This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through October 12)

AI’s Penicillin and X-Ray Moment
Matteo Wong | The Atlantic
“When the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel wrote his will in 1895, he designated funds to reward those who ‘have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.’ The resulting Nobel Prizes have since been awarded to the discoverers of penicillin, X-rays, and the structure of DNA—and, as of today, to two scientists who, decades ago, laid the foundations for modern artificial intelligence.”

‘I Applied to 2,843 Roles’: The Rise of AI-Powered Job Application Bots
Jason Koebler | 404 Media
“Before I put my laptop aside at the restaurant I’m working at, I open a terminal window, enter a single command, and hit enter. The server gives me my breakfast and I push my laptop away as the bot springs to life, opening a Chrome window and navigating to LinkedIn. It starts scrolling through job listings, and opens a few of them.”

They Were Made Without Eggs or Sperm. Are They Human?
Kristen V. Brown | The Atlantic
“In recent years, Hanna and other scientists have made remarkable progress in cultivating pluripotent stem cells to mimic the structure and function of a real, growing embryo. But as researchers solve technical problems, they are still left with moral ones. When is a copy so good that it’s equivalent to the real thing? And more to the point, when should the lab experiment be treated—legally and ethically—as human?”

Ian Brooke Wants to Revolutionize Flight as We Know It
Ross Pomeroy | Big Think
“The 34-year-old Brooke is CEO of Astro Mechanica, a Y Combinator-backed startup that has invented a new kind of jet engine. It’s radically more efficient and versatile than anything that has come before. …Astro Mechanica claims the Turboelectric Adaptive Engine will unlock massive efficiency gains across a whole range of speeds, but especially at supersonic speeds between Mach 1.8 to Mach 3.4.”

The World’s First Commercial Space Station Looks Like a Luxury Hotel Inside
Carlton Reid | Wired
“Aluminum for spacecraft interiors is passé; what space-farers apparently want is wood. That’s the bet from Vast, the makers of Haven-1, the world’s first commercial space station set to be placed in low-Earth orbit by the SpaceX Falcon rocket next year. First paying customers will be getting on board in 2026, and judging by the final designs just released of the station’s cozy interior, they’ll feel right at home.”

The Kevin Kelly Interview: The Power of ‘Radical Optimism’
Eric Markowitz | Big Think
“Kelly—author, philosopher, and co-founder of Wired magazine—insists that to truly play the long game and rebuild society for the better, we must embrace one simple yet profound mindset: optimism. ‘Optimism,’ he has written, ‘enables us to reach good and great things beyond the capability of a single generation.’ He also believes that in business, embracing optimism—and a long-term perspective—can lead to compounding advantages.”

The ‘Beautiful Confusion’ of the First Billion Years Comes Into View
Rebecca Boyle | Quanta
“The galaxies were never supposed to be so bright. They were never supposed to be so big. And yet there they are—oddly large, luminous objects that keep appearing in images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Kevin Hainline(opens a new tab) is part of a team that uses the JWST to find these galaxies, whose brightness, apparent mass, and sheer existence a virtual eyeblink after the Big Bang are among the biggest surprises from the three-year-old mission.”

TECH

The O.G. of Tech Startups Says AI Changes Everything
Julianne Pepitone | IEEE Spectrum
“Now [Steve] Blank, who teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford University, is thinking about how artificial intelligence tools are poised to transform his lean startup method—by supercharging the process of testing hypotheses, developing novel products, and creating businesses with a speed that humans could never match.”

Image Credit: Marcel Strauß / Unsplash