AI

Spending on AI Is at Epic Levels. Will It Ever Pay Off?

Tech companies pour hundreds of billions into data centers, taking on heavy debt, but current revenue is relatively tiny; echoes of dot-com bubble.

Today, the typically dull world of chips and data centers has become a raging multihundred billion dollar battleground where Silicon Valley giants one up each other with spending commitments—and sci-fi names.

Zuckerberg teased his planned “Hyperion” mega-data center with a social-media post showing it would be the size of a large chunk of Manhattan.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman calls his data-center effort “Stargate,” a reference to the 1994 movie about an interstellar time-travel portal. Company executives this week laid out plans that would require at least $1 trillion in data-center investment, and Altman recently committed the company to pay Oracle an average of around $60 billion a year for servers in data centers in coming years. Yet OpenAI is on track to take in just $13 billion in revenue from all its paying customers this year.

Clean Tech

Battery made from natural materials could replace conventional lithium-ion batteries

A team of researchers at Texas A&M University, including Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Dr. Karen Wooley and Professor of Chemical Engineering Dr. Jodie Lutkenhaus, has developed a biodegradable battery using natural polymers. The new material is made from two key ingredients found in nature: riboflavin, also known as vitamin B2, and L-glutamic acid, an amino acid that helps build proteins in the body.

Fusion power plants don’t exist yet, but they’re making money anyway

Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced it has another customer for its first commercial fusion power plant, in Virginia. Eni, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, signed a billion-dollar deal to buy electricity from the facility. One small detail? That reactor doesn’t exist yet. Neither does the smaller reactor Commonwealth is building first to demonstrate that its tokamak design will work as intended.

Healthcare

3D-printed skin stretches, bleeds like the real thing

A new printable material developed by researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities more closely mimics the adaptive nature of human tissue. It utilizes advances in modern bioprinting to produce lifelike tissue that’s stiffness can change depending on its location on a body and in what direction it is intended to move. For added realism, the researchers incorporated fluid-filled microcapsules into the printed material to simulate the release of bodily fluids.

If A.I. Can Diagnose Patients, What Are Doctors For?

During my medical training, I revered senior physicians who, through some alchemy of knowledge and gestalt, always seemed to home in on the clue that cracked the case: the unusual shape of a patient’s nails; an occupational hazard from decades before; an overlooked blood test. What algorithm was running in these physicians’ minds? Could I load it into my own? In the future, however, diagnosis may increasingly become a computer science. Surveys have suggested that many people are more confident in A.I. diagnoses than in those rendered by professionals. Meanwhile, in the United States alone, misdiagnosis disables hundreds of thousands of people each year; autopsy studies suggest that it contributes to perhaps one in every ten deaths. If Williams hadn’t ignored his initial diagnosis, he might have been among them. “I trust A.I. more than doctors,” he said. “I don’t think I’m the only one.” 

Quantum Computing

Industry-compatible silicon spin-qubit unit cells exceeding 99% fidelity

We show precise qubit operation of silicon two-qubit devices made with standard semiconductor tooling in a 300-mm foundry environment. Of the key metrics, single- and two-qubit control fidelities exceed 99% for all four devices, and the state preparation and measurement fidelities reach up to 99.9%, as evidenced by gate set tomography. 

Robotics

OmniCore EyeMotion lets robots adapt to complex environments in real time, says ABB

ABB Robotics launched OmniCore EyeMotion, which enables an OmniCore-powered robot to recognize its surroundings using any third-party camera or sensor and adapt in real time, even in complex applications.