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5 Discoveries That Made 2018 a Huge Year for Neuroscience
2018 was when neuroscience made the impossible possible.
There was the dazzling array of crazy neurotech: paralyzed patients shopped and texted using an Android tablet...
These Smart Seafaring Robots Have a Whole New Set of Skills
Drones. Self-driving cars. Flying robo taxis. If the headlines of the last few years are to be believed, terrestrial transportation in the future will...
The Rise of a New Generation of AI Avatars
I recently discovered it’s possible for someone in their 20s to feel old—just mention Microsoft’s Clippy to anyone born after the late 90s. Weirdly,...
The Verge’s ‘Better Worlds’ Sci Fi Series Launches Today
When you picture what the world will look like in 10, 20, or 50 years, what comes to mind? Most people probably envision a...
Big Brother Nation: The Case for Ubiquitous, Open-Sourced Surveillance in Smart Cities
Powerful surveillance cameras have crept into public spaces. We are filmed and photographed hundreds of times a day. To further raise the stakes, the...
Understanding the Hidden Bias in Emotion-Reading AIs
Facial recognition technology has progressed to point where it now interprets emotions in facial expressions. This type of analysis is increasingly used in daily...
Making Superhumans Through Radical Inclusion and Cognitive Ergonomics
Imagine trying to read War and Peace one letter at a time. The thought alone feels excruciating. But in many ways, this painful idea...
How Can Leaders Ensure Humanity in a World of Thinking Machines?
It’s hard to avoid the prominence of AI in our lives, and there is a plethora of predictions about how it will influence our...
How Scientists Hacked Photosynthesis to Up Crop Yields By 40 Percent
Almost every living creature on Earth relies on photosynthesis for its survival, but the process is far from efficient. Now some clever genetic engineering...
3D Printed Heads Can Unlock Phones. What Does that Mean for Biometric Security?
Facial recognition technology is likely not as safe as you may have thought. This was illustrated by a recent test where 3D printed busts...
Blacklisted in China—Misbehaving Scientists Poised for “Social” Punishment
When Dr. He Jiankui announced the birth of CRISPR-edited babies last month, the world grappled with how to handle the aftermath.
Should journals overlook his...
Are Stablecoins the New and Improved Bitcoin?
PwC, the global consulting and assurance firm, recently signalled its entrance into the cryptocurrency world by announcing a partnership with decentralized lending platform Cred....
5 Major Drug Breakthroughs That Happened in 2018
The pharmaceutical industry churns out dozens of new drugs and biological products every year. Most are small tweaks to something previously approved by the...
Could an Atlas of the Brain’s Genome Solve Neuropsychiatric Disorders?
Dr. Thomas Lehner was tired of his research repeatedly hitting a wall.
A scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health, Lehner studies the genetic...
Gene Drives Survived a Proposed UN Ban in 2018—What’s Next?
In September 2018, a lab-based study published in Nature Biotechnology confirmed what many had long believed possible. The experiment involved cages of a few...
AI Will Create Millions More Jobs Than It Will Destroy. Here’s How
In the past few years, artificial intelligence has advanced so quickly that it now seems hardly a month goes by without a newsworthy AI...
Why the Future of Solar Power Is from Space
Over seven decades ago in 1941, Isaac Asimov wrote a short story, “Reason” (PDF), in which energy captured from the sun was transmitted via...
The Most Surprising Tech Breakthroughs of 2018
Development across the entire information technology landscape certainly didn’t slow down this year. From CRISPR babies, to the rapid decline of the crypto markets,...
Singularity Hub’s Top Articles of the Year
2018 was a big year for science and technology. The first gene-edited babies were born, as were the first cloned monkeys. SpaceX successfully launched...
How AR and VR Will Shape the Future of Work and Play
How we work and play is about to transform.
After a prolonged technology “winter”—or what I like to call the ‘deceptive growth’ phase of any...
The Milestones of Human Progress We Reached in 2018
When you look back at 2018, do you see a good or a bad year? Chances are, your perception of the year involves fixating...
Quantum Communication Just Took a Great Leap Forward
Researchers in the field of quantum communication have recently made great strides, taking us closer to a perfectly secure method of communication.
For years, researchers...
Nvidia’s Fake Faces Are a Masterpiece—But Have Deeper Implications
‘Don’t believe everything you see on the internet’ is pretty standard advice, but it’s getting harder than ever to distinguish the real from the...
Eating, Hacked: When Tech Took Over Food
In 2018, Uber and Google logged all our visits to restaurants. Doordash, Just Eat, and Deliveroo could predict what food we were going to...
Educating the Wise Cyborgs of the Future
When we think of wisdom, we often think of ancient philosophers, mystics, or spiritual leaders. Wisdom is associated with the past. Yet some intellectual...
