This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How “personhood credentials” could help prove you’re a human online As AI models become better at mimicking human behavior, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between real human internet users and sophisticated systems … Read more
Martin Tschammer, head of security at the startup Synthesia, which creates AI-generated hyperrealistic deepfakes, says he agrees with the principle driving personhood credentials: the need to verify humans online. However, he is unsure whether it’s the right solution or whether it would be practical to implement. He also expresses skepticism over who would run such … Read more
Editing human embryos is restricted in much of the world—and making an edited baby is fully illegal in most countries surveyed by legal scholars. But advancing technology could render the embryo issue moot. New ways of adding CRISPR, the revolutionary gene editing tool, to the bodies of people already born could let them easily receive … Read more
But if you press harder, you may notice a second way of sensing the touch: through your knuckles and other joints. That sensation–a feeling of torque, to use the robotics jargon–is exactly what the researchers have re-created in their new system. Their robotic arm contains six sensors, each of which can register even incredibly small … Read more