URL: NPR

Technology News

Sunday, April 6, 2025

• Research finds how AI will impact demographics differently
  AI will have more of an impact on certain demographic groups than others. NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Jonathan Hersh, professor at Chapman University, about who will be most affected and why.
  

Saturday, April 5, 2025

• TikTok creators go from sadness and fear to...'whatever!' over app's future
  It's been an emotional rollercoaster for TikTok creators over the past few months, with the app's future uncertain. But there are ways to decompress.
  

Friday, April 4, 2025

• Trump extends TikTok's sell-by deadline again
  On his first day in office, President Trump used an executive order to hit pause on the TikTok ban for 75 days. Now he's pushing back that deadline.
  
• Microsoft turns 50: A look back at everything from the Altair to the Zune
  The company helped launch the software industry and bring a computer to every desktop. Hit products like Windows and the Xbox became household names – but does anyone remember the Zune?
  

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

• As deadline nears, the White House considers leasing TikTok's algorithm from China
  Ahead of a self-imposed April 5 deadline, the Trump administration is close to clinching a deal with Oracle to oversee TikTok's U.S. operations.
  

Monday, March 31, 2025

• AI is great at predicting text. How well can it guide robots?
  It seems like artificial intelligence is everywhere in our virtual lives. It's in our search results and our phones. But what happens when AI moves out of the chat and into the real world? NPR science editor and correspondent Geoff Brumfiel took a trip to the Intelligence through Robotic Interaction at Scale Lab at Stanford University to see how scientists are using AI to power robots and the large hurdles that exist for them to perform even simple tasks.
  
  Read Geoff's full story.
  
  Interested in more AI stories? Email us your ideas at shortwave@npr.org.
  
• Am I a god?! Why "manifesting" your reality is easier than ever
  America is a deeply spiritual nation. Over 70% of us say that we feel spiritual in some way. But – at the same time – we're getting less religious. So for people who are spiritual-but-not-religious – what's replacing organized religion? What do they believe – and where does that show up in their day-to-day lives? In Brittany's series called Losing My Religion, It's Been a Minute is going to find out.
  
  In her final episode of the series, Brittany is investigating so-called manifestation. It's this popular belied that if you want something badly enough, it'll come to you. You might know this idea by other names, like The Law of Attraction, or The Secret. Manifestation spiked in 2020, according to Google Trends, and it's still riding that wave online. Brittany calls on with Tara Isabella Burton, an author and journalist, and New York Magazine's Rebecca Jennings to get to the bottom of this trend: the appeal of manifestation, its symbiotic relationship with the internet, and why it might make us less aware of our humanity.
  
  Want to get to know Brittany? Follow her at @bmluse on socials.
  
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Sunday, March 30, 2025

• How is the tech industry thinking about AI's environmental impact?
  We investigate how the tech industry is thinking about its environmental footprint as it invests in energy-consuming new AI models.
  
• Gambling with Memes
  What do Moo Deng the pygmy hippo, social media sensation Hawk Tuah, and the President of the United States all have in common? They've all inspired highly valuable, highly volatile memecoins. The memecoin began as a sort of joke cryptocurrency, but it soon became very real.
  
  On today's episode of The Sunday Story, we turn to our friends at NPR's Planet Money to help us understand the phenomenon of memecoins. What are they, and how did they go from a one-off joke to a speculative frenzy worth tens of billions of dollars? Who are the winners and losers in this brazen new market?
  

Friday, March 28, 2025

• Trump's changes to a $42 billion broadband program could be a win for Musk's Starlink
  After years of planning, the Trump administration is overhauling a federal universal broadband initiative to open the door to Musk's Starlink satellite service.