an ‘edge case,’ which are the unscripted situations that no one trained the robo-taxis to handle. The problem is that edge cases appear to be piling up as Waymo, the leading autonomous car service, rapidly expands. Owned by Google’s parent Alphabet, Waymo has more than quintupled the number of autonomous cars it has on the road to nearly 4,000 today, up from about 700 early last year.”

The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 15) appeared first on SingularityHub.

Received — 8 August 2026 ⏭

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 8)

✇SingularityHub
By: SingularityHub Staff
8 August 2026 at 14:00

Future

Should AI Labs Be Treated Like the Owners of Dangerous Animals?Staff | The Economist ($)

“Gabe Weil of the Institute for Law and AI, in Massachusetts, proposes a system of strict liability. As with rules around keeping wild animals, it would assume that any harm is always the fault of the party carrying out the risky activity.”

Tech

Google Overhauls AI Leadership as Longtime Chief Scientist Joins Wave of ExitsMeghan Bobrowsky | The Wall Street Journal ($)

“Demis Hassabis is stepping down as chief executive of Google DeepMind to become chairman and chief scientist, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a post on X. Google DeepMind technology chief Koray Kavukcuoglu is taking on responsibility for all AI-model development, and Jeff Dean, Google’s current chief scientist, is leaving with three other company veterans to co-found a new AI startup.”

Biotechnology

Gene-Edited Puppies Will Melt Your Heart—but Won’t Trigger Your AllergiesEmily Mullin | Wired ($)

“Bailey and Alfie are two young beagles that can do tricks like any other dog, but they lack the protein that causes sniffles. They’re the culmination of years of work at Kindred Companion Sciences, a biotech company [Matt] Walker founded in 2020 that emerged from stealth this week with the two pups in tow.”

Biotechnology

Large Genome Models Used to Design New VirusesJohn Timmer | Ars Technica

“This isn’t science fiction—all the viruses the models created are closely related to an existing virus. But they do have some distinct features that would be challenging to evolve. And the researchers who did the work, based at Stanford University, suggest we may want to start thinking now about preparing for the potential that someone could develop a related AI that can design a virus that targets vertebrates.”

Future

Why Is Anthropic Destroying Books?Kathryn James | The Guardian

“We should worry that Anthropic decided it was easier to scan and destroy physical books than to deal with the ‘legal/practice/business slog.’ We should worry that the current understanding of fair use allowed Anthropic to decide that it was easier to buy and destroy ‘all the books in the world’ than to pay the creators of those works.”

Biotechnology

FDA Approves Moderna’s mRNA Flu VaccineChristina Jewett | The New York Times ($)

“In the case of flu, scientists believe that mRNA technology offers an advance from traditional vaccine options that take several months to prepare using decades-old technology, some requiring the virus to develop in fertilized eggs. Moderna has said that the faster new approach will enable a shift away from the current process of focusing on one flu strain for an entire hemisphere each season and allow each nation to pick its best option.”

Computing

AI Hacks Are Bad. AI Worms and Viruses Will Be WorseWill Knight | Wired ($)

“The work is an alarming window into how the next generation of AI agents could do more than just hack into other systems’ computers without permission. It also raises the prospect of future AI agents acting like super-smart, highly aggressive, and rapidly adapting computer viruses.”

Computing

OpenAI’s Expensive Smart Speaker Will Use Moving Parts to Seem ‘More Alive’Scharon Harding | Ars Technica

“Per Bloomberg, the OpenAI speaker’s main appeal is ChatGPT capabilities. Today, ChatGPT has significantly more users than Alexa+, but those users are largely accustomed to accessing the chatbot on devices they already own. With the rumored speaker, OpenAI would be betting on people’s willingness to pay substantial money for dedicated hardware to access chatbot features, the most advanced of which also require a subscription fee.”

Artificial Intelligence

China’s New AI Gold Rush: World ModelsJuro Osawa | The Information ($)

“World models are considered the key to unlocking breakthroughs in humanoids and autonomous vehicles, two areas where China has the world’s broadest and deepest supply chain. The Chinese neolabs think they have a shot, because the race to build world models is still in the early stage, with no front-runners yet, in contrast with the well-beaten path of large language models.”

Space

These Are the Sharpest Images Ever Taken of the Sun, and They Might Solve a Decades-Old MysteryEllyn Lapointe | Gizmodo

“The images are more than beautiful—they’re packed with critical information about the fundamental physics of our home star, including the first experimental confirmation of a long-theorized phenomenon that only the high spatial resolution of the Inouye Solar Telescope could reveal.”

The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 8) appeared first on SingularityHub.

Received — 1 August 2026 ⏭

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 1)

✇SingularityHub
By: SingularityHub Staff
1 August 2026 at 14:00

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI’s Hacking Debacle Comes Down to Human ErrorLily Hay Newman | Wired ($)

“If the generative AI giant had followed well-known security best practices, it’s likely that its AI agent would never have escaped to the open internet and hacked multiple companies. …’A simple analysis of the actual risk has an actual simple answer,’ says longtime security and compliance consultant Davi Ottenheimer. ‘The OpenAI mistakes were dead simple.'”

Artificial Intelligence

Anthropic’s New AI Model Can Identify More Software Bugs Than Ever. Microsoft Is Struggling to Fix Them Fast Enough.Renee Dudley and Doris Burke | ProPublica

“Each month, the company publicly releases fixes for its software vulnerabilities in what’s known as ‘Patch Tuesday.’ In June, it released patches for more than 200 bugs, which industry experts then said was an all-time high. But on July 14, the company blew through that record and released patches for more than 600 bugs.”

Future

The Rise of Million-Dollar Companies With Just One EmployeeTe-Ping Chen | The Wall Street Journal ($)

“An analysis by the payments company Stripe shows there are thousands of solo operators on the company’s platform that are generating over $1 million in revenue, with their ranks doubling between 2023 and 2025. The number of solo operators crossing the $10 million threshold nearly tripled in that same span.”

Future

The AI Jobs Apocalypse Probably Isn’t Coming Anytime SoonEduardo Porter | The Guardian

“As Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist David Autor noted: ‘A lot of people have noticed that the world is not changing as fast as they predicted.’ The emerging new story not only puts more emphasis on the complexity of the relationship between automation and human work across history. It is also raising doubts about the very feasibility of the threatened AI transformation of the universe.”

Robotics

Are Brain Waves the Next Unlock for Physical AI?Tim Fernholz | TechCrunch

“Encord is one of a growing number of startups betting the next real constraint on humanoid and warehouse will be the scarcity of real-world physical training data, and which is building a business not just to manage that data but to manufacture it. The brain wave headset Ceja is wearing was built by Zander Labs, a German neuroscience startup that’s betting measuring brain activity—to deduce mental states like error, intent, and surprise—can create a more useful dataset to train models.”

Tech

Wall Street Hunts for Creative AI Financing as ‘Digestion Issues’ EmergeStaff | The Information ($)

“John Greenwood, Goldman Sach’s global head of infrastructure and real asset finance, said he’s ‘looking for capital in every nook and cranny’ to support an expected $7.5 trillion in spending on chips, data centers, and power in the next five years. The hunt won’t end there, since much of that spending is on GPUs and other chips that need replacing every few years.”

Space

Experts Warn Current Starship Heat Shield Tech Is a ‘Dead End’ for Rapid ReuseEric Berger | Ars Technica

“The problem is that, with the signs of damage [to its heat shield], such a heat shield would appear to require a fair amount of inspection and refurbishment before another launch. In other words, SpaceX has a ways to go to reach ‘full and rapid’ reuse of Starship. “

Tech

In Silicon Valley, Some Say an AI Bubble Would Be Just FineErin Griffith | The New York Times ($)

“The excitement created by a bubble can drive new breakthroughs, their thinking goes. …These frenzies are important for allowing crucial infrastructure to get built, even if they lead to some ‘capital destruction’ along the way, [said Tomasz Tunguz, an investor at the venture capital firm Theory Ventures].”

Future

Neri Oxman Wants to Grow the Colors on Your ClothesElizabeth Segran | Fast Company ($)

“While several biotech firms have created more sustainable dyes, plugging cleaner chemicals into existing dye houses, Oxman’s approach reimagines dying from the ground up, treating dyes and fabrics as living organisms that can be grown. And while the Vigils project is still experimental, Oxman’s long-term goal is to commercialize and scale the technology, reshaping the future of fashion.”

Energy

New Data Shows EV Batteries Are Lasting Longer Than Initially ExpectedBruce Gil | Gizmodo

“Today’s average EV retains 97% of its original range after three years and 95% after five years, according to an analysis by EV data company Recurrent. …Additionally, battery replacement appears to be rare among newer EVs. A separate Recurrent analysis found that the battery replacement rate for EVs with model years 2022 and later was only 0.3%.”

Tech

Corporate America Has Suddenly Decided to Stop Blowing Money on AIAngel Au-Yeung, Katherine Bindley, and Tina Li | The Wall Street Journal ($)

“Fed up with ballooning costs, companies big and small are starting to use lower-priced models, including some built in China. In many cases, they are adding the new, cheaper models alongside OpenAI and Anthropic’s products, shopping a la carte for their artificial intelligence.”

Robotics

This Automation Tech Turns Old Tractors Into Self-Driving Farming MachinesPatrick Sisson | Fast Company ($)

“It’s a rig that can be attached to just about any existing tractor to help it mow, seed, weed, and perform any number of time-intensive tasks, all on its own, for a sector desperate for more labor.”

Space

AI Data Centers in Space? A System to Cool Chips Could Help.Ivan Penn | The New York Times ($)

“With a growing backlash against the proliferation of data centers to power artificial intelligence, there has been increasing interest in putting the energy-thirsty operations into orbit. Now, researchers may have figured out how to overcome a major obstacle to that goal: cooling the data centers in space.”

The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 1) appeared first on SingularityHub.

Received — 25 July 2026 ⏭

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 25)

✇SingularityHub
By: SingularityHub Staff
25 July 2026 at 14:00

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI Says Its AI Models Went Rogue and Attacked a Digital Library
Kate Conger | The New York Times ($)

“The trial was designed to keep the models in a safe testing environment, known as a sandbox, OpenAI said. But the models found a vulnerability that allowed them to escape the sandbox and connect to the internet. Then they targeted Hugging Face because they inferred that the library, which contains millions of AI models, could hold clues about how to successfully pass the evaluation.”

Tech

Be Skeptical of OpenAI’s Rogue Hacker Agent Story
John Thickstun | The Guardian

“OpenAI remains hungry for ever larger investments, and the company increasingly seeks privileged regulatory status as defense against competition. AI is so powerful that investors should buy OpenAI, even at a trillion-dollar valuation; AI is so dangerous that only trusted actors like OpenAI should be permitted to possess and operate this technology. Step back from these doomsday warnings and consider who might benefit from them.”

Biotechnology

Can This New Enzyme Turn Back the Clock in the Human Body?
K.R. Callaway | The New York Times ($)

“In a recent study, scientists devised a way of reversing the buildup of compounds that lead to some age-related diseases. …After several cycles of guided evolution, the novel enzyme, called CMLase, became very good at removing AGEs [advanced glycation end products] from human tissue samples. ‘In the most extreme case, we took 70-year-old human skin and brought the levels back to that of a 30-year-old,’ Dr. Cravens said.”

Tech

Silicon Valley Is Completely Divided Over Chinese AI
Lauren Goode | Wired ($)

“Having access to open-source software allows startups to scale, scale, scale—and deal with the consequences down the road. Meanwhile, the AI labs and hyperscalers that make proprietary platforms, like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and XAI, stand to benefit greatly if their systems remain protected and dominant. The bigger question that none of these companies seem to be asking is what best serves the 99 percent of us who don’t have their financial future fully staked on advancing AI.”

Science

Neuron Discovery Could Explain Why Some People Don’t Get Alzheimer’s
Pranjal Malewar | Refractor

“This kind of strategy may open up novel avenues for the prevention of cognitive decline generally or for protecting against Alzheimer’s-related vulnerability/resilience. Salta states, ‘Cognitive resilience is extremely exciting. If we understand what protects these brains, it could eventually lead to new therapeutic strategies. For now, the message is clear: the aging brain may be more adaptable and more complex than we once thought.'”

Space

India’s First Privately Developed Rocket Reaches Orbit on Dramatic Debut Launch
Stephen Clark | Ars Technica

“Indian space officials celebrated the debut flight of Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 rocket, India’s first fully commercial satellite launcher, as a ‘grand success’ Saturday after an on-target climb into a 280-mile-high orbit following liftoff from an island spaceport in the Bay of Bengal.”

Tech

Kagi Brings Back Old-School Search, One Human-Made Website at a Time
David Nield | Wired ($)

“As Kagi explains it, searching the web is always going to cost you—it’s just a question of whether you pay directly with dollars, by giving up data about your online activity, or by sifting through an increasing number of ads and sponsored links. Besides making search more private, Kagi also wants to make it better by serving up results that aren’t influenced by paid promotions or whatever Google’s favored business practices happen to be from month to month.”

Artificial Intelligence

Now, Defenders Are Embracing the prompt Injection, Too
Dan Goodin | Ars Technica

“Researchers from Tracebit on Monday said they found that placing prompt injections alongside passwords, cryptographic keys, and other secrets stored on Amazon Web Services was often all that was needed to shut down attacks from AI hacking agents.”

Artificial Intelligence

What the New Kimi K3 Model Really Means for the US-China AI Race
Alix Coutures, Rocket Drew, and Aaron Holmes | The Information ($)

“Greenblatt estimates that Kimi K3 is 10 months behind Anthropic in terms of pre-training. ‘My basic takeaway is it’s probably not that competitive with the best recent pre-trains from OpenAI and Anthropic,’ he said. ‘It’s some evidence that the model is more behind than people might have otherwise thought.'”

The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 25) appeared first on SingularityHub.

Received — 18 July 2026 ⏭

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 18)

✇SingularityHub
By: SingularityHub Staff
18 July 2026 at 14:00

Artificial Intelligence

China’s Moonshot AI Releases Model to Challenge Top US SystemsTracy Qu and Raffaele Huang | The Wall Street Journal ($)

“Moonshot said Friday that it planned to fully open-source the model, called Kimi K3, by late this month, where people will be generally free to download and adapt. With 2.8 trillion parameters dictating its decision-making, Kimi K3 is the world’s biggest open-source model, according to the Beijing-based startup.”

Robotics

The Fight Over Humanoid Robots Has Shut Down a Car Factory for the First TimeJiyoung Sohn | The Wall Street Journal ($)

“The union’s response [to Hyundai’s new Atlas robot] was blunt: Atlas would never step onto a production line without workers agreeing first. This week, Hyundai’s auto workers in South Korea have gone on a partial strike. It is the car industry’s first factory stoppage addressing humanoid robots.”

Computing

Psiquantum Has a Plan to Make a Massive Quantum Computer Out of LightJames O’Donnell | MIT Technology Review ($)

“PsiQuantum has attracted unusual investment and scrutiny for two reasons: It is one of the few companies aiming directly at building a large and useful machine, and it is already working with a major chip manufacturer to build its systems using existing semiconductor fabs.”

Tech

Generative AI Is an Engineering DisasterAlex Reisner | The Atlantic ($)

“I asked a few AI researchers whether they could name any other real-world software that scales so poorly. None of them could think of any. Even outside the world of software, it’s hard to find a comparable example, given that economy of scale is the principle that has made light bulbs, cars, and clothing so affordable. By economic and engineering measures, generative AI might be the worst technology ever deployed.”

Space

How Hard Is It to Build Orbital Data Centers, Actually?Eric Berger | Ars Technica

“You need unprecedented heavy lift: reusable and rapid launch. You need the ability to manufacture the largest satellites humans have ever built and to build 100 times more of them than humans ever have for a single constellation. You have to hope that radiation’s impacts on chips are manageable and that radiational cooling scales. You also need a few trillion bucks.”

Future

Once Again We Are Told AI May Be Conscious—I Study Consciousness, and I Have My DoubtsAnil Seth | The Guardian

“The information processing unfolding inside Claude is no more likely to result in consciousness than a simulation of a weather system is likely to generate a real hurricane. AI systems are getting more powerful every day. But to give ourselves the best chance of navigating this new world, we should remember how different we are from our almost-magical creations. When we sell our minds too cheaply to our machines, we not only overestimate them, we underestimate ourselves.”

Biotechnology

AI Teaches a Bitter Biology LessonReed Albergotti | Semafor

“Future discoveries and therapies will come not from a human-like understanding of science, but by simple pattern recognition of new biological information at scale. …[Richard] Sutton’s bitter lesson is applicable to biology because so much of the human body—not just the mind—is still beyond our understanding. And we’ll find the way forward by industrializing trial-and-error experimentation until the breakthroughs materialize.”

Future

Want Experts in 10 Years? Keep AI Away From Your Beginners TodayLaëtitia Vitaud | Fast Company

“A Nordic public school system and a 300-person American law firm aren’t pursuing the same goals. But they arrived at the same conclusion: Beginners must first learn without assistance in order to be, later on, well assisted.”

Space

Astronomers Find an Atmosphere on a Nearby Earthlike PlanetKatrina Miller | The New York Times ($)

“New data collected by the astronomers strongly suggests that LHS 1140b has a helium-rich atmosphere. The detection, published in the journal Science, is the first clear evidence of a potentially habitable planet with an atmosphere, and it reinforces the idea that there exists a population of worlds similar to our own with the properties necessary to sustain life.”

Future

The Big Reason Einstein Would Never Have Used AIEthan Siegel | Big Think

“Irrespective of whether AI counts as actual ‘intelligence’ or not, the fact is that outsourcing the growth and refinement of your critical thinking skills means you not only don’t develop those skills yourself, the ones you already have begin to decay. …This is where humans are needed most. Einstein was uncompromising about humans developing those exact skills.”

Artificial Intelligence

Simulating Everything, Sort Of: The Promise and Limits of World ModelsSamuel Axon | Ars Technica

“Instead of or in addition to working with language, world models aim to lay the groundwork for AI systems that are capable of simulating the physical world, or at least a useful approximation of it. To examine what’s different and important about this idea, Ars spoke with three expert practitioners working on world models and related technologies.”

Artificial Intelligence

Meet GPT-Red: An LLM Super-Hacker OpenAI Built to Make Its Models SaferWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review ($)

“GPT-Red automates a type of safety evaluation for software systems known as red-teaming, which is typically done by a team of human testers. The aim is to find as many different ways to break or hijack a system as possible. The weak spots can then be patched before the final version of the software is released.”

The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 18) appeared first on SingularityHub.

Received — 11 July 2026 ⏭

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 11)

✇SingularityHub
By: SingularityHub Staff
11 July 2026 at 14:00

Artificial Intelligence

Khosla-Backed Startup Claims Breakthrough With Largest-Ever AI Model on an iPhoneAaron Tilley | The Information ($)

“The largest AI models, which can measure in the trillions of parameters, are still far too big to run on mobile devices. But the model PrismML has working on an iPhone is capable of tasks like complex chat, reasoning, fully autonomous agents and software coding, the startup said.”

Robotics

Humanoid Robots Controlled by Surgeons Did World-First Operation on Live PigsJeremy Hsu | Ars Technica

“Humanoid robots have surgically removed the gallbladders from living animals in an unprecedented medical experiment—but not as autonomous machines capable of replacing human doctors. Instead, skilled human surgeons remotely controlled the robots’ movements in a new example of human-robot teamups.”

Biotechnology

mRNA Vaccines Clear Sweeping Global Review of Safety and EffectivenessBronwyn Thompson | Refractor

“An international team…reviewed data from laboratory studies, clinical trials, and real-world statistics to fully investigate this relatively novel class of vaccine, from design and manufacturing to its long-term performance. ‘After billions of doses, we now have an extraordinary amount of scientific evidence,’ says lead author Dr. Anna Blakney, assistant professor at UBC’s Michael Smith Laboratories and School of Biomedical Engineering.”

Tech

Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX Are Bigger Than the Last 25 Years of Tech ExitsRussell Brandom | TechCrunch

“SpaceX has already gone public at a $1.77 trillion valuation, and with both Anthropic and OpenAI pushing into the trillions it’s likely the trio together will land somewhere north of $4 trillion. By comparison, the US Securities and Exchange Commission counted just $70 billion in US-based IPO proceeds last year.”

Biotechnology

11% of Americans Are Currently Taking a GLP-1 Weight Loss Drug Like WegovyMatt Novak | Gizmodo

“Gallup notes that obesity reached a record high in the US in 2022 at 39.9% but has ticked down to 36.4%, according to the latest data based on self-reported height and weight. That dip has been credited to the large number of Americans now using GLP-1 drugs.”

Tech

The Mistrust of AI Labs Bubbles OverLiz Hoffman | Semafor

“Forward-deployed engineers, dispatched by AI labs to help customers implement their models, will come back to the mother ship with a deep understanding of how banks, consulting firms, retailers, manufacturers, and consultants operate. That customer support, to a suspicious eye, looks a lot like reconnaissance.”

Future

Microsoft’s Carbon Emissions Went Up 25 Percent Last YearStevie Bonifield | The Verge

“Microsoft says this was ‘driven primarily by the expansion of our datacenter infrastructure,’ as well as the company’s decision last February to stop purchasing ‘non-additional, unbundled renewable energy certificates.'”

Tech

China’s Answer to AI Sticker ShockMatteo Wong | The Atlantic ($)

“Having successfully persuaded corporate America to give their products a try, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are now struggling to prove that their tools are worth the money. …While it’s too soon to know whether GLM-5.2 is really capable of replacing America’s top-tier AI agents, any firm or developer who is balking at the costs now might have an alternative.”

Artificial Intelligence

Anthropic Found a Hidden Space Where Claude Puzzles Over ConceptsWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review ($)

“The J-space contains individual words that are related to the words and phrases that the model is most likely to spit out in a response in the near future. If Claude were a person (which it is not), you might say that these hidden words can reveal what’s on its mind before it actually speaks.”

Artificial Intelligence

Hackers Can Use 9 of the Most Popular AI Tools to Assemble Massive BotnetsDan Goodin | Ars Technica

“A new attack the researchers have named HalluSquatting has the potential to assemble massive botnets, perform large-scale DDoSes, and infect devices at scale, a first for prompt-injection attacks. The attack works against AI coding assistants and agents, including Cursor, Cursor CLI, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, Cline, OpenClaw, ZeroClaw, and NanoClaw, which are all susceptible.”

Future

UN Secretary-General Seeks Ban on AI WeaponsTom Chivers | Semafor

“The UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for a ban on ‘killer robots,’ saying the decision to take life ‘must remain forever human.’ …Guterres called AI-controlled weapons ‘morally repugnant,’ although not all ethicists agree: One roboticist argues they are more discriminate in their killing than scared human soldiers, while a philosopher said in 2022 that using robots will prevent young men and women bearing ‘the moral burden’ of wars.”

The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 11) appeared first on SingularityHub.

Received — 27 June 2026 ⏭

This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through June 27)

✇SingularityHub
By: SingularityHub Staff
27 June 2026 at 14:00

Computing

IBM Has Unveiled Chip Technology That Could Help Extend Moore’s Law Another DecadeSophia Chen | MIT Technology Review ($)

“To fit more transistors on a chip, engineers across the industry are eyeing a pivot to an approach familiar to urban planners: build up. On Thursday, IBM announced it has created a chip that uses this strategy. The new architecture, known as a nanostack, vertically stacks transistors in two layers on a silicon chip.”

Artificial Intelligence

AI Is Designing Radio Chips That Humans Couldn’t Even ImagineKaushik Sengupta | IEEE Spectrum

“Some of the…chips look more like modern art than circuit layouts. Yet in many cases, the physical prototypes bested state-of-the art circuits in terms of performance. The real achievement, however, is that it took the AI orders of magnitude less time to conceive a working design than it would a human designer.”

Science

A Dark Dimension Could Link Two of the Universe’s Great UnknownsSteve Nadis | Quanta Magazine

“Even though scientists have assumed that dark energy and dark matter ‘don’t have anything to do with each other,’ said Tim Tait, a particle physicist at the University of California, Irvine, ‘you can imagine a case where one influences the other. And it would not be surprising if [they] were manifestations of a kind of unified theory of the dark universe.'”

Biotechnology

New Effort Will Get Genome Sequences for Entire Endangered Species ListJohn Timmer | Ars Technica

“Over 2,300 plant and animal populations remain on the [endangered species] list, requiring ongoing government intervention. On Thursday, it was announced that all of those species would see their genomes sequenced and tissue samples preserved to aid future conservation efforts.”

Future

AI Was Supposed to Kill Engineering Jobs, but New Data Suggests They’re the Most ResilientMarina Temkin | TechCrunch

“Software engineering, in theory, is the professional field most vulnerable to automation, given the rapid adoption of AI-powered coding tools. However, researchers at venture firm SignalFire say the hiring data tells a different story. ‘The rationale given for lots of layoffs is consistently AI, and specifically they’ll say AI with respect to code; they’ll say one engineer could do the job of however many engineers in the past,’ said Asher Bantock, SignalFire’s head of research. ‘What we’re seeing on the ground is a little inconsistent with that.'”

Computing

This Flying Solar-Powered Platform Could Deliver Better Internet From the AirRachel Courtland | MIT Technology Review ($)

“As soon as August, a giant silver bullet will cut its way through the dry air of the southwestern US and cross the Pacific to reach the coast of Japan. Once there, the roughly 200-foot-long craft, built by the New Mexico–based company Sceye, will park some 18 kilometers above the ocean’s surface, in a wispy-thin layer known as the stratosphere. Then it will use a custom-built antenna to supplement Softbank’s 5G network, a test that will include beaming data straight to devices.”

Computing

A New Paper Argues Microsoft Exaggerated Its Quantum Claims a Year AgoSophia Chen | The Verge

“A critique published in Nature Wednesday calls the basic technology behind Microsoft’s ‘breakthrough’ quantum computing chip the Majorana 1 into question. …In a peer-reviewed article, Henry Legg, a physicist at the University of St. Andrews, reanalyzed Microsoft’s data on their device and argued that the company’s researchers did not conclusively demonstrate a working topological qubit in the first place.”

Artificial Intelligence

The AI World Is Getting ‘Loopy’Russell Brandom | TechCrunch

“‘Two years ago, we wrote source code by hand. We started to transition so agents write the code. And now we’re transitioning to the point where agents are prompting agents that then write the code,’ [said Claude Code creator Boris Cherny]. ‘As big as the step from source code to agents was, loops are just as important and as big a step.'”

The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through June 27) appeared first on SingularityHub.

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