In some San Francisco neighborhoods, automobiles with no driver behind the wheel have change into a typical sight. Lots of the metropolis’s ghostly driverless automobiles are industrial robotaxis, immediately competing with taxis and ride-hailing corporations.Â
I spent the previous yr overlaying robotaxis for the San Francisco Examiner and have taken practically a dozen rides in Cruise driverless automobiles over the previous few months. Throughout my reporting, I’ve been struck by the dearth of urgency within the public discourse about robotaxis. It’s excessive time for the general public and its elected representatives to play a extra energetic function in shaping the way forward for this new know-how. Prefer it or not, robotaxis are right here.Â
Now comes the tough work of deciding what to do about them. Learn the complete story.
The chip patterning machines that may form computing’s subsequent act
Once we speak about computing nowadays, we have a tendency to speak about software program and the engineers who write it. However with out the {hardware} and the bodily sciences that enabled their creation—disciplines like optics, supplies science, and mechanical engineering—fashionable computing would have been inconceivable.
Semiconductor lithography, the manufacturing course of liable for producing laptop chips, stands on the middle of a geopolitical competitors to regulate the way forward for computing energy. And the pace at which new lithography programs and parts are developed will form not solely the pace of computing progress but in addition the stability of energy and income throughout the tech trade. Learn the complete story.
—Chris Miller
