Robotics
How Pokémon Go Is Giving Supply Robots an Inch-Excellent View of the WorldWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Know-how Evaluate ($)
“Niantic Spatial is utilizing that huge and unparalleled trove of crowdsourced information—pictures of city landmarks tagged with super-accurate location markers taken from the telephones of a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of Pokémon Go gamers world wide—to construct a sort of world mannequin, a buzzy new know-how that grounds the smarts of LLMs in real-world environments.”
Future
A Roadmap for AI, if Anybody Will Pay attentionConnie Loizos | TechCrunch
“The newly printed doc, signed by a whole bunch of consultants, former officers, and public figures, opens with the no-nonsense statement that humanity is at a fork within the highway. One path, which the declaration calls ‘the race to interchange,’ results in people being supplanted first as employees, then as decision-makers, as energy accrues to unaccountable establishments and their machines. The opposite results in AI that massively expands human potential.”
Computing
Startup Is Constructing the First Knowledge Heart to Use Human Mind CellsAlex Wilkins | New Scientist ($)
“Knowledge facilities use large quantities of power and chips are in excessive demand—may mind cells be the reply? Australia-based start-up Cortical Labs has introduced it’s constructing two ‘organic’ information facilities in Melbourne and Singapore, stacked with the identical neuron-filled chips that it has demonstrated can play Pong or Doom.”
Robotics
Why Do Humanoid Robots Nonetheless Battle With the Small Stuff?John Pavlus | Quanta Journal
“‘I requested every researcher: Can your flagship robotic—Boston Dynamics’ Atlas or Agility’s Digit, two of essentially the most credible and pedigreed humanoids on Earth—deal with any set of stairs or doorway? ‘Not reliably,’ Hurst mentioned. ‘I don’t assume it’s completely solved,’ Kuindersma mentioned. …It’s 2026. Why are humanoids nonetheless this…exhausting?”
Future
AI Isn’t Lightening Workloads. It’s Making Them Extra Intense.Ray A. Smith | The Wall Avenue Journal ($)
“One of many nice hopes for synthetic intelligence—not less than, amongst employees—is that it’ll ease workloads, releasing folks up for extra high-level, artistic pursuits. Thus far, the alternative is occurring, new information present. In reality, AI is growing the velocity, density and complexity of labor somewhat than lowering it, in response to an evaluation of 164,000 employees’ digital work exercise.”
Future
Karpathy’s March of Nines Exhibits Why 90% AI Reliability Isn’t Even Near SufficientNikhil Mungel | VentureBeat
“The ‘March of Nines’ frames a standard manufacturing actuality: You may attain the primary 90% reliability with a robust demo, and every further 9 usually requires comparable engineering effort. For enterprise groups, the gap between ‘often works’ and ‘operates like reliable software program’ determines adoption.”
Computing
The Race to Resolve the Largest Drawback in Quantum ComputingKarmela Padavic-Callaghan | New Scientist ($)
“Quantum computer systems are already right here, however they make far too many errors. That is arguably the most important impediment to the know-how actually changing into helpful, however latest breakthroughs recommend an answer could also be on the horizon. ‘It’s a really thrilling time in error correction. For the primary time, principle and observe are actually making contact,’ says Robert Schoelkopf at Yale College.”
Robotics
Modular Yard Robotic Mows Lawns, Plows Snow, Gathers Leaves and Trims GrassMaryna Holovnova | New Atlas
“Owners often find yourself with a storage crammed with varied tools: a garden mower, snow blower, shovels, and instruments for clearing fallen leaves. At present obtainable on Kickstarter, the Yarbo M makes an attempt to mix all these particular person instruments into one compact robotic platform that may mechanically do all of the yard work.”
Robotics
These Self-Configuring Modular Robots Might One Day Rule the WorldTom Hawking | Gizmodo
“Every unit has a number of factors to which one other unit can connect itself: 18 of them, to be exact, which implies that simply two items may be mixed in 435 methods. The variety of doable configurations explodes because the variety of items will increase, and by the point you get to 5 items, there are a whole bunch of billions of doable combos.”
House
This SpaceX Veteran Says the Subsequent Large Factor in House Is Satellites That Return to EarthTim Fernholz | TechCrunch
“The reusable rocket has reworked the area trade within the final decade, and a brand new startup led by a SpaceX veteran desires to do the identical for satellites. Brian Taylor, who helped construct satellites for networks like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Leo, based Lux Aeterna in December 2024 to develop satellite tv for pc buildings with a built-in warmth defend that can enable them to return to Earth with their payloads intact.”
Tech
Virtually 40 New Unicorns Have Been Minted So Far This Yr—Right here They AreDominic-Madori Davis | TechCrunch
“Utilizing information from Crunchbase and PitchBook, TechCrunch tracked down the VC-backed startups that grew to become unicorns in 2026. Whereas most are AI-related, a shocking quantity are centered on different industries like healthcare and even just a few crypto firms.”
House
SETI Thinks It May Have Missed a Few Alien Calls. Right here’s WhyMatthew Phelan | Gizmodo
“A brand new research printed by researchers on the SETI Institute, quick for the Seek for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has examined the likelihood that ‘area climate’ may render sturdy premeditated alien broadcasts into the sort of fainter radio alerts that SETI sometimes ignores.”