August 28, 2025
(Wired) – A new policy document outlines China’s plan to create an internationally competitive BCI industry within five years, and proposes developing devices for both health and consumer uses. Jointly authored in July by seven departments within the Chinese government—including … Read More
August 28, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – The antiabortion movement has found an unlikely new ally to target abortion providers: husbands, boyfriends and exes. Men have filed several recent lawsuits stemming from abortions obtained by their partners or ex-partners. The strategy is part … Read More
August 28, 2025
(CNN) – That small scratch on Lyons’ leg became the entryway for Vibrio vulnificus, also known as flesh-eating bacteria. Those black sores on his leg signified necrotizing fasciitis, which “affects the tissue under your skin,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. … Read More
August 27, 2025
(NPR) – The Food and Drug Administration approved the next round of COVID-19 vaccines Wednesday, but imposed new restrictions on who’s eligible to get receive them. The agency is limiting the updated shots to people who are at risk for … Read More
August 27, 2025
(NPR) – A growing number of Americans find themselves in a similar pinch. In New York City, negotiations between UnitedHealthcare and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center missed a June 30 deadline, briefly leaving some patients in limbo until a deal … Read More
August 27, 2025
(NPR) – The digital afterlife industry, which manages a person’s digital assets after their death, is expected to quadruple in size to nearly $80 billion over the next decade. That includes the creation of deadbots. The more immersive these bots … Read More
August 27, 2025
(Quartz) – OpenAI says it’s updating ChatGPT to better recognize when a user is in serious emotional or mental distress as it gets hit with a lawsuit alleging the chatbot aided in a teen’s suicide. The company made the announcement … Read More
August 27, 2025
(Rest of World) – A ChatGPT-powered robotic companion called Hyodol is taking over some work from overburdened caregivers, much to the delight of seniors who treat them like grandchildren. Kim lives alone in Guro, an industrial hub in the bustling … Read More
August 26, 2025
(Longreads) – “Standard of Fear,” a project led by Lauren Caruba and Marin Wolf of The Dallas Morning News, details the consequences of recent laws restricting abortions in Texas, which now has “one of the country’s most strict and punitive … Read More
August 26, 2025
(Wired) – Anthropic has reached a preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by a group of prominent authors, marking a major turn in of the most significant ongoing AI copyright lawsuits in history. The move will allow Anthropic … Read More
August 26, 2025
(Nature) – RFK Jr has vowed to find out what’s responsible, but scientists say he is ignoring answers from decades of research. There are several reasons to think that a rise in diagnoses explains a large part of this trend. … Read More
August 26, 2025
(NBC News) – The parents of Adam Raine, who died by suicide in April, claim in a new lawsuit against OpenAI that the teenager used ChatGPT as his “suicide coach.” Adam’s parents say that he had been using the artificial … Read More
August 26, 2025
(Wired) – New research from Stanford provides the clearest available evidence that AI is reshaping the workforce—but it’s complicated. Economists at Stanford University have found the strongest evidence yet that artificial intelligence is starting to eliminate certain jobs. But the … Read More
August 26, 2025
(404 Media) – Forty-four attorneys general signed an open letter to 11 chatbot and social media companies on Monday, warning them that they will “answer for it” if they knowingly harm children and urging the companies to see their products … Read More
August 25, 2025
(New York Times) – If cherishing the suffering can make a nation kind, then discarding the suffering makes it cruel. It can breed a sense of contempt — why should we care for this hopeless cause? — and when our … Read More
August 25, 2025
(New York Times) – Marketed as conversational agents, chatbots are becoming de facto digital therapists for many teens, for whom this technology now feels native. This raises the stakes for ensuring these tools are safe and governed by enforceable standards. … Read More
August 25, 2025
(Science News) – Scientists have, for the first time, transplanted a genetically engineered pig lung into a human. The lung tissue remained alive for nine days after the transplant despite early signs of inflammation, researchers report August 25 in Nature … Read More
August 25, 2025
(Wired) – Image generators are designed to mimic their training data, so where does their apparent creativity come from? A recent study suggests that it’s an inevitable by-product of their architecture. Diffusion models, the backbone of image-generating tools such as … Read More
August 22, 2025
(Nature) – Study challenges the textbook idea that the brain region that processes body sensations reorganizes itself after limb amputation. A brain-imaging study of people with amputated arms has upended a long-standing belief: that the brain’s map of the body … Read More
August 22, 2025
(The Guardian) – Figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database indicate five out of six Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians, an extreme rate of slaughter rarely matched in recent decades of warfare. (Read More)
August 22, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – Official designation by leading food-security experts adds to pressure on Israel International food-security experts said a famine has taken hold around Gaza City, the first-ever such determination in the Middle East and one that puts more … Read More
August 22, 2025
(MIT Technology Review) – My relatives didn’t get a vote when I added my genetic profile to a crime-fighting database. In 2018, police in California announced they’d caught the Golden State Killer, a man who had eluded capture for decades. They … Read More
August 22, 2025
(Wired) – Scientists recorded in 3D and in real time the exact moment a human embryo implanted itself in an artificial uterus, opening new avenues for treating infertility. A team of researchers at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) … Read More
August 22, 2025
(After Babel) – Last week, Reuters published an investigation that cited internal Meta documents and sources that should anger anyone who cares about children’s safety online. The documents explain that the social media giant’s AI policies explicitly permit chatbots to … Read More
August 21, 2025
(MIT Technology Review) – Google has just released a technical report detailing how much energy its Gemini apps use for each query. In total, the median prompt—one that falls in the middle of the range of energy demand—consumes 0.24 watt-hours … Read More
