News

I spent a day at a robot “carnival” in Shanghai. Here’s what I saw.

This busy hub houses more than 100 companies that research, develop, manufacture, and market robotic technologies and equipment. Many build...

How to encourage smarter AI use in the classroom

Nevertheless, the generative AI boom increased the burden on teachers, who were already working long hours to plan lessons, make...

The Download: kids outlearning AI, and space travel agents

These stories are from the next issue of our magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to get your...

Kids outlearn AI—and we still don’t know why

“It’s just totally miraculous,” says Frank. “If you train GPT-2 on 30 million words, you get a nonsense generator; you...

The Download: threats from space mirrors and credit for AI drugs

Later this year, Reflect Orbital plans to launch a test satellite that will extend an 18-by-18-meter mirror in orbit. The...

Mother tongue

“Daddy?” Theo curled against my side in bed. “Where do words go when they die?” I’d orchestrated the bedtime routine...

When AI designs a drug, who gets the credit?

The discrepancy points to a fascinating wrinkle in intellectual-property law. No matter how fundamental an AI is to a discovery,...

This company’s plans to deploy space mirrors could jeopardize the night sky for many

Reflect Orbital CEO Ben Nowack disagrees with the findings of Kocifaj’s paper. “Some assumptions are simply inaccurate,” he says. “The...

Debates over AI consciousness are a trap

Philosophical musings on the consciousness of AI systems are intellectually interesting but legally ungrounded. For beliefs about consciousness to have...

The Download: polycrisis support networks and a hydrogen gold rush

This is an area of research I’ve been fascinated by lately, so let’s take a look at the potential to...

Unlocking hidden revenue streams with market models

“It helps us make better, faster, more granular commercial decisions,” says Dominic Kennedy, senior vice president of revenue management, sales,...

The next big thing in hydrogen could be underground

In a new story for our latest print issue, freelance reporter James Dineen took a look at the 21st-century gold...

Support networks aim to help kids through the polycrisis

Does it all work? GGN-Z is currently in the process of evaluating itself—something Igras thinks is not done often enough...

The Download: AI’s self-improvement problem, and what’s driving the heat

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in...

Child-monitoring apps might need a reboot

Digital harms have become the defining fear of American parenthood. In the University of Michigan’s 2025 National Poll on Children’s...

The Download: how people really use AI, and Flock’s design choices

A new research project called the AI Observatory aims to fill in the gap. Its analysis shows many more sensitive...

AI’s recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all

“On the other hand, the agents were unambiguously bad at carrying out the research itself,” says Kapoor. They ran bizarre...

We still don’t know how people are really using AI

Additionally, exchanges that the researchers labeled as sensitive use—meaning ones with potentially harmful or restricted content, including sexual harassment and...