This Week’s Superior Tech Tales From Across the Internet (By way of August 16)


Tech

Sam Altman Says ChatGPT Is on Monitor to Out-Discuss HumanityZoë Schiffer and Will Knight | Wired

“The OpenAI CEO addressed GPT-5 backlash, the AI bubble—and why he’s keen to spend trillions of {dollars} to win. …’In the event you challenge our progress ahead, fairly quickly billions of individuals a day will likely be speaking to ChatGPT,’ [he said] throughout a dinner with journalists in San Francisco.”

Biotechnology

Experimental ‘Off-the-Shelf’ Most cancers Vaccine Is Already Prolonging Lives, Research SuggestsEd Cara | Gizmodo

“Part I trials aren’t meant to conclusively present that an experimental drug or vaccine works, so the findings ought to nonetheless be considered with some warning till extra knowledge is collected. But it surely actually appears to be like like we’re on the verge of a breakthrough with most cancers vaccines.”

Robotics

Unique: Inside San Francisco’s Robotic Struggle MembershipAshlee Vance | Core Reminiscence

“For the previous few months, Cix Liv—actual identify—has been working his firm REK out of a no-frills warehouse area off Van Ness in San Francisco. The workplace has a few makeshift desks with computer systems and a bunch of digital actuality headsets on some cabinets. Extra to the purpose, REK additionally has 4 humanoid-style robots hanging from gantries, they usually’ve been outfitted with armor, boxing gloves, swords, and backstories.”

Tech

This Quantum Radar May Picture Buried ObjectsSophia Chen | MIT Know-how Overview

“Physicists have created a brand new kind of radar that might assist enhance underground imaging, utilizing a cloud of atoms in a glass cell to detect mirrored radio waves. The radar is a sort of quantum sensor, an rising expertise that makes use of the quantum-mechanical properties of objects as measurement units.”

Synthetic Intelligence

Why GPT-4o’s Sudden Shutdown Left Individuals GrievingGrace Huckins | MIT Know-how Overview

“June was simply certainly one of various individuals who reacted with shock, frustration, disappointment, or anger to 4o’s sudden disappearance from ChatGPT. Regardless of its earlier warnings that individuals would possibly develop emotional bonds with the mannequin, OpenAI seems to have been caught flat-footed by the fervor of customers’ pleas for its return.”

Future

Taiwan’s ‘Silicon Protect’ May Be WeakeningJohanna M. Costigan | MIT Know-how Overview

“Semiconductor powerhouse TSMC is beneath rising strain to broaden overseas and play a safety position for the island. These two roles might be in rigidity. …In Taiwan, there’s a fear that enlargement overseas will dilute the corporate’s energy at house, making the US and different international locations much less inclined to really feel Taiwan is worthy of protection.”

Synthetic Intelligence

LLMs’ ‘Simulated Reasoning’ Talents Are a ‘Brittle Mirage,’ Researchers DiscoverKyle Orland | Ars Technica

“The outcomes counsel that the seemingly giant efficiency leaps made by chain-of-thought fashions are ‘largely a brittle mirage’ that ‘turn into[s] fragile and susceptible to failure even beneath reasonable distribution shifts,’ the researchers write. ‘Relatively than demonstrating a real understanding of textual content, CoT reasoning beneath activity transformations seems to replicate a replication of patterns discovered throughout coaching.'”

Tech

AOL Proclaims September Shutdown for Dial-Up Web EntryBenj Edwards | Ars Technica

“After a long time of connecting People to its on-line service and the web via phone traces, AOL just lately introduced it’s lastly shutting down its dial-up modem service on September 30, 2025. The announcement marks the tip of a expertise that served as the first gateway to the World Vast Internet for hundreds of thousands of customers all through the Nineties and early 2000s.”

Synthetic Intelligence

What If AI Doesn’t Get A lot Higher Than This?Cal Newport | The New Yorker

“Within the aftermath of GPT-5’s launch, it has turn into harder to take bombastic predictions about AI at face worth, and the views of critics like [Gary] Marcus appear more and more reasonable. Such voices argue that this expertise is vital, however not poised to drastically remodel our lives. They problem us to think about a special imaginative and prescient for the near-future—one by which AI won’t get significantly better than this.”

Computing

OpenAI, Cofounder Sam Altman to Tackle Neuralink With New StartupIvan Levingston, George Hammond, and James Fontanella-Khan, Monetary Occasions | Ars Technica

“OpenAI and its cofounder Sam Altman are getting ready to again an organization that may compete with Elon Musk’s Neuralink by connecting human brains with computer systems, heightening the rivalry between the 2 billionaire entrepreneurs.”

Tech

Ford’s Reply to China: A Fully New Method of Making AutomobilesJeremy White | Wired

“Ford calls its new approach of constructing EVs the ‘Ford Common EV Manufacturing System,’ and can spend $2 billion to set it up on the firm’s Louisville meeting plant. Ford says the brand new methodology will likely be 40 % sooner than the prevailing course of there, and have a comparable discount in workstations. Components wanted to make Ford’s new EVs will likely be lower by 20 %.”

Synthetic Intelligence

How AI’s Sense of Time Will Differ From OursPetar Popovski | IEEE Spectrum

“An understanding of the passage of time is prime to human consciousness. Whereas we proceed to debate whether or not synthetic intelligence (AI) can possess consciousness, one factor is for certain: AI will expertise time in another way. Its sense of time will likely be dictated not by biology, however by its computational, sensory, and communication processes.”

How Alien Life May Exist With out WaterGayoung Lee | Gizmodo

“Intriguing new analysis from MIT proposes that liquids are what’s vital for extraterrestrial habitability, and never simply water. The brand new analysis particularly focuses on ionic fluids—substances that planetary scientists consider may kind on the surfaces of rocky planets and moons. Ionic liquids are extremely tolerant to excessive temperatures and low pressures, permitting them to stay in a steady liquid state that’s doubtlessly pleasant to biomolecules.”