Robotics
How Pokémon Go Is Giving Supply Robots an Inch-Good View of the WorldWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Know-how Overview ($)
“Niantic Spatial is utilizing that huge and unparalleled trove of crowdsourced information—photos of city landmarks tagged with super-accurate location markers taken from the telephones of a whole lot of tens of millions of Pokémon Go gamers world wide—to construct a sort of world mannequin, a buzzy new expertise that grounds the smarts of LLMs in real-world environments.”
Future
A Roadmap for AI, if Anybody Will Pay attentionConnie Loizos | TechCrunch
“The newly revealed doc, signed by a whole lot of specialists, former officers, and public figures, opens with the no-nonsense statement that humanity is at a fork within the street. One path, which the declaration calls ‘the race to switch,’ results in people being supplanted first as staff, then as decision-makers, as energy accrues to unaccountable establishments and their machines. The opposite results in AI that massively expands human potential.”
Computing
Startup Is Constructing the First Knowledge Middle to Use Human Mind CellsAlex Wilkins | New Scientist ($)
“Knowledge facilities use big quantities of power and chips are in excessive demand—may mind cells be the reply? Australia-based start-up Cortical Labs has introduced it’s constructing two ‘organic’ information facilities in Melbourne and Singapore, stacked with the identical neuron-filled chips that it has demonstrated can play Pong or Doom.”
Robotics
Why Do Humanoid Robots Nonetheless Battle With the Small Stuff?John Pavlus | Quanta Journal
“‘I requested every researcher: Can your flagship robotic—Boston Dynamics’ Atlas or Agility’s Digit, two of essentially the most credible and pedigreed humanoids on Earth—deal with any set of stairs or doorway? ‘Not reliably,’ Hurst mentioned. ‘I don’t suppose it’s completely solved,’ Kuindersma mentioned. …It’s 2026. Why are humanoids nonetheless this…arduous?”
Future
AI Isn’t Lightening Workloads. It’s Making Them Extra Intense.Ray A. Smith | The Wall Avenue Journal ($)
“One of many nice hopes for synthetic intelligence—no less than, amongst staff—is that it’s going to ease workloads, releasing individuals up for extra high-level, inventive pursuits. Thus far, the alternative is going on, new information present. Actually, AI is growing the pace, density and complexity of labor slightly than lowering it, in response to an evaluation of 164,000 staff’ digital work exercise.”
Future
Karpathy’s March of Nines Exhibits Why 90% AI Reliability Isn’t Even Near SufficientNikhil Mungel | VentureBeat
“The ‘March of Nines’ frames a typical manufacturing actuality: You possibly can attain the primary 90% reliability with a powerful demo, and every extra 9 usually requires comparable engineering effort. For enterprise groups, the space between ‘normally works’ and ‘operates like reliable software program’ determines adoption.”
Computing
The Race to Resolve the Largest Downside in Quantum ComputingKarmela Padavic-Callaghan | New Scientist ($)
“Quantum computer systems are already right here, however they make far too many errors. That is arguably the most important impediment to the expertise actually turning into helpful, however latest breakthroughs recommend an answer could also be on the horizon. ‘It’s a really thrilling time in error correction. For the primary time, principle and apply are actually making contact,’ says Robert Schoelkopf at Yale College.”
Robotics
Modular Yard Robotic Mows Lawns, Plows Snow, Gathers Leaves and Trims GrassMaryna Holovnova | New Atlas
“Owners normally find yourself with a storage crammed with varied gear: a garden mower, snow blower, shovels, and instruments for clearing fallen leaves. Presently out there on Kickstarter, the Yarbo M makes an attempt to mix all these particular person instruments into one compact robotic platform that may routinely do all of the yard work.”
Robotics
These Self-Configuring Modular Robots Could One Day Rule the WorldTom Hawking | Gizmodo
“Every unit has a number of factors to which one other unit can connect itself: 18 of them, to be exact, which signifies that simply two models will be mixed in 435 methods. The variety of doable configurations explodes because the variety of models will increase, and by the point you get to 5 models, there are a whole lot of billions of doable mixtures.”
House
This SpaceX Veteran Says the Subsequent Massive Factor in House Is Satellites That Return to EarthTim Fernholz | TechCrunch
“The reusable rocket has reworked the area trade within the final decade, and a brand new startup led by a SpaceX veteran needs to do the identical for satellites. Brian Taylor, who helped construct satellites for networks like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Leo, based Lux Aeterna in December 2024 to develop satellite tv for pc buildings with a built-in warmth protect that can enable them to return to Earth with their payloads intact.”
Tech
Nearly 40 New Unicorns Have Been Minted So Far This Yr—Right here They AreDominic-Madori Davis | TechCrunch
“Utilizing information from Crunchbase and PitchBook, TechCrunch tracked down the VC-backed startups that grew to become unicorns in 2026. Whereas most are AI-related, a stunning quantity are targeted on different industries like healthcare and even a number of crypto corporations.”
House
SETI Thinks It Would possibly Have Missed a Few Alien Calls. Right here’s WhyMatthew Phelan | Gizmodo
“A brand new examine revealed by researchers on the SETI Institute, brief for the Seek for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has examined the chance that ‘area climate’ may render sturdy premeditated alien broadcasts into the sort of fainter radio indicators that SETI sometimes ignores.”