Technology

Starting in 2025, the Vera C. Rubin observatory will increase the number of known objects circling the sun by roughly tenfold, spotting new comets, exotic asteroids from other stars, and perhaps even the elusive Planet Nine. The UW's Mario Jurić, professor of astronomy, and Pedro Bernardinelli, postdoctoral fellow in astronomy, are quoted.

A proposal to build a far-flung set of radio antennas to measure the cosmos is one of 13 far-out concepts to receive seed funding from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, also known as NIAC. Matthew McQuinn, associate professor of astronomy at the UW, is quoted.

Devices that connect brains to computers are increasingly sophisticated. Can the nascent neurorights movement catch up? Sara Goering, professor of philosophy at the UW, is quoted.

According to a 2021 survey by Vox and Data for Progress, 37% of Americans think billionaires are terrible role models, and 49% said they have overall negative feelings towards them. And the heat is felt most prominently by the big-name tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Margaret O'Mara, professor of history at the UW, is quoted.

Researchers led by Jiun-Haw Chu, a University of Washington associate professor of physics, and Philip Ryan, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energyâs Argonne National Laboratory, have found a superconducting material that is uniquely sensitive to outside stimuli, enabling the superconducting properties to be enhanced or suppressed at will. This discovery could enable new opportunities for switchable, energy-efficient superconducting circuits.

"The toll of my husband’s hearing loss can be invisible—even to me. But a new wave of tech could change everything," writes Seattle Met editor, Allecia Vermillion. Yi Shen, associate professor of speech and hearing sciences at the UW, is quoted.

After internal chaos earlier this month, OpenAI replaced the women on its board with men. As it plans to add more seats, Timnit Gebru, Sasha Luccioni and other AI luminaries tell WIRED why they wouldn't join. Margaret O'Mara, professor of history at the UW, is quoted.

Following a dramatic departure of two key leaders from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Microsoft, a major investor in the startup, ended up a winner on Monday. The Redmond-based tech giant said Monday it was hiring former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and co-founder and former OpenAI President Greg Brockman, who left after Altman’s ouster Friday, to lead an in-house AI innovation lab. Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

What do you get when you put two of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people on artificial intelligence together in the same lecture hall? If the two influencers happen to be science-fiction writer Ted Chiang and Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, you get a lot of skepticism about the future of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT.

Tech welcomes big characters, and many successful founders become synonymous with their brands. The incentive structures of Silicon Valley — and the huge sums that can be gained from selling stories rather than functional products — mean that the door remains open for other people to follow in Bankman-Fried's tracks. Margaret O'Mara, professor of history at the UW, is quoted.

Sam Altman thinks the technology underpinning his company’s most famous product could bring about the end of human civilization. The UW's Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics, and Margaret O'Mara, professor of history, are quoted.

Artists and writers are up in arms about generative artificial intelligence systems—understandably so. These machine learning models are only capable of pumping out images and text because they’ve been trained on mountains of real people’s creative work, much of it copyrighted. Major AI developers including OpenAI, Meta and Stability AI now face multiple lawsuits on this. Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

Companies are designing AI to appear increasingly human. That can mislead users — or worse. Emily M. Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

Astronomers with the International Astronomical Union are trying to understand how the brightness and transmissions of the BlueWalker3 satellite will interfere with Earth-based observations of the universe — and what can be done to minimize these effects as more of these satellites are launched.

A new satellite has become one of the brightest objects in the night sky, sparking concerns among scientists for the future of astronomy. Meredith Rawls, a research scientist of astronomy at the UW, is quoted.