Author: Taylor Lowery

There is a scenario in which a self-driving car traveling at highway speed encounters an inevitable collision. This scenario is currently theoretical but is getting closer to reality every year. Some pedestrians have entered the road. It’s clear in the oncoming lane. The vehicle has about 200 milliseconds to take action. Additionally, an answer already exists somewhere in its code. It was written by someone. It was approved by someone. Furthermore, very few people who purchased that vehicle are aware of its contents. Beneath all the excitement surrounding autonomous vehicles lies a quiet, unsettling truth. For years, engineers at Tesla,…

When everyone leaves a crowded party at once, there’s a certain kind of silence. The table still has the drinks on it. The music continues to play. But the energy has drained out of the room so fast it leaves you wondering whether the party was ever as good as it felt. That is roughly what happened to Asia’s semiconductor markets this past week, and watching it unfold from the outside, it’s hard not to feel a strange mix of vindication and unease. The reasoning seemed sound for months. The world needed more artificial intelligence. More chips were required for…

Every surgeon is aware that there is a time during surgery when the hands must move with a certainty that the eyes are unable to fully provide. Beneath the skin, the anatomy remains hidden. Millimeters, sometimes even less, separate a tumor from a blood vessel. Surgeons used training, experience, and a sort of educated intuition to navigate this uncertainty for decades. Something is starting to alter that equation now. When you walk into some operating rooms these days, you might notice something strange: a surgeon wearing what appear to be futuristic ski goggles. That would be the Microsoft HoloLens, a…

Somewhere in a lab with white walls, a hum of machinery, and a researcher staring at a screen that shows neural pathways like fault lines on a map, the question of whether science can erase a traumatic memory is not being asked. The question is whether it ought to. Until you sit with it, that difference seems insignificant. Then it feels huge. The field of neuroscience has advanced quickly. Originally created to treat heart problems, beta-adrenergic blockers have demonstrated an unexpected capacity to lessen the emotional impact of upsetting memories without completely erasing them. For years, Parkinson’s patients have been…

The story of clean transportation has been straightforward for the majority of the past ten years: batteries win. Internal combustion engines began to appear truly outdated as electric vehicles proliferated on city streets and charging infrastructure spread across highways. Hydrogen fuel cell models are about 1,000 times less popular than battery-electric vehicles. For proponents of hydrogen who spent years arguing that their technology was the way of the future, that figure is shocking and even a little embarrassing. However, something is subtly changing. Not in a big way. Not through a viral announcement or a press conference. Just a methodical,…

On the final day of 2023, just before midnight, a doctor in the northern Rwandan mountains picked up his phone and sent a WhatsApp message. A woman who had recently given birth was his patient, and she was bleeding dangerously. It would take four hours to get to him via the roads. Instead, it took eighteen minutes for the white paper parachute that emerged from the dark sky. A tiny red box. a product for blood coagulation. Ten minutes later, the woman was still struggling, so there was actual blood. She made it out alive. You remember that story. It’s…

A small group of people congregate around what appears to be just another smartphone at a Mobile World Congress booth in Barcelona. The screen doesn’t glare back like most do, despite the harsh lighting—overhead LEDs bouncing off polished surfaces. It is nearly soft and matte as it sits there. It is tilted in the direction of a window. It is still readable. Avoid awkward angle hunting. It is difficult to resist bending slightly closer. The display industry has endured a silent compromise for many years. E-readers’ e-ink screens are soft on the eyes and resemble paper, but they are slow,…

Somewhere in the Pentagon, screens glow in a gentle blue haze in an operations room without windows. Sitting silently, analysts scan streams of data, including satellite photos, intercepted signals, and bits of information that used to take days to process. Nowadays, artificial intelligence has pre-filtered, arranged, and even prioritized a large portion of it. For many years, artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the military to help analysts sort through massive amounts of data, identify anomalies, and suggest possibilities. However, something has changed lately. The Pentagon’s “AI-first” strategy now goes beyond support. It has to do with integration. reducing the…

A producer uses a laptop to browse through a playlist in a dimly lit Los Angeles studio. The voice that emerges from the speakers sounds polished, tidy, a little breathy, and uncannily familiar. However, the singer is nonexistent. No recording sessions at night. Not a tour bus. No discussions about contracts. Just write code. Artificial intelligence was viewed by record labels for many years as a danger that existed only outside the industry’s boundaries. Something to battle. Something to file a lawsuit. However, things seem to be changing lately. Labels are starting to investigate a different strategy—owning the thing they…

Just before dusk, something subtle occurs at a busy intersection in Singapore. Cars don’t follow the typical stop-and-go pattern; instead, they slow down and then accelerate. There is no sense of rigidity in the traffic light. As a wave of cars approaches, it changes—almost instinctively—stretching green for a few more seconds before tightening once more as the road clears. Nobody is aware of it. Perhaps that’s the point. Like the weather, traffic jams have always seemed inevitable. You anticipate them. You gripe about them. Your life is organized around them. However, this assumption is being subtly challenged in an increasing…