Archive | February, 2021

The self-driving tech developer is acquiring Silicon Valley startup OURS Technology to integrate its lidar sensor into a single chip.

Deliveries have skyrocketed during the pandemic. This California city wants to nudge companies to make sure they’re happening in nonpolluting vehicles.
When someone in downtown Santa Monica now gets a delivery, there’s a good chance that it will now show up on an electric delivery truck—or an electric scooter, or a battery-powered robot, or an electric cargo bike. The city

By eliminating choice and chance, AI could make life comfortable—and utterly predictable.
The history of humans’ use of technology has always been a history of coevolution. Philosophers from Rousseau to Heidegger to Carl Schmitt have argued that technology is never a neutral tool for achieving human ends. Technological innovations—from the most rudimentary to the most sophisticated—reshape people as they use

Describing a decision-making system as an “algorithm” is often a way to deflect accountability for human decisions. For many, the term implies a set of rules based objectively on empirical evidence or data. It also suggests a system that is highly complex—perhaps so complex that a human would struggle to understand its inner workings or anticipate its behavior when deployed.

Counselors volunteering at the Trevor Project need to be prepared for their first conversation with an LGBTQ teen who may be thinking about suicide. So first, they practice. One of the ways they do it is by talking to fictional personas like “Riley,” a 16-year-old from North Carolina who is feeling a bit down and depressed. With a team member

An illustration shows the deployment of an autonomous borebot into a layered deposit on Mars. The inset shows a closeup of the borebot drive system. (Planet Enterprises Illustration / James Vaughan)
The latest crop of NASA-backed concepts for far-out space exploration includes “borebots” that could drill as far as a mile beneath the Martian surface in search of liquid water,

Hulu has released the first trailer for MODOK, its upcoming animated show that will see Patton Oswalt voice the titular Marvel villain in a more light-hearted, Robot Chicken-style take on the franchise’s usual portentous superhero dramas. The show also got a release date: it’ll debut on May 21st on the streaming service.
MODOK (Mental Organism Designed Only

Machine Learning and the Internet of Things (IoT) have been the buzzwords for the decade. These technologies find application in almost all industries, from enabling artificially intelligent powered digital assistants to the supply chain’s automation. They have revolutionized not only how we interact on social media but also how we pay the bills. Here is how to use Machine Learning