This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 28)
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Computing
Breaking Encryption With a Quantum Computer Just Got 10 Times EasierKarmela Padavic-Callaghan | New Scientist ($)
"In 2019, Craig Gidney at Google Quantum AI co-authored a paper that reduced [the requirement to break RSA encryption] from 170 million to 20 million quantum bits, or qubits. And in 2025, Gidney devised a way to slash that number to less than a million qubits. Now, Paul Webster at Iceberg Quantum in Australia and his colleagues have managed to decrease the number even further to about 100,000 qubits."
FUTURE
Tech Has Never Caused a Job Apocalypse. Don’t Bet on It Now.Greg Ip | The Wall Street Journal ($)
"No one should dismiss any scenario, even the most dystopian, with high conviction. Certainly not journalists, whose way of life is in AI’s crosshairs. But I keep stumbling over one small problem with the doomsday vision: It requires a breakdown in how the market economy functions. Nothing like it has happened in the US before, and there is no evidence it is happening now."
Tech
A Recent 3D Printing Breakthrough Brings Us One Step Closer to You Downloading a CarJustin Caffier | Gizmodo
"A team at [MIT] has recently developed a printer with four different extruders that outputs five different materials to produce a fully functioning linear motor in about three hours. ...The team explained how by retrofitting a printer with enough extruders to handle the various materials needed to make a working motor, they decimated the usual production time for such a device and brought the material costs down to around $0.50."
Computing
Human Brain Cells on a Chip Learned to Play Doom in a WeekAlex Wilkins | New Scientist ($)
"A clump of human brain cells can play the classic computer game Doom. While its performance is not up to par with humans, experts say it brings biological computers a step closer to useful real-world applications, like controlling robot arms."
Robotics
Waymo Robotaxis Are Now Operating in 10 US CitiesKirsten Korosec | TechCrunch
"'Waymo is serving more riders than ever, as we are on track to serve over one million rides per week by the end of this year,' Mawakana said in a blog post Tuesday, adding that the company is laying the groundwork for robotaxi service in more than 20 cities."
Artificial Intelligence
AI Will Never Be ConsciousMichael Pollan | Wired ($)
"By the time I finished digesting the Butlin report, the Copernican moment I’d worried about seemed more distant than the report’s bold conclusion had led me to believe. After reviewing the half‑dozen or so theories of consciousness covered by the report, it seemed clear that all of them stacked the deck by taking for granted that consciousness could be reduced to some kind of algorithm."
Artificial Intelligence
Andrew Ng Says AGI Is Decades Away—and the Real AI Bubble Risk Is in the Training LayerVictor Dey | Fast Company ($)
"Maybe a year ago, AGI felt 50 years away. Over the past year, perhaps we’ve made a solid 2% of progress, with another 49 years to go. These numbers are metaphorical, so don’t take them too seriously. [Laughs] But we are closer than before, yet many decades away from an AI that matches human intelligence. If you stick with the original definition—aligned with what people genuinely imagine AGI to be—we remain very, very far away."
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FUTURE
The Hidden Cost of Letting AI Make Your Life EasierShai Tubali | Big Think
"'[AI] is designed to take over tasks that are effortful for us,' Nyholm says. ...The difficulty, he adds, is that many effortful tasks are precisely the ones that carry meaning. Deep relationships require patience, friction, and vulnerability. Skills demand time, frustration, and persistence. ...When effort, creativity, and skill fall away, meaningfulness no longer seems the right category."
Robotics
The Human Work Behind Humanoid Robots Is Being HiddenJames O'Donnell | MIT Technology Review ($)
"The roboticist Aaron Prather told me about recent work with a delivery company that had its workers wear movement-tracking sensors as they moved boxes; the data collected will be used to train robots. The effort to build humanoids will likely require manual laborers to act as data collectors at massive scale. 'It’s going to be weird,' Prather says. 'No doubts about it.'"
Computing
The 5 Biggest Obstacles to AI Data Centers in SpaceEthan Siegel | Big Think
"Is this an example of an emerging technology that could provide an off-world solution to the problem of competing demands for limited resources? Or is it, like the hyperloop, an example of grift: where the concept itself isn’t exactly physically impossible, but is rendered so impractical due to the actual physical constraints of the endeavor, that it absolutely cannot materialize as advertised?"
Artificial Intelligence
Meta Director of AI Safety Allows AI Agent to Accidentally Delete Her InboxMatthew Gault | 404 Media
"As countless people on X have said in response to her post, seeing the person in charge of making sure powerful AI tools are safe at one of the biggest tech companies in the world trust an AI agent that is known to pose several serious security risks, does not inspire a lot of confidence in what Meta and other big AI companies are doing."
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