Research & Development news

• What happens when a kid’s robot best friend dies?

  17-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  When Xander first met Moxie, she taught him that when he was anxious, he could calm down by exhaling through his lips so that he buzzed like a bee. They practiced breathing like dragons to manage feeling mad and sniffing like bunnies to boost his energy. But in the six years they’ve known each other, Moxie’s changed. She doesn’t talk anymore about her home or do their animal breathing. Now, she watches Xander play Minecraft and talks to him about his stuffed animal collection.&
  
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• When AI designs a drug, who gets the credit?

  21-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  When the biotech company Insilico Medicine used its computer models to propose a promising drug for pulmonary fibrosis, it enthusiastically claimed in a press release that the molecule had been “discovered by” its generative AI platform.Insilico leads a pack of companies using AI to rapidly come up with drug ideas humans might never think of, potentially speeding the race to new cures. AI models are now able to generate atomic designs for drugs almost as easily as ChatGPT can write
  
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• This company’s plans to deploy space mirrors could jeopardize the night sky for many

  21-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  A company that plans to beam sunlight from space to Earth on demand might unintentionally brighten the night sky for many more people than intended, according to a new study.Later this year, the US company Reflect Orbital plans to launch a test satellite called Eärendil-1 that will extend an 18-by-18-meter mirror in orbit. The goal is to test the feasibility of the company’s plans to launch up to 50,000 larger satellites, measuring 54 by 54 meters, and reflect sunlight to Earth on de
  
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• Mother tongue

  21-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  “Daddy?” Theo curled against my side in bed. “Where do words go when they die?”I’d orchestrated the bedtime routine flawlessly: bath (taken), teeth (brushed), potty (tinkled), books (two), song (one, poorly sung), and snuggle (his chin on my second rib). Now was the moment when our son’s eyelids were supposed to flutter gently closed, his breath sighing into a slower rhythm. Like clockwork; like magic. You remember how easy it was, don’t you? All those n
  
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• Debates over AI consciousness are a trap

  20-08-2026 17:42 via technologyreview.com
  
  “Runaway” AI, “rogue” agents, and “autonomous” actors—the current rhetoric would have you believe that AI agents are not only awake and aware, but angry at their creators. Prominent tech leaders such as Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and Sam Altman push for regulation of these seemingly “superhuman” systems, while a separate faction, led by policy organizations and academic philosophers often aligned with the effective altruism movement, debat
  
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• The Download: polycrisis support networks and a hydrogen gold rush

  20-08-2026 14:10 via technologyreview.com
  
  This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
  Support networks aim to help kids through the polycrisisSometime in the late 2000s, six-year-old Pim Sullivan-Tailyour was sitting in the back of a car in Thailand when she saw a mountain that had been quarried away. It was the first time she recognized that humans could alter the world for the worse.She carried that knowledge with her, later joini
  
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• The next big thing in hydrogen could be underground

  20-08-2026 12:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  There’s a hunt for new sources of hydrogen, and the gas (or at least the right conditions to make it) could be hiding beneath our feet.Hydrogen can be used as a fuel in everything from large trucks to planes to steelmaking. It’s often hailed as a climate solution because when burned, it produces water and oxygen—none of the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.In a new story for our latest print issue, freelance reporter James Dineen took a look at the 21st-centu
  
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• Unlocking hidden revenue streams with market models

  20-08-2026 11:47 via technologyreview.com
  
  Each day, an airline transports tens of thousands of passengers on hundreds of flights. Often these are not straightforward point-to-point routes, with passengers requiring multiple connections. The airline can consider potentially hundreds of variables to price each of these journeys: demand, season, time of day, current events, global markets, and competitor airline activity to name just a few. It is a nuanced process that must constantly adapt to the goings on in the wider world.Generative AI
  
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• Support networks aim to help kids through the polycrisis

  20-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  Sometime in the late 2000s, Pim Sullivan-Tailyour was sitting in the back of a car, headed toward her great-grandmother’s tiny town in the south of Thailand. She watched big mountains pass by out the window. She was just six years old but was about to be hit by an adult-size realization. “They were just quarried out,” she says. “Like half the mountain just dug out and disappeared, and so there was just this huge orange face.” Although she probably didn’t
  
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• The Download: AI’s self-improvement problem, and what’s driving the heat

  19-08-2026 14:10 via technologyreview.com
  
  This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
  AI’s recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after allThe AI industry’s boldest promise right now is that AI will soon improve itself, with almost no need for human oversight. But a new study suggests it might take a while to get there.Researchers found that AI agents still can’t conduct open-ended AI research—f
  
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• Child-monitoring apps might need a reboot

  19-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  Pam Wisniewski’s digital adolescence showed her the best and the worst of the internet. At 14, she left an abusive home, where she’d been isolated in a fifth-wheel trailer at the end of a seven-­mile dirt road. She moved in with her older sister and taught herself to type on AOL Instant Messenger. Online, she sought out the support and the community she’d lacked at home. She also discovered how thin the ice can be. “I sent my address to some guy in New Mexico to send
  
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• The Download: how people really use AI, and Flock’s design choices

  18-08-2026 14:10 via technologyreview.com
  
  This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
  We still don’t know how people are really using AIAI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI regularly publish reports on how people are using their products. But they only release the data they want us to see, AI researchers say, and there’s no independent source to corroborate it.A new research project called the AI Observatory aims to fi
  
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• We still don’t know how people are really using AI

  18-08-2026 12:06 via technologyreview.com
  
  AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI regularly publish reports on how people are using products like Claude and ChatGPT, but they only release the data they want us to see, AI researchers say. “There is no independent source to corroborate it,” says Anka Reuel, a Computer Science PhD candidate at the Stanford Trustworthy AI Research (STAIR) Lab. Reuel is co-lead of a new research project, called the AI Observatory, that aims to fill in the gap. It’s a public platfo
  
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• The role of the astronaut is in flux

  18-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  When the four astronauts on board NASA’s Artemis II swung around the moon earlier this year, they set a new record for the farthest humans have ever ventured from Earth, surpassing the distance set by Apollo 13 in 1972 by some 4,000 miles. While no space mission can live up to the historic touchdown of Apollo 11—a spectacle that 20% of the world population watched live—Artemis II still attracted massive public interest. It drew tens of millions of viewers and inspired outp
  
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• AI’s recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all

  18-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  The AI industry’s boldest promise right now is that AI will soon improve itself, with almost no need for human oversight. LLMs can already write code, generate synthetic data for training, and optimize the computer chips they run on. Forecasts of explosive AI progress predict that what researchers call recursive self-improvement is on the horizon. But a new study suggests that it might take a while for us to get there. The researchers behind it found that AI agents are not yet capable
  
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• What Flock’s defenders are missing

  17-08-2026 21:16 via technologyreview.com
  
  This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.Flock, the police-tech giant known for its network of some 120,000 automatic license plate readers around the US, announced some changes to its platform last Thursday. The updates are meant to prevent officers from using the platform for illegal or illegitimate purposes. That includes stalking. The Washington Post recently identified 50 cases in which
  
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• The Download: dead robot friends and the “censorship-industrial complex”

  17-08-2026 14:10 via technologyreview.com
  
  This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
  What happens when a kid’s robot best friend dies?When Xander first met Moxie, she taught him how to calm down when he was anxious or mad. Six years later, she mostly watches him play Minecraft and talks to him about his stuffed animals.Moxie is a robot—a 15-inch-tall device that looks a bit like a blue, legless astronaut. It belongs to
  
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• How much hydrogen awaits us underground?

  17-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  In the 1990s, Barbara Sherwood Lollar descended into the Kidd Creek mine in northern Ontario, which cuts more than three kilometers into the ancient root of North America. There her team of geochemists found water that had been confined underground for more than a billion years. This ancient brine turned out to be a habitat for living microbes that feed on the hydrogen produced in reactions between the water and the rock.Decades later, Sherwood Lollar, who is a geochemist at the University of To
  
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• I survived two years as prime minister in a hit new game - then my cabinet deserted me

  16-08-2026 01:45 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Mobile game No 10: Full Confidence recently ranked above Minecraft on the UK App Store paid games chart
  
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• Secondhand book sales are booming. Is it because of AI?

  15-08-2026 13:25 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Booksellers are reporting mysterious bulk orders. It's thought the books are being used to train AI - and ending up pulped.
  
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• Why tech bosses keep sharing their manifestos about AI

  15-08-2026 01:06 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg is the latest Big Tech name to pen a letter thousands of words long about AI.
  
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• Protein or pickled garlic? What's new in ice cream

  14-08-2026 23:20 via bbc.co.uk
  
  There's a constant battle in ice cream to come up with new flavours and to keep costs down.
  
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• The Download: Flock’s new rules, cloning’s future, and children’s cells

  14-08-2026 14:17 via technologyreview.com
  
  This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
  Flock is tightening its rules in response to a growing surveillance backlashThe police-tech giant Flock is changing officers’ access to its nationwide network of license plate readers. The move comes amid a backlash over mass surveillance and reports of officers using the technology to stalk and harass current or former romantic partners.To c
  
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• This scientist is helping build a missing map of childhood

  14-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  In 2017, Deanne Taylor attended a presentation at the University of Pennsylvania, just a short walk from her office. A researcher was there to unveil the Human Cell Atlas, an ambitious project that aimed to map every cell in the human body. Taylor was floored, and then concerned. As details emerged, she discovered that the project’s researchers had only made plans to study adults. “That’s when my little alarm went off,” she says. “Not again.”Since joining the
  
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• Job titles of the future: Space travel agent

  14-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  Roman Chiporukha has long turned wild travel dreams into reality. Over two decades as co-owner of the luxury lifestyle firm Roman & Erica, he has orchestrated everything from the construction of a client’s superyacht to vacations in the Bahamas at a location so private that guests must sign an NDA. NHUNG LÊ
  The experiences earned him “the ear,” he says, “of the ultra-high-net-worth audience.” It also led to a life-changing phone call: In 2018, Axiom S
  
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• Cloning could be used to save species—or make human “organ sacks”

  14-08-2026 11:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  This week I spoke to scientists who have found a way to turn male mouse embryos female. They’ve developed a CRISPR-based approach to essentially cut out the Y chromosome. It allowed them to create female clones of male mice.That’s right: female animals that are genetically identical to males, except for the missing Y chromosome. Takashi Ishiuchi, a reproductive biologist at the University of Yamanashi who co-led the work, told me it felt a bit like sci-fi.Ishiuchi and his colleague
  
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• Roundtables: Inside the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” Idea Shaping US Policy

  13-08-2026 23:00 via technologyreview.com
  
  Listen to the session or watch belowThe “censorship-industrial complex” is an idea that a network of government, tech, and research groups is collaborating to suppress conservative online speech. This was fodder for the right-wing information sphere for years—then it began making its way into US policy. Watch a conversation exploring how it started, where it’s going, and what it means for the future of democracy and the internet.Speakers: Amy Nordrum, Executive Editor, Op
  
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• Building a practical path to post-quantum cryptography

  13-08-2026 20:11 via technologyreview.com
  
  Quantum computing has alternated between breakthrough darling and overhyped promise in technology circles. Its powerful new capabilities come with a threat to break current cryptography, but for business leaders navigating the noise, the signal should be clear: post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is a manageable evolution, not a crisis.The mathematics behind today’s encrypted digital transactions may yield to quantum computers one day, but the transition to quantum-resistant algorithms is neit
  
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• Bumble divides users by ditching its signature 'women-first' chat rule

  13-08-2026 16:09 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The dating app's boss says the move is in response to a successful trial and a change in what users want.
  
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• Flock is tightening its rules in response to a growing surveillance backlash

  13-08-2026 15:41 via technologyreview.com
  
  The police-tech giant Flock is announcing today that it will change officers’ access to its nationwide network of license plate readers, in an apparent effort to quell a growing backlash and win back contracts lost amid concerns about mass surveillance and police abuse.Several changes aim directly at a problem that has made recent headlines: officers abusing Flock’s technology to stalk and harass current or former romantic partners. Flock’s 120,000 cameras form a nationwide net
  
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