5 questions

22 Nov 23

What to Do When the Ghost in the Machine Is You

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

Limor Fried is the founder of Adafruit, a leading electronics manufacturer for makers. The open-source microcontroller driver libraries she writes to interface with devices such as sensors and displays often become de facto standards and are found in many code repositories. Recently, Fried began experimenting with ChatGPT to generate drivers…

22 Oct 23

Why Power a Whisky Still with Green Hydrogen?

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

Dozens of companies are trying to replace the typical method of producing hydrogen—from natural gas—with electrolysis, in which an electric current is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The goal for many of these companies is “green hydrogen,” in which the electricity used comes from renewable sources.Luke TanTan…

26 Aug 23

Why Today’s Chatbots Are Weird, Argumentative, and Wrong

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

Long before most people began playing around with generative AI models like ChatGPT and DALL-E, Janelle Shane started documenting AI oddities. An optics researcher by training, she’s also held a long fascination in testing AIs’ ability to be, well, normal. With more and more people testing AI limits than ever…

31 Jul 23

Boston Dynamics’ Founder on the Future of Robotics

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

When Marc Raibert founded Boston Dynamics in 1992, he wasn’t even sure it was going to be a robotics company—he thought it might become a modeling and simulation company instead. Now, of course, Boston Dynamics is the authority in legged robots, with its Atlas biped and Spot quadruped. But as…

13 May 23

A Former Pilot On Why Autonomous Vehicles Are So Risky

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation, Mechanical, Production & Manufacturing

In October 2021, Missy Cummings left her engineering professorship at Duke University to join the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) in a temporary position as a senior safety advisor. It wasn’t long before Elon Musk tweeted an attack: “Objectively, her track record is extremely biased against Tesla.” He was…

22 Mar 23

“Web3 Is Going Just Great” Creator On Why It Isn’t

Computer & Information Technology

In mid-2021, the term “Web3” suddenly exploded into the public consciousness. As people scrambled to figure out what it was—cryptocurrencies? blockchain? nonfungible tokens?—venture capital firms were pouring money into new startups, over US $30 billion before the year was out. Meanwhile, Molly White, a software engineer, started reading up on…

27 Feb 23

Aalyria’s Lasers and Routers Could Close the Digital Divide

Electrical, Electronics & Instrumentation

Aalyria, a recent spinout from Google, is trying to build on other companies’ near successes. The company is revamping the software platform from the ambitious-yet-failed startup Loon to optimize and reconfigure networks in real time, using whatever connections are available. Aalyria is combining that tech with free-space lasers originally developed…