August 31, 2026

‘Is This How Layoffs Start?’ — How to Ease Your Employees’ Fears About AI

Small business AI succeeds or fails on trust, not technology. The counterintuitive first step is drawing lines around what stays human.

Technology

Debates over AI consciousness are a trap

August 20, 2026
“Runaway” AI, “rogue” agents, and “autonomous” actors—the current rhetoric would have you believe that AI agents are not only awake and aware, but angry at their creators. Prominent tech leaders such as Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and Sam Altman push for regulation of these seemingly “superhuman” systems, while a separate faction, led by policy organizations…

The Download: polycrisis support networks and a hydrogen gold rush

August 20, 2026
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. Support networks aim to help kids through the polycrisis Sometime in the late 2000s, six-year-old Pim Sullivan-Tailyour was sitting in the back of a car in Thailand when she saw a…

The next big thing in hydrogen could be underground

August 20, 2026
There’s a hunt for new sources of hydrogen, and the gas (or at least the right conditions to make it) could be hiding beneath our feet. Hydrogen can be used as a fuel in everything from large trucks to planes to steelmaking. It’s often hailed as a climate solution because when burned, it produces water…

Unlocking hidden revenue streams with market models

August 20, 2026
Each day, an airline transports tens of thousands of passengers on hundreds of flights. Often these are not straightforward point-to-point routes, with passengers requiring multiple connections. The airline can consider potentially hundreds of variables to price each of these journeys: demand, season, time of day, current events, global markets, and competitor airline activity to name…

Support networks aim to help kids through the polycrisis

August 20, 2026
Sometime in the late 2000s, Pim Sullivan-Tailyour was sitting in the back of a car, headed toward her great-grandmother’s tiny town in the south of Thailand. She watched big mountains pass by out the window. She was just six years old but was about to be hit by an adult-size realization. “They were just quarried…

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

August 19, 2026
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. AI’s recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all The AI industry’s boldest promise right now is that AI will soon improve itself, with almost no need for human oversight.…

Child-monitoring apps might need a reboot

August 19, 2026
Pam Wisniewski’s digital adolescence showed her the best and the worst of the internet. At 14, she left an abusive home, where she’d been isolated in a fifth-wheel trailer at the end of a seven-­mile dirt road. She moved in with her older sister and taught herself to type on AOL Instant Messenger. Online, she…