AI has injected a shot of optimism. Like much of Silicon Valley, many attendees at the summit subscribe to the idea that AI might dramatically increase their productivity—though their goal is not... Read more »

By September, the company plans to build “an autonomous AI research intern” that can take on a small number of specific research problems. The intern will be the precursor to the fully automated... Read more »

For Pachocki, that’s a clear Yes. In fact, he thinks it’s just a matter of pushing ahead on the path we’re already on. A simple boost in all-round capability also leads to... Read more »

This phenomenon can distort the results of psychedelic drug trials. While a placebo in a traditional antidepressant drug trial improves symptoms by eight points, placebos in psychedelic trials improve symptoms by a... Read more »

Unfortunately, those patterns are hidden inside data sets so large that they overwhelm classical solvers. Infleqtion uses the quantum computer to find correlations in the data that can reduce the size of... Read more »

Unfortunately, those patterns are hidden inside data sets so large that they overwhelm classical solvers. Infleqtion uses the quantum computer to find correlations in the data that can reduce the size of... Read more »

My reporting also helped answer another question that was lingering in my brain: Why doesn’t the world recycle more nuclear waste? There’s still a lot of usable uranium in spent nuclear fuel... Read more »

Now off-the-shelf technology—Starlink terminals, plug-and-play nautical autopilots, high-resolution video cameras—may be advancing that cat-and-mouse game into a new phase.  Uncrewed subs could move more cocaine over longer distances, and they wouldn’t put human smugglers... Read more »

On the other hand, some other reactor designs could produce a smaller volume of spent fuel, but that isn’t necessarily a smaller problem. Fast reactors, for example, achieve a higher burn-up, consuming... Read more »