Technology

At WWDC, Apple says it will use AI to tag apps to improve discoverability on the App Store

June 11, 2025
Apple will begin using AI technology to power the discovery of apps on the App Store, the company announced at this week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 25). In a session focused on updates to App Store Connect, its app distribution platform for developers, the company announced it will introduce App Store Tags — labels that […]

The Download: Amsterdam’s welfare AI experiment, and making humanoid robots safer

June 11, 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. Inside Amsterdam’s high-stakes experiment to create fair welfare AI Amsterdam thought it was on the right track. City officials in the welfare department believed they could build technology that would prevent fraud while…

Why humanoid robots need their own safety rules

June 11, 2025
Last year, a humanoid warehouse robot named Digit set to work handling boxes of Spanx. Digit can lift boxes up to 16 kilograms between trolleys and conveyor belts, taking over some of the heavier work for its human colleagues. It works in a restricted, defined area, separated from human workers by physical panels or laser…

Inside Amsterdam’s high-stakes experiment to create fair welfare AI

June 11, 2025
This story is a partnership between MIT Technology Review, Lighthouse Reports, and Trouw, and was supported by the Pulitzer Center.  Two futures Hans de Zwart, a gym teacher turned digital rights advocate, says that when he saw Amsterdam’s plan to have an algorithm evaluate every welfare applicant in the city for potential fraud, he nearly…

The Download: IBM’s quantum computer, and cuts to military AI testing

June 10, 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. IBM aims to build the world’s first large-scale, error-corrected quantum computer by 2028 The news: IBM announced detailed plans today to build an error-corrected quantum computer with significantly more computational capability than existing…

IBM aims to build the world’s first large-scale, error-corrected quantum computer by 2028

June 10, 2025
IBM announced detailed plans today to build an error-corrected quantum computer with significantly more computational capability than existing machines by 2028. It hopes to make the computer available to users via the cloud by 2029.  The proposed machine, named Starling, will consist of a network of modules, each of which contains a set of chips,…

The Pentagon is gutting the team that tests AI and weapons systems

June 10, 2025
The Trump administration’s chainsaw approach to federal spending lives on, even as Elon Musk turns on the president. On May 28, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced he’d be gutting a key office at the Department of Defense responsible for testing and evaluating the safety of weapons and AI systems. As part of a string…

The Download: an inspiring toy robot arm, and why AM radio matters

June 9, 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. How a 1980s toy robot arm inspired modern robotics —Jon Keegan As a child of an electronic engineer, I spent a lot of time in our local Radio Shack as a kid. While…