From new constraints on police surveillance tools to a surprising breakthrough in cloning and a push to include children in a landmark biological map, today’s technology roundup covers the key developments shaping the field.
Flock, the police technology company that operates a nationwide network of license plate readers, is overhauling how officers can access its system. The change comes amid growing criticism of mass surveillance and reports that some officers used the technology to stalk or harass romantic partners, both current and former. To curb such behavior, the company is now requiring officers to provide a criminal case number before running a search. Flock is also expanding automated auditing designed to detect suspicious queries. Yet because Flock does not verify the validity of those case numbers, there is still room for officers to maneuver around the safeguards.
Here are the details of what Flock is changing and where the loopholes remain.
A CRISPR route to female clones
Scientists this week reported that they have successfully transformed male mouse embryos into female ones. Using a CRISPR-based approach, they surgically removed the Y chromosome, allowing them to generate female clones from male mice. The team hopes the technique could be enlisted in conservation work, especially when a species is down to just a few individuals. Cloning itself has a broad range of uses, from genetically modifying livestock to resurrecting beloved pets, and potentially even producing ‘brainless’ human replicas. This story is adapted from The Checkup, our weekly biotech newsletter.
A cellular atlas for children
Deanne Taylor’s involvement with the Human Cell Atlas began in 2017 when she attended a presentation about the project, which aims to map every cell in the human body. She was initially impressed, then concerned. The researchers had only planned to study adults. “That’s when my little alarm went off,” she said. “Not again.” Children’s cells express genes differently than adult cells, which can cause drastically different, and sometimes deadly, responses to drugs that adults tolerate without issue. Taylor has since pushed to include children in the Atlas and is developing a major database of healthy pediatric tissue. The goal is to provide researchers with a reference for how children grow, and perhaps reveal how adult diseases may have roots in childhood.
Today’s tech headlines from around the web
Ukrainian drones defeated U.S. forces in a military exercise, wiping out an American tank brigade in the war game, according to the Wall Street Journal. The drill exposed U.S. vulnerabilities to drone attacks, as reported by Ars Technica. President Trump has declared 100% tariffs on many drones, per The Verge, and Europe has a drone-filled vision for future wars, according to MIT Technology Review.
OpenAI and Anthropic are cutting prices to compete with Chinese AI, as rising AI bills push companies toward cheaper models, according to the Financial Times. China’s Z.ai aims to rival Anthropic and OpenAI in coding, per Bloomberg, while DeepSeek is rapidly pushing up API prices, Quartz reports.
Apple has trained its own AI model for China with support from Alibaba, according to Reuters. A China-tailored model could give Apple greater control and make it the first foreign firm with a Beijing-approved AI model, The Verge reports. Meanwhile, Chinese AI has divided the White House, according to MIT Technology Review.
U.S. efforts to build humanoid robots face a Chinese supply chain, as an affordable device requires Chinese parts, according to the New York Times. Chinese humanoids have business concerns of their own, CNBC reports, and gig workers are training humanoids at home, according to MIT Technology Review.
People are marrying chatbots, and lawmakers want to stop it, as a response to the rise of AI companion apps, according to Wired. Chatbots are pushing us toward a post-human internet, per the New York Times.
Researchers have cast doubts over Anthropic’s new AI watermarks, as the marks can disappear when text is rewritten, according to Nature.
AI is scrambling the political map, with data centers and surveillance creating unlikely political alliances, Axios reports.
Oxygen has been found nearly two miles underground, suggesting Earth’s deep biosphere could support more life than thought, according to The New Yorker.
A new study challenges our understanding of memory storage: mice retained memories after losing half of their synapses, according to New Scientist.
An Indian startup is testing cancer-sniffing dogs for early detection, with AI interpreting the dogs’ responses to patients’ breath samples, Bloomberg reports.
Additionally, a former OpenAI employee told Wired that the company’s rogue agent hack was a watershed moment for AI safety and cybersecurity.
AI laboratories for materials discovery
Startups flush with cash are building AI-assisted laboratories to find materials faster and cheaper than ever before, but they’re still waiting for their ‘ChatGPT moment.’ The most time-consuming and expensive part of materials discovery isn’t imagining new structures; it’s making them in the real world. You don’t know whether a material can actually be synthesized or if it will have the desired properties until you try. Startups like Lila Sciences and Periodic Labs are now building labs where AI agents can design experiments, control robots, and analyze results, potentially compressing the discovery process from decades to a few years or even less.
A pleasant diversion
For a bit of comfort and fun: astronomers have created the largest-ever 2D map of the universe, you can lose yourself in breathtaking photos of the total solar eclipse, musician Andy Brewer has composed an entire song using only equalization, and the National Gallery’s Imaginarium turns masterpieces into digital adventures. A big thanks to reader Peter Ryan for the last find!
More quick hits
OpenAI has finally unveiled its long-awaited ‘super app.’ New York has become the first state to enact a moratorium on data centers. Meta is pausing an AI training program that tracked workers’ keystrokes. And SpaceX is now valued higher than Amazon.
From tighter surveillance controls to breakthroughs in cloning and a more complete picture of childhood health, today’s developments underscore the complexity and pace of change in technology. We’ll keep watching these stories as they evolve.
