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China’s Moonshot AI Releases Model to Challenge Top US SystemsTracy Qu and Raffaele Huang | The Wall Street Journal ($) "Moonshot said Friday that it planned to fully open-source the model, called Kimi K3, by late this month, where people will be generally free to download and adapt.

When you interact with a large language model (LLM)—one of the systems behind chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude—it can feel as though you are in contact with another conscious mind. But are you, really? Some prominent scientists, such as Geoff Hinton and Richard Dawkins, claim you are. But most experts remain skeptical, arguing that the impressive cognitive capacities of LLMs occur in the absence of consciousness.

Thinking is hard. It’s no wonder we lean on technology to lighten the load. We use calculators instead of doing long division by hand, GPS or Google Maps for navigation, and search engines instead of countless trips to the library. Yet just a few decades ago, getting around meant unfolding paper maps, and looking up a word required leafing through a hefty dictionary. Cognitive offloading of mental tasks to tools makes us more efficient. What’s the harm? Then along came ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.

Stress does more than take a toll on mental health. After a particularly taxing week or month, it’s easier to catch a cold and harder to recover. Health issues build up as stress lingers, raising the risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and a weakened immune system. Chronic stress is often treated as an unavoidable part of modern life.

Watchers held their breath as the robot made its first incision. Hovering over its patient, an anesthetized pig, with a robotic assistant standing nearby, it navigated to the gallbladder and gently removed it. The operation marked the debut of humanoid robots in a standard surgical setting. The robot, named Surgie, wasn't autonomous; rather, it was controlled by an expert surgeon. But the study is a step toward using humanoid robots as collaborators in minimally invasive surgery.

Khosla-Backed Startup Claims Breakthrough With Largest-Ever AI Model on an iPhoneAaron Tilley | The Information ($) "The largest AI models, which can measure in the trillions of parameters, are still far too big to run on mobile devices.

Cancer researchers just found a new way to take on tumors. CAR T cell therapy revolutionized blood cancer treatment by supercharging a patient’s own immune cells to hunt down cancers. But the approach has struggled in solid cancers. These are some of our top killers—breast, lung, prostate. Roughly two million Americans are expected to be diagnosed with cancer in 2026, and over 600,000 will likely succumb to the disease.

Synthetic biologists have long dreamed of constructing artificial cells from the bottom up. Researchers have now taken a major step in this direction by demonstrating that non-living components can be assembled into a system that grows, copies its DNA, and divides. The genomic revolution transformed our ability to understand and manipulate cellular machinery, allowing scientists to rewire cells' genetic circuitry to fight disease, produce valuable chemicals, and make crops more resilient.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed what they describe as a fundamentally new type of vaccine using artificial intelligence. The vaccine’s key component was designed entirely by AI and has now been tested in people for the first time. The goal is ambitious: a single vaccine that works not just against all known human coronavirus variants, but against related bat viruses that could jump from animals to humans and cause future pandemics.

My octogenarian father-in-law is trilingual and a lifelong fan of the World Cup. As he cheers on his favorite teams in English, Spanish, or French—sometimes switching between them mid-sentence—I’m always amazed at how easy it seems. Scientists have long been fascinated by the brain’s ability to learn and retain multiple languages. Even after years of disuse, a brief exposure can quickly revive a language without having to consciously relearn its grammar or vocabulary.