Technology

Why we should thank pigeons for our AI breakthroughs

August 18, 2025
In 1943, while the world’s brightest physicists split atoms for the Manhattan Project, the American psychologist B.F. Skinner led his own secret government project to win World War II.  Skinner did not aim to build a new class of larger, more destructive weapons. Rather, he wanted to make conventional bombs more precise. The idea struck…

The Download: Taiwan’s silicon shield, and ChatGPT’s personality misstep

August 15, 2025
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. Taiwan’s “silicon shield” could be weakening Taiwanese politics increasingly revolves around one crucial question: Will China invade? China’s ruling party has wanted to seize Taiwan for more than half a century. But in…

Losing GPT-4o sent some people into mourning. That was predictable.

August 15, 2025
June had no idea that GPT-5 was coming. The Norwegian student was enjoying a late-night writing session last Thursday when her ChatGPT collaborator started acting strange. “It started forgetting everything, and it wrote really badly,” she says. “It was like a robot.” June, who asked that we use only her first name for privacy reasons,…

Indigenous knowledge meets artificial intelligence

August 15, 2025
There is no word for art in most Native American languages. Instead, the closest terms speak not to objecthood but to action and intention. In Lakota, “wówačhiŋtȟaŋka” implies deep thought or reflection, while “wóčhekiye” suggests offering or prayer. Art is not separate from life; it is ceremony, instruction, design. Like architecture or code, it carries…

Taiwan’s “silicon shield” could be weakening

August 15, 2025
One winter afternoon in a conference room in Taipei, a pair of twentysomething women dragged their friend across the floor. Lying on the ground in checkered pants and a brown sweatshirt, she was pretending to be either injured or dead. One friend picked her up by her arms, the other grabbed hold of her legs,…

Why US federal health agencies are abandoning mRNA vaccines

August 15, 2025
This time five years ago, we were in the throes of the covid-19 pandemic. By August 2020, we’d seen school closures, national lockdowns, and widespread panic. That year, the coronavirus was responsible for around 3 million deaths, according to the World Health Organization. Then came the vaccines. The first mRNA vaccines for covid were authorized for…

The Download: affordable EV trucks, and Russia’s latest internet block

August 14, 2025
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 could really use an affordable electric truck On Monday, Ford announced plans for an affordable electric truck with a 2027 delivery date and an expected price tag of about $30,000, thanks…

The US could really use an affordable electric truck

August 14, 2025
On Monday, Ford announced plans for an affordable electric truck with a 2027 delivery date and an expected price tag of about $30,000, thanks in part to a new manufacturing process that it says will help cut costs. This could be the shot in the arm that the slowing US EV market needs. Sales are…

The road to artificial general intelligence

August 13, 2025
Artificial intelligence models that can discover drugs and write code still fail at puzzles a lay person can master in minutes. This phenomenon sits at the heart of the challenge of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Can today’s AI revolution produce models that rival or surpass human intelligence across all domains? If so, what underlying enablers—whether…

The Download: Trump’s golden dome, and fueling AI with nuclear power

August 13, 2025
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. Why Trump’s “golden dome” missile defense idea is another ripped straight from the movies Within a week of his inauguration, President Trump issued an executive order to develop “The Iron Dome for America”…