This Year's 4 Most Mind-Boggling Stories About the Brain . 2019 was nuts for neuroscience. I said this last year too, but that’s the nature of accelerating technologies: the advances just keep coming. There’re the theoretical showdowns: a mano a mano ba

Would You Want a Personal AI That Knows Everything About You? . A couple years ago I took part in a marketing video where I was recorded answering questions about my career path, interests, and goals. The next day, the videographer offered to show me the

Retail Robots Are on the Rise—at Every Level of the Industry . The robots are coming! The robots are coming! On our sidewalks, in our skies, in our every store... Over the next decade, robots will enter the mainstream of retail. As countless robots work

How Two Robots Learned to Grill and Serve the Perfect Hot Dog . The list of things robots can do seems to be growing by the week. They can play sports, help us explore outer space and the deep sea, take over some of our boring everyday tasks, and even ass

How Two Robots Learned to Grill and Serve the Perfect Hot Dog . The list of things robots can do seems to be growing by the week. They can play sports, help us explore outer space and the deep sea, take over some of our boring everyday tasks, and even ass

Robotic Exoskeletons, Like This One, Are Getting More Practical . When you imagine an exoskeleton, chances are it might look a bit like the Guardian XO from Sarcos Robotics. The XO is literally a robot you wear (or maybe, it wears you). The suit’s powered

Gene Therapy for Sickle-Cell Anemia Looks Promising—but It's Riddled with Controversy . Gene therapy is fighting to enter mainstream medicine. With sickle cell disease, the fight is heating up. Roughly two years ago, the FDA made the historic decision t

A New Anti-Aging Therapy Is Starting its First Human Trial—and it Costs $1 Million . Recent research on longevity is making the idea of an elixir of life sound increasingly plausible. But a startup that’s started selling a $1 million anti-aging treatment

‘Robotic Blacksmithing’: A Technology That Could Revive US Manufacturing . Although it may not be obvious, there’s a close link between manufacturing technology and innovation. Elon Musk often talks of the “machines that build the machines” as being the r

How Far Are We from (Accurately and Safely) Editing Human Embryos? . We can already edit genes in human embryos. We can even do it in a way to pass the edits down generations, fundamentally changing a family’s genetic makeup. Doing it well, however, is