AI coaching AI, and the way forward for robotaxis

In some San Francisco neighborhoods, vehicles with no driver behind the wheel have grow to be a standard sight. Most of the metropolis’s ghostly driverless vehicles are business robotaxis, instantly competing with taxis and ride-hailing corporations. 

I spent the previous yr overlaying robotaxis for the San Francisco Examiner and have taken almost a dozen rides in Cruise driverless vehicles over the previous few months. Throughout my reporting, I’ve been struck by the dearth of urgency within the public discourse about robotaxis. It’s excessive time for the general public and its elected representatives to play a extra lively position in shaping the way forward for this new know-how. Prefer it or not, robotaxis are right here. 

Now comes the tough work of deciding what to do about them. Learn the total story.

The chip patterning machines that may form computing’s subsequent act

After we speak about computing nowadays, we have a tendency to speak about software program and the engineers who write it. However with out the {hardware} and the bodily sciences that enabled their creation—disciplines like optics, supplies science, and mechanical engineering—fashionable computing would have been inconceivable.

Semiconductor lithography, the manufacturing course of accountable for producing pc chips, stands on the middle of a geopolitical competitors to manage the way forward for computing energy. And the velocity at which new lithography techniques and elements are developed will form not solely the velocity of computing progress but in addition the steadiness of energy and income inside the tech trade. Learn the total story.

—Chris Miller