Technology

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. Are friends electric? Thankfully, the difference between humans and machines in the real world is easy to discern, at least for now. While machines tend to excel at things adults find difficult—playing world-champion-level…

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Opaque algorithms meant to analyze worker productivity have been rapidly spreading through our workplaces, as detailed in a new must-read piece by Rebecca Ackermann, published Monday in MIT Technology Review.  Since the…

For decades, patents have been a bone of contention in the technology world, seen by some as a way to protect intellectual property, but by critics as a blunt weapon against innovation. In the age of AI, they are once again getting revisited. New York startup Patlytics has developed an AI-enabled patent analytics platform to […]

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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. Your boss is watching Working today—whether in an office, a warehouse, or your car—can mean constant electronic surveillance with little transparency, and potentially with livelihood-­ending consequences if your productivity flags.  But what matters…

A full day’s work for Dora Manriquez, who drives for Uber and Lyft in the San Francisco Bay Area, includes waiting in her car for a two-digit number to appear. The apps keep sending her rides that are too cheap to pay for her time—$4 or $7 for a trip across San Francisco, $16 for…

The National Institute of Standards and Technology could fire as many as 500 staffers, according to multiple reports — cuts that further threaten a fledgling AI safety organization. Axios reported this week that the US AI Safety Institute (AISI) and Chips for America, both part of NIST, would be “gutted” by layoffs targeting probationary employees […]

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Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub compared using CO2 in enhanced oil recovery to fracking, the technology that sent U.S. oil and gas production skyrocketing.

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Tiny Michigan biotech startup CircNova has raised a $3.3 million seed round for its technology that uses AI to target so-called “circular RNA.” The development holds promise as a new method to quickly develop therapies for conditions that currently have no drug treatments. The new funding is also a victory lap for co-founder and CEO […]

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