Chuck Brooks, a GovCon Expert, explores how quantum wave architectures, photonics and AI convergence could reshape computing.
Category: robotics/AI – Page 64
AI, Mathematics, Robotics and Security: The Stories Shaping Tech Right Now
Twenty-five Fields Medalists have signed a declaration titled “A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics,” published on September 11, 2026. The mathematicians are not arguing that AI is incapable of solving difficult problems, but rather that the technology is being optimized for the wrong goals.
The declaration argues that solving a mathematical problem is a tool rather than the ultimate purpose of mathematics. Progress depends on conceptual understanding, insight, discussion, attribution and the ability to pass knowledge on. Rapidly producing answers for AI benchmarks could conflict with those goals, particularly when results are difficult to understand or verify.
Terence Tao, one of the signatories, has highlighted concerns about the growing use of AI to produce results without the traditional process of exploration and understanding. The declaration represents a debate about how AI should be used, rather than a claim that it cannot contribute positively.
Fine-tuning medical AI can improve diagnosis but also creates privacy risks
Qingyu Chen, PhD, and his team set out to study how artificial intelligence language models are adapted for medicine and found that what these models memorize can be both useful and risky. A model may retain valuable medical knowledge, but in a controlled study using real hospital records, the same fine-tuning—the added training that adapts a model to a specific task—that improved diagnostic performance also made it more likely to reproduce material it had seen during training, including sensitive patient information.
The study, published recently in Nature Communications, reflects a question at the center of Chen’s research: How can medical AI become not only more capable but also more reliable and safer? The study was led by its first author, Anran Li, PhD, who conducted the research as a postdoctoral researcher in Yale’s Department of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science.
Chen is an assistant professor of biomedical informatics and data science at Yale School of Medicine, with a secondary appointment in ophthalmology. He leads research on the accuracy and reasoning of medical language models and on multimodal AI-assisted disease diagnosis, which draws on both text and medical images.
Transhumanist Manifestos and Dilemmas: 15 Years Later
Fifteen years ago I asked a question. A few months later I decided I had the answer, and that was my mistake.
The question came from Hamlet: will technology replace biology? It felt like our generation’s version of to be or not to be. Death is a tragedy; technology looked like the only exit, and yet I suspected the trade might cost us something we could never buy back.
Then I stopped asking and started declaring. I went headfirst into #transhumanism and wrote a manifesto calling on everyone to break the chains of biology and death.
Manifestos are seductive that way. Clean, confident, and they hand you your marching orders. Dilemmas do none of that. They just sit there, unresolved, making you uncomfortable.
Fifteen years later, I know which one I trust, and I know why it matters now more than it did then. We are surrounded by action without introspection. By people ready to build a new world on the ruins of the current one, with #AI as the wrecking ball and the blueprint both.
Richard Feynman said something about questions and answers that I have not been able to shake. It is in the essay.
HD Hyundai Robotics Tactile Sensor Investment: The $9.7M Bet On Robot Touch
HD Hyundai Robotics invested 13 billion won ($9.7 million) in AIDIN Robotics on September 11, 2026, securing a stake in the company that makes force and tactile sensors for humanoid hands. HD Hyundai Robotics tactile sensor investment targets shipbuilding and heavy-industry applications, where a robot needs to feel the difference between grinding a weld and damaging the hull. For procurement teams, the signal is clear: the humanoid race is shifting from who can build the best body to who can secure the sensing layer that makes the body useful.
HD Hyundai Robotics tactile sensor investment landed on September 11, 2026, when the shipbuilding giant announced it had acquired a stake in AIDIN Robotics for 13 billion Korean won, roughly $9.7 million. The investment secures core technologies for humanoid robots and strengthens HD Hyundai’s position in the physical AI business, according to the company’s announcement.
The procurement implication is not about the dollar figure. It is about what HD Hyundai bought: the layer of the humanoid stack that most vendors treat as a detail and most buyers never ask about until deployment fails. HD Hyundai Robotics tactile sensor investment is a bet that sensing—not actuation, not locomotion, not AI model size—is the bottleneck that determines whether a humanoid robot can do useful work.
AI-Designed Drug Makes Patients’ Blood Look Biologically Younger, Study Shows
You can’t change the age written on your ID. But what about the age of your body?
A drug designed with the help of artificial intelligence made the blood profiles of people with lung disease look biologically younger, new research reveals.
The result came from six computer models that estimate biological age by examining proteins in the blood. Scientists call them biological aging clocks.
AI helps microscopes find the most informative nanoscale features in a sample
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed an artificial intelligence framework that helps researchers use atomic force microscopes to identify important nanoscale features while autonomously targeting the most informative areas of a sample for closer study.
Although atomic force microscopy (AFM) reveals structures as small as molecules, operating the instrument still requires expert judgment about where to scan, how to adjust settings and which features deserve closer study. SimuScan reduces that burden, making AFM faster, more consistent and better suited for high-throughput research.
“Operating an atomic force microscope is a bit like piloting a modern jet,” said Liam Collins, an ORNL senior R&D scientist at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS). “The hardware has incredible capability, but making full use of it often requires an experienced pilot.” That reliance on specialized expertise slows large-scale studies and makes results more dependent on individual users.
Humanoid Robots And The Cyborg Future Of Human-Machine Integration
China is showcasing the strength of its manufacturing capacity. The United States exhibits remarkable capabilities in artificial intelligence, software development, and advanced computing. Japan possesses profound proficiency in precision robotics and human-centric engineering. Europe, South Korea, Taiwan, and various other technological ecosystems possess essential components of the solution.
The contest has only just begun. The era of humanoids has commenced, yet it remains in its nascent stages. The machinery operating in factories today is rudimentary in comparison to what could develop in the forthcoming decade. As artificial intelligence advances, materials are enhanced to be lighter and more robust, battery technology progresses, sensors gain complexity, and robotic models assimilate knowledge from expansive datasets of the physical realm, humanoid robots may emerge as a pivotal technology of the Acceleration Era.
The primary inquiry has shifted from whether machines will integrate into human surroundings. They have already done so. The question pertains to what we instruct them in, how we safeguard them, how we regulate them, and how we guaranty that their growing physical intelligence ultimately enhances rather than constricts human potential. This will constitute a pivotal technological and policy challenge of the forthcoming decade.
Waymo robotaxi calls cops on riders handling loaded ARstyle ghost gun San Francisco police, then juvenile riders were stopped and arrested
Following a tip-off from robotaxi firm Waymo, San Francisco police conducted a “high-risk vehicle stop” and arrested two juveniles last week. The crime? The Waymo had seen its two passengers handling a loaded AR-style assault rifle. Police who intercepted the car also found “suspected marijuana and mace spray,” reports SFGate.
Fully autonomous taxi cabs like the Waymo in this story are an increasingly common form of transport seen on the world’s roads. With no human driver, these electric vehicles are packed with sensors, cameras, and more, all tied into the software presence that is called the Waymo Driver. To ensure the utmost safety, the sensors also continually monitor passengers. This might typically check if passengers are following the rules regarding minor transgressions like smoking or not wearing a seatbelt. In this case, the cameras recognized something more serious.
AI Has Solved One of Math’s $1 Million Millennium Prize Problems
Mathematicians at OpenAI showed that the Navier-Stokes equations, which describe how fluids flow, can sometimes “blow up.” But the massive result is not without controversy.