Google rerouted over 100 flights to cut climate-warming contrails
A trial involving thousands of flights between the US and Europe has found that planes produce fewer contrails if they follow flight paths recommended by an artificial intelligence to reduce their global warming impact. The streaks of condensation triggered by soot particles produced by aircraft engines are thought to cause more warming than the carbon dioxide that planes emit. Research has also shown that some ice-rich regions of the upper atmosphere are more likely to form contrails when a plane passes through them, and that AI can predict where these regions will be using detailed weather forecasts. We're finally solving the puzzle of how clouds will affect our climate There have been small-scale trials showing that planes rerouted through these regions will produce fewer contrails, but the practice has yet to be applied to commercial flights at scale. Now, Dinesh Sanekommu at Google and his colleagues have used an AI contrail-forecasting tool to give routing advice in a randomised control trial of more than 2400 real American Airlines flights.
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Route-planning AI cut climate-warming contrails on over 100 flights
A trial involving thousands of flights between the US and Europe has found that planes produce fewer contrails if they follow flight paths recommended by an artificial intelligence to reduce their global warming impact. The streaks of condensation triggered by soot particles produced by aircraft engines are thought to cause more warming than the carbon dioxide that planes emit. Research has also shown that some ice-rich regions of the upper atmosphere are more likely to form contrails when a plane passes through them, and that AI can predict where these regions will be using detailed weather forecasts. We're finally solving the puzzle of how clouds will affect our climate There have been small-scale trials showing that planes bypassing these regions will produce fewer contrails, but the practice has yet to be applied to commercial flights at scale. Now, Dinesh Sanekommu at Google and his colleagues have used an AI contrail-forecasting tool to give routing advice in a randomised control trial of more than 2400 real American Airlines flights.
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Nvidia's DLSS 5 isn't a tool. It's an invasion
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. When AI starts redrawing characters and lighting, who's really in control of the art? Because it makes a game look how Nvidia thinks it should look--and uses AI to do it. Nvidia's newly-announced DLSS 5 is an Nvidia feature that injects new details like textures and lighting via generative AI into supported games, all done using the GPU. It's quickly become the focal point of an increasingly vicious battle between human artists and AI.
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Government backtracks on AI and copyright after outcry from major artists
We have listened, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said on Wednesday, saying the government no longer favours that approach. However, the government's position is now unclear, saying it no longer has a preferred option for what to do next. Kendall said the government had engaged extensively with people in the creative and AI industries. It is attempting to balance the interests of the two sectors by giving creatives control how their work is used, while recognising AI models need to be trained on work such as writing, music and video. In a report published on Wednesday, the government said there was no consensus on how these objectives should be achieved.
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How marine mammals stay hydrated in a salty sea
This adorable sea lion has to eat five to eight percent of its body weight every day to stay healthy and hydrated. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Over the long and complicated course of evolutionary history, mammals independently turned towards water to make a home multiple times. While many of the warm-blooded animals that abandoned dry land for a watery habitat no longer exist, we still have plenty of stunning examples: Think dolphins, whales, manatees, porpoises. There's even a whole suborder of carnivores called the pinnipeds, which includes seals, sea lions, and walruses who move between land and water.
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A multi-armed robot for assisting with agricultural tasks
In their paper Force Aware Branch Manipulation To Assist Agricultural Tasks, which was presented at IROS 2025,, and proposed a methodology to safely manipulate branches to aid various agricultural tasks. We interviewed Madhav to find out more. Could you give us an overview of the problem you were addressing in the paper? Our work is motivated by StickBug [1], a multi-armed robotic system for precision pollination in greenhouse environments. One of the main challenges StickBug faces is that many flowers are partially or fully hidden within the plant canopy, making them difficult to detect and reach directly for pollination.
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The Download: The Pentagon's new AI plans, and next-gen nuclear reactors
The Download: The Pentagon's new AI plans, and next-gen nuclear reactors Plus: The OpenClaw frenzy has led to a new Nvidia product. The Pentagon plans to set up secure environments for generative AI companies to train military-specific versions of their models on classified data, MIT Technology Review has learned. AI models like Anthropic's Claude are already used to answer questions in classified settings, including for analyzing targets in Iran. But allowing them to train on and learn from classified data is a major new development that presents unique security risks. It would also bring AI firms closer to classified data than ever before. What do new nuclear reactors mean for waste?
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The Defense Department reportedly plans to train AI models on classified military data
The models will be separate versions of models specifically for military use. The Pentagon is making plans to have AI companies train versions of their models specifically for military use on classified information, according to the . If true, it wouldn't come as a surprise, seeing as the US is aiming to become an "AI-first warfighting force, based on the statement [PDF] released by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth earlier this year. The department is already using AI models in the military: For instance, the US reportedly used Anthropic's Claude to help with the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and with its attack on Iran, even after President Trump ordered federal agencies to ban its technology. But models trained on actual classified data could give more accurate and detailed responses, say, for situations similar to what happened in the past that aren't public information.
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