Technology

Generative AI models can produce images in response to prompts within seconds, and they’ve recently been used for everything from highlighting their own inherent bias to preserving precious memories. Now, researchers from Stephen James’s Robot Learning Lab in London are using image-generating AI models for a new purpose: creating training data for robots. They’ve developed…

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. Introducing: 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch The urgency of addressing climate change has never been clearer. Emissions of planet-warming gases are at record highs, as are global temperatures.  All that extra heat…

NASA is poised to launch Europa Clipper, a $5.2 billion mission to Jupiter’s fourth-largest moon, as early as October 10. The spacecraft will blast off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. It will study Europa, a possible home for extraterrestrial life, through a series of flybys after reaching Jupiter…

First Solar is expanding production of its thin-film solar cells and opening new factories to meet a surge of demand. Meanwhile, it’s investing in perovskites—tiny crystalline materials that many view as a key solar technology of the future.  The world needs more electricity than ever, as the AI boom puts intense demand on data centers…

Large swaths of the global economy are nearly impossible to electrify but could run on low-emissions hydrogen, helping the world transition away from fossil fuels. Electric Hydrogen is working toward more efficient, affordable production of green hydrogen. Electric Hydrogen is striving to develop production methods that make it easier and more affordable to generate huge…

Pivot Bio is using genetically edited microbes to deliver just the right amount of nitrogen to crops, cutting climate emissions without reducing agricultural yields. The development of synthetic fertilizer was one of the great achievements of the last century, providing an abundant source of nitrogen that boosted crop yields and helped feed a growing global…

Sun King is helping poor households across Asia and Africa access reliable, clean power and healthier ways of cooking.  Accessing clean sources of energy has always been a challenge for low-income communities worldwide, given the high up-front costs. At least hundreds of millions of people around the world have unreliable or no access to the…

Ceibo seeks to eliminate a major potential speed bump for the clean-energy transition: the looming global copper shortage. The firm’s low-impact extraction technology targets ores that aren’t economical to mine today but could help meet the copper demands of an electrified world. Copper wires form the backbone of the clean-energy economy, connecting cars, buildings, and…

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 coolest thing about smart glasses is not the AR. It’s the AI. In case you missed the memo, we are barreling toward the next big consumer device category: smart glasses. At its…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. In AI research, everyone seems to think that bigger is better. The idea is that more data, more computing power, and more parameters will lead to models that are more powerful.…