This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through May 3)

Biotechnology

The US Has Approved CRISPR Pigs for FoodAntonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review

“There’s a chance the Genus pigs could turn out to be the most financially valuable genetically modified animal ever created—the first CRISPR hit product to reach the food system. After the approval, the company’s stock value jumped up by a couple of hundred million dollars on the London Stock Exchange.”

Space

Eric Schmidt Apparently Bought Relativity Space to Put Data Centers in OrbitEric Berger | Ars Technica

“In the nearly two months since former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt acquired Relativity Space, the billionaire has not said much publicly about his plans for the launch company. However, his intentions for Relativity now appear to be increasingly clear: He wants to have the capability to launch a significant amount of computing infrastructure into space.”

Tech

I Recorded Everything I Said for Three Months. AI Has Replaced My Memory.Joanna Stern | The Wall Street Journal

“I willingly wore a $50 Bee Pioneer bracelet that records everything I say and uses AI to summarize my life—and send me helpful reminders. …[This assistant] can recall every dumb, private, and cringeworthy thing that came out of my mouth. Is this the dawn of the AI surveillance state? Absolutely. Is it also the dream of hyper-personal, all-knowing AI assistants coming to life? Also absolutely.”

Robotics

Aurora’s Driverless Trucks Are Making Deliveries in TexasAndrew J. Hawkins | The Verge

“After years of testing and validation, Aurora says its first fully autonomous tractor-trailers are operating on public highways in Texas. The company’s Class 8 trucks are now making customer deliveries between Dallas and Houston, having already completed 1,200 miles ‘without a driver,’ Aurora said.”

ENERGY

Grid-Scale Battery Storage Is Quietly Revolutionizing the Energy SystemUmair Irfan | Wired

“This energy storage technology is harnessing the potential of solar and wind power—and its deployment is growing exponentially. …If we can get it right, true grid-scale battery storage won’t just be an enabler of clean energy, but a way to upgrade the power system for a new era.”

Robotics

2025 Is the Year of the Humanoid Robot Factory WorkerRussell Brandom | Wired

“2025 looks set to be the year that multipurpose humanoid robots, until now largely confined to research labs, go commercial. Some have already taken their first tentative robot steps into paid work, with Agility Robotics’ Digit moving items in a warehouse and Figure’s eponymous biped shipping out to commercial customers last year.”

Future

Time Saved by AI Offset by New Work Created, Study SuggestsBenj Edwards | Ars Technica

“A new study analyzing the Danish labor market in 2023 and 2024 suggests that generative AI models like ChatGPT have had almost no significant impact on overall wages or employment yet, despite rapid adoption in some workplaces. The findings, detailed in a working paper by economists from the University of Chicago and the University of Copenhagen, provide an early, large-scale empirical look at AI’s transformative potential.”

Energy

This Chart Might Keep You From Worrying About AI’s Energy UseEmily Waltz | IEEE Spectrum

“The world is collectively freaking out about the growth of artificial intelligence and its strain on power grids. But a look back at electricity load growth in the United States over the last 75 years shows that innovations in efficiency continually compensate for relentless technological progress.”

Future

What Happens When AI Starts to Ask the Questions?Gregory Barber | Quanta Magazine

“The dream chased by academics like Krenn, as well as tech giants and startups raising money on the prospect of ‘scientific superintelligence,’ involves folding AI into the creative aspects of science. Krenn, for example, hopes to create a system that would combine expert scientific systems, such as his physics simulators, with large language models that could sift through all the world’s knowledge and come up with new ideas and how to test them. Perhaps robots could then follow through on the experiments.”

Artificial Intelligence

Here’s Why We Need to Start Thinking of AI as ‘Normal’James O’Donnell | MIT Technology Review

“Rather than planning around sci-fi fears, Kapoor talks about ‘strengthening democratic institutions, increasing technical expertise in government, improving AI literacy, and incentivizing defenders to adopt AI.’ By contrast to policies aimed at controlling AI superintelligence or winning the arms race, these recommendations sound totally boring. And that’s kind of the point.”

We Now Know How AI ‘Thinks’—and It’s Barely Thinking at AllChristopher Mims | The Wall Street Journal

“All of this work suggests that under the hood, today’s AIs are overly complicated, patched-together Rube Goldberg machines full of ad-hoc solutions for answering our prompts. Understanding that these systems are long lists of cobbled-together rules of thumb could go a long way to explaining why they struggle when they’re asked to do things even a little bit outside their training, says Vafa.”