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The Download: planning a honeymoon with AI, and deepfakes in 2024

The big story Welcome to Chula Vista, where police drones respond to 911 calls February 2023 In the skies above Chula Vista, California, where the police department runs a drone program, it’s... Read more »

Can AI help me plan my honeymoon?

In the future, an AI agent could not only suggest things to do and places to stay on my honeymoon; it would also go a step further than ChatGPT and book flights... Read more »

A way to let robots learn by listening will make them more useful

Researchers at the Robotics and Embodied AI Lab at Stanford University set out to change that. They first built a system for collecting audio data, consisting of a GoPro camera and a... Read more »

The Download: listening robots, and Google’s AI emissions

We all want to be able to speak our minds online—to be heard by our friends and talk (back) to our opponents. At the same time, we don’t want to be exposed... Read more »

A polyester-dissolving process could make modern clothing recyclable  

Nevertheless, the process could be difficult to scale, says Bryan Vogt, a chemical engineer at Penn State University, who was not involved in the study. That’s because the solvent used to break... Read more »

What new hydropower tech says about climate action

The presentation was from our ClimateTech event in 2022, when we invited scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs in fields from fusion energy to agriculture to talk about their work. Gia Schneider, a cofounder... Read more »

The Download: recycling clothing, and fish-friendly hydropower

The news: Less than 1% of clothing is recycled. Most of the rest ends up dumped in a landfill or burned. A team of researchers hopes to change that with a new... Read more »

AI lie detectors are better than humans at spotting lies

This reliance can shape our behavior. Normally, people tend to assume others are telling the truth. That was borne out in this study—even though the volunteers knew half of the statements were... Read more »

What are AI agents? 

Agents featured prominently in Google’s annual I/O conference in May, when the company unveiled its new AI agent called Astra, which allows users to interact with it using audio and video. OpenAI’s... Read more »

The Download: AI agents, and how to detect a lie

“I’m so cute; please watch my campaign broadcast.”  —Airi Uchino, a candidate in Tokyo’s forthcoming governor elections, takes a novel approach in trying to secure residents’ votes, the Associated Press reports.  The... Read more »