Aceasta este ediția de astăzi a Descărcarea, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

A new AI translation system for headphones clones multiple voices simultaneously

What’s new: Imagine going for dinner with a group of friends who switch in and out of different languages you don’t speak, but still being able to understand what they’re saying. This scenario is the inspiration for a new AI headphone system that translates the speech of multiple speakers simultaneously, in real time.

How it works: The system tracks the direction and vocal characteristics of each speaker, helping the person wearing the headphones to identify who is saying what in a group setting. Citește povestea completă.

—Rhiannon Williams

Your gut microbes might encourage criminal behavior

A few years ago, a Belgian man in his 30s drove into a lamppost. Twice. Local authorities found that his blood alcohol level was four times the legal limit. Over the space of a few years, the man was apprehended for drunk driving three times. And on all three occasions, he insisted he hadn’t been drinking.

He was telling the truth. A doctor later diagnosed auto-brewery syndrome—a rare condition in which the body makes its own alcohol. Microbes living inside the man’s body were fermenting the carbohydrates in his diet to create ethanol. Last year, he was acquitted of drunk driving.

His case, along with several other scientific studies, raises a fascinating question for microbiology, neuroscience, and the law: How much of our behavior can we blame on our microbes? Citește povestea completă.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.

Lecturile obligatorii

Am căutat pe internet ca să vă găsesc cele mai amuzante/importante/înfricoșătoare/fascinante povești de astăzi despre tehnologie.

1 How the Gates Foundation will end
Bill Gates will wind it down in 2045, after distributing most of his remaining fortune. (NYT $)
+ He estimates he’ll give away $200 billion in the next 20 years. (Semafor)
+ The foundation is shuttering several decades earlier than he expected. (BBC)

2 US Customs and Border Protection will no longer protect pregnant women
It’s rolled back policies designed to protect vulnerable people, including infants. (Cu fir $)
+ The US wants to use facial recognition to identify migrant children as they age. (Revista Tehnologiei MIT)

3 DOGE is readying software to turbo-charge mass layoffs
After some 260,000 government workers have already been let go. (Reuters)
+ DOGE’s math doesn’t add up. (Atlanticul $)
+ One of its biggest inspirations is no fan of the program. (WP $)
+ Can AI help DOGE slash government budgets? It’s complex. (Revista Tehnologiei MIT)

4 Scientists are using AI to predict cancer survival outcomes
In some cases, it’s outperforming clinicians’ forecasts. (FT $)
+ Why it’s so hard to use AI to diagnose cancer. (Revista Tehnologiei MIT)

5 Apple is reportedly working on new chips for its smart glasses
But we’ll have to wait a few more years. (Bloomberg $)
+ What’s next for smart glasses. (Revista Tehnologiei MIT)

6 Silicon Valley has a vision for the future of warfare
Military technologies are no longer solely the preserve of governments. (Bloomberg $)
+ Palmer Luckey on the Pentagon’s future of mixed reality. (Revista Tehnologiei MIT)

7 AI companies don’t want regulation any more
Just a few short years after they claimed regulation was the best way of making AI safe. (WP $)

8 Forget SEO, GEO is where it’s at these days
Marketers are scrambling to adopt best Generative Engine Optimization practices now that AI is upending how we search the web. (WSJ $)
+ Your most important customer may be AI. (Revista Tehnologiei MIT)

9 AI-generated recruiters are making job hunting even worse
Avatars can glitch out and stumble over their words. (404 Media)

10 A Soviet-era spacecraft is reentering Earth’s atmosphere
More than 50 years after it misfired on a journey to Venus. (Ars Technica)
+ The world’s next big environmental problem could come from space. (Revista Tehnologiei MIT)

Citatul zilei

“The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.”

—Bill Gates lashes out at Elon Musk’s cuts to USAID in an interview with the Financial Times.

Încă un lucru

The great commercial takeover of low Earth orbit

NASA designed the International Space Station to fly for 20 years. It has lasted six years longer than that, though it is showing its age, and NASA is currently studying how to safely destroy the space laboratory by around 2030.

The ISS never really became what some had hoped: a launching point for an expanding human presence in the solar system. But it did enable fundamental research on materials and medicine, and it helped us start to understand how space affects the human body.

To build on that work, NASA has partnered with private companies to develop new, commercial space stations for research, manufacturing, and tourism. If they are successful, these companies will bring about a new era of space exploration: private rockets flying to private destinations. They’re already planning to do it around the moon. One day, Mars could follow. Citește povestea completă.

—David W. Brown