This week on Tech Pulse, we ask three uncomfortable questions: What happens to human thinking when AI does it for us? What happens to the combustion engine when EVs stumble? And what happens to the guide dog when you give it a language model?
A neuroscientist tested humans, AIs, and human-AI teams on real-world forecasting. Most hybrid teams just handed the wheel to the AI. The small fraction that pushed back and demanded counterarguments consistently rivaled professional prediction markets — and the essay's conclusion is unsettling.
EV sales have dropped by half from their peak, and a reinvented rotary engine — small enough to hold in two hands, Pentagon-funded, and fuel-agnostic — is starting to look like a very shrewd bet on old technology.
Researchers have built a robotic guide dog powered by large language models that can hold a real conversation with its user. A real dog knows around 20 commands. This one knows as many as you can think to ask.