{"id":418370,"date":"2026-04-26T12:12:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T12:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/418370\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T12:12:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T12:12:27","slug":"this-weeks-awesome-tech-stories-from-around-the-web-through-april-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/418370\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week\u2019s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through April 25)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Future<\/a><\/p>\n

The People Do Not Yearn for Automation<\/a>Nilay Patel | The Verge<\/p>\n

“Not everything about our lives can be measured and automated and optimized, and it shouldn\u2019t be. And so the tech industry is rushing forward to put AI everywhere at enormous cost\u2014energy, emissions, manufacturing capacity, the ability to buy RAM\u2014and locked into the narrow framework of software brain without realizing they are also asking people to be fundamentally less human.”<\/p>\n

BIOTECHNOLOGY<\/a><\/p>\n

AI-Designed Drugs by a DeepMind Spinoff Are Headed to Human Trials
<\/a>Emily Mullin | Wired ($)<\/p>\n

“In a\u00a0technical paper [released earlier this year], the company touts that the [new IsoDDE] platform more than doubles the accuracy of AlphaFold 3. The startup has formed partnerships with Eli Lilly and Novartis to work together on AI drug discovery and is also advancing its own ‘broad and exciting pipeline of new medicines’ in oncology and immunology, Jaderberg said.”<\/p>\n

Computing<\/a><\/p>\n

We Might Finally Know How to Use Quantum Computers to Boost AI<\/a>Karmela Padavic-Callaghan | New Scientist ($)<\/p>\n

“They showed not only that this approach can work but that it would allow the quantum computer to process more data at a smaller memory cost than any conventional computer. The memory advantage is so large, in fact, that a quantum computer made from about 300 error-proof building blocks called logical qubits would outperform a classical computer built using every atom in the observable universe, says Zhao.”<\/p>\n

Future<\/a><\/p>\n

New Gas-Powered Data Centers Could Emit More Greenhouse Gases Than Entire Nations<\/a>Molly Taft | Wired ($)<\/p>\n

“A Wired review of permits for data center projects using natural gas and linked to OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and xAI shows they could emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year.\u00a0…As tech companies race to secure massive power deals to build out hundreds of data centers across the country, these projects represent just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the potential climate cost of the AI boom.”<\/p>\n

TECH<\/a><\/p>\n

Anthropic Has Surged to a Trillion-Dollar Valuation on Secondary Markets, Overtaking OpenAI<\/a>Ben Bergman | Business Insider<\/p>\n

“Desperate buyers are in a race to secure a dwindling supply of secondary shares in Anthropic, driving the AI company’s valuation on some sites to $1 trillion, a price that would have seemed unthinkable even a few weeks ago. Meanwhile, traders Business Insider spoke with are seeing slumping demand for OpenAI, which is now trading at a discount to Anthropic, despite OpenAI being valued at $852 billion, more than twice Anthropic’s valuation in their most recent funding rounds.”<\/p>\n

TECH<\/a><\/p>\n

You\u2019re About to Feel the AI Money Squeeze<\/a>Hayden Field | The Verge<\/p>\n

“Ads, rate limits, feature restrictions, price hikes. The AI free ride is over. …To reach that bare minimum of 7 percent [return on invested capital], Gartner forecasts that large AI companies would need to earn cumulatively close to $7 trillion in AI-driven revenue through 2029, which is close to $2 trillion per year by the end of the period.”<\/p>\n

Future<\/a><\/p>\n

BMW Is One Step Closer to Selling You a Color-Changing Car<\/a>Andrew Liszewski | The Verge<\/p>\n

“The new BMW iX3 Flow Edition is potentially the most exciting of all of BMW\u2019s concepts as it embeds the E Ink Prism technology directly into the structure of the vehicle\u2019s hood panel, instead of just slapping it on top. The new approach has ‘undergone BMW\u2019s stringent quality testing’ so that it meets the ‘requirements of automotive engineering and everyday use,’ according to a\u00a0release from E Ink.”<\/p>\n

Biotechnology<\/a><\/p>\n

The FDA Gives the Green Light to the First Gene Therapy for Deafness<\/a>Rob Stein | NPR<\/p>\n

“‘That was like the most surreal moment a mother can feel when your son first hears your voice,’ [said Sierra Smith]. The\u00a0treatment [Smith’s son] received\u00a0was the one just approved by the FDA. …The FDA’s decision was based on the results from the treatment of 20 patients born with a defective version of a gene known as OTOF, which is necessary to transmit sound from the ears to the brain.”<\/p>\n

Energy<\/a><\/p>\n

Will Fusion Power Get Cheap? Don\u2019t Count On It.<\/a>Casey Crownhart | MIT Technology Review ($)<\/p>\n

“Technologies tend to get less expensive over time. Lithium-ion batteries are now about 90% cheaper than they were in 2013. But historically, different technologies tend to go through this curve at different rates. And the cost of fusion might not sink as quickly as the prices of batteries or solar.”<\/p>\n

Biotechnology<\/a><\/p>\n

A Startup Says It Grew Human Sperm in a Lab\u2014and Used It to Make Embryos<\/a>Emily Mullin | Wired ($)<\/p>\n

“The process involves isolating sperm-making stem cells from testicular tissue and coaxing the cells into becoming fully-fledged sperm in a dish. Scientists have been attempting to produce sperm outside the body, known as in vitro spermatogenesis, for almost a century. A Japanese team was the first to produce viable mouse sperm in the lab in 2011, but making human sperm has turned out to be a more difficult task.”<\/p>\n

Artificial Intelligence<\/a><\/p>\n

Are OpenAI and Anthropic Moving Away From Reasoning Tech?<\/a>Stephanie Palazzolo | The Information ($)<\/p>\n

“Early signs point to both\u00a0Spud\u00a0and\u00a0Mythos\u00a0being more intelligent pretrained models, meaning they got smart during the initial part of the development process. Now, OpenAI\u2019s upcoming Spud model is noticeably better at answering tough questions without relying on reasoning, said two people familiar with it.”<\/p>\n

Future<\/a><\/p>\n

Only Antimatter Provides the Energy We Need for Interstellar Travel<\/a>Ethan Siegel | Big Think<\/p>\n

“If our goal is to eventually extend our reach not just to the other worlds of our Solar System, but to exoplanets around other stars, we\u2019ll need a different, more efficient method of propulsion than chemical-based rockets can supply. The most efficient form of energy generation, theoretically, is to reach 100%, and only one fuel is capable of doing that: matter-antimatter annihilation. Here\u2019s why that\u2019s the ultimate dream, and how we might conceivably get there.”<\/p>\n

Biotechnology<\/a><\/p>\n

If a Bird Flu Pandemic Starts, We May Have an MRNA Vaccine Ready<\/a>Michael Le Page | New Scientist ($)<\/p>\n

“It was roughly a year after the earliest cases of covid-19 before the first vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus were ready for roll-out. By then millions had died worldwide and economies were devastated. In the advent of a bird flu pandemic, we will be able to react more rapidly, because we should have an mRNA vaccine already approved and ready to go. A phase III trial of a such a vaccine is now getting under way in the UK and the US.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Future The People Do Not Yearn for AutomationNilay Patel | The Verge “Not everything about our lives can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,141718,61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-418370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-curation","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}