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AI-designed viruses are here and already killing bacteria

“That was pretty striking, just actually seeing, like, this AI-generated sphere,” says Brian Hie, who leads the lab at the Arc Institute where the work was carried out. Overall, 16 of the... Read more »

The Download: measuring returns on R&D, and AI’s creative potential

—Matthew Raine, whose 16-year old son Adam died by suicide after repeatedly sharing his intentions with ChatGPT, gives evidence to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee investigating chatbot dangers, the Washington Post reports. One... Read more »

How to measure the returns on R&D spending

If in fact the productivity slowdown was at least partially caused by a drop in public R&D spending, it’s evidence that we would be far richer today if we had kept up... Read more »

How to measure the returns to R&D spending

If in fact the productivity slowdown was at least partially caused by a drop in public R&D spending, it’s evidence that we would be far richer today if we had kept up... Read more »

De-risking investment in AI agents

For businesses, the potential is transformative: AI agents that can handle complex service interactions, support employees in real time, and scale seamlessly as customer demands shift. But the move from scripted, deterministic... Read more »

The Download: regulators are coming for AI companions, and meet our Innovator of 2025

As long as there has been AI, there have been people sounding alarms about what it might do to us: rogue superintelligence, mass unemployment, or environmental ruin. But another threat entirely—that of... Read more »

The looming crackdown on AI companionship

It’s hard to overstate the impact of these stories. To the public, they are proof that AI is not merely imperfect, but a technology that’s more harmful than helpful. If you doubted... Read more »

The Download: computing’s bright young minds, and cleaning up satellite streaks

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 China has accused Nvidia of violating anti-monopoly lawsAs US and Chinese officials head into a second day of... Read more »

The Download: America’s gun crisis, and how AI video models work

This week, the Trump administration released a strategy for improving the health and well-being of American children. The report was titled—you guessed it—Make Our Children Healthy Again. It suggests American children should... Read more »

How do AI models generate videos?

But you don’t want any image—you want the image you specified, typically with a text prompt. And so the diffusion model is paired with a second model—such as a large language model... Read more »