Tech Pulse

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning robotics, wearable technology, and digital wellness. As humanoid robots grow bigger and more common in factories, engineers race to answer one question: what happens if a 200-pound machine loses its balance beside a person? A reporter surveys the safeguards meant to prevent it. Smartglasses are multiplying, but nobody agrees on what they'...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate 2 articles spanning artificial intelligence, psychology, and medical technology. Psychiatric researchers have identified three chatbot behaviors -- excessive agreement, mirrored language, and hyperpersonalized replies -- that can pull users into an "amplification spiral." Clinicians report more patients turning to AI for emotional support, with some developing d...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate one article spanning artificial intelligence and consumer technology. Apple finally delivers the AI-powered Siri it promised two years ago, and a reporter gets early hands-on access at Apple Park. The new assistant blends on-device and cloud-based models, can scan messages and emails to answer personal questions, and even uses the camera to size up a bookshelf....

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning artificial intelligence in photography, sports officiating technology, and wearable health sensing. Apple's iPhone camera chief sits down to discuss the company's new AI photo tools coming in iOS 27. Features like Extend and Spatial Reframe can generate pixels that weren't in the original image — filling in backgrounds, widening frames, s...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning sleep technology, artificial intelligence, and biosecurity. A writer puts the Eight Sleep Pod — a $3,500 AI-powered mattress topper favored by billionaires — through two months of testing. The device promises to optimize sleep through temperature control and data tracking, but ends up raising harder questions about what it means to try to...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning Waymo's new Chinese-made robotaxi, the hidden risks of trolling scam texts, and the growing backlash against autonomous vehicles spreading across American cities. Waymo is rolling out a brand-new vehicle called the Ojai — a pale-blue, sensor-studded minivan built from the ground up for driverless operation. The piece details what makes it...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate four articles spanning license plate surveillance, AI elder care, autonomous AI experiments, and robotic exoskeletons. A bipartisan amendment in Congress could end police license plate tracking nationwide — not through the courts, but by tying federal highway dollars to a camera ban. The proposal is a single sentence long, but its consequences would reach nearly...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning AI-powered dementia care, personal productivity, and hearing health. A startup uses an AI chatbot named Sunny to help dementia patients practice conversation and memory exercises between telehealth visits. Families report brighter moods and improved social engagement, and early data suggest cognitive gains. The approach builds on a Harvar...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning home surveillance, emotional robotics, and screenless health tracking. AI-powered security cameras are generating confusion and more than a few laughs. They're designed to describe what they see in plain language — but the results can be wildly wrong, turning raccoons into bears and brake lights into house fires. Homeowners report false a...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning aging-in-place technology, AI voice dictation, and wearable health tracking. A growing field of "age tech" is helping older Americans stay in their homes longer — through robotic companion pets, AI-powered check-in robots, and remote monitoring tools. But a researcher studying the ethics of these technologies raises hard questions about p...

This week on Tech Pulse, we ask three uncomfortable questions: What happens to human thinking when AI does it for us? What happens to the combustion engine when EVs stumble? And what happens to the guide dog when you give it a language model? A neuroscientist tested humans, AIs, and human-AI teams on real-world forecasting. Most hybrid teams just handed the wheel to the AI. The small fraction that...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate four articles spanning AI-assisted personal finance, space communication technology, battery repurposing, and AI's acceptance in journalism. Most people using AI for financial advice are doing it wrong — not because the technology can't help, but because vague prompts get vague answers. An MIT professor walks through what a strong prompt actually looks like and...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning assistive technology, battery science, and analog parenting. A blind ultramarathoner takes on the NYC Half Marathon with AI-powered glasses that describe the world around him in real time — attempting to hand off some of a guide runner's duties to technology. What the experiment reveals about AI's limits is as interesting as what it gets...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning artificial intelligence, medicine, and consumer technology. A reporter hands her full medical records to two leading AI chatbots and puts them through three real health scenarios — with a physician grading the results in real time. The bots are more capable than expected, but the experiment surfaces a harder question: what happens to your...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning consumer rights, accessibility, and space exploration. A New York IT professional got so frustrated when his smart garage door was hobbled by a manufacturer update that he built his own fix. His story pulls back the curtain on a question every connected-device owner should be asking: what rights do you actually have when a product changes...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning electric vehicle charging, smartphone battery care, and the neuroscience of digital distraction. A Chinese automaker can now charge an EV from 10 to 70 percent in five minutes. The piece is honest about why that breakthrough won't translate to American roads anytime soon — and what's standing in the way. Leaving your phone plugged in over...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning urban air mobility, consumer hardware, and artificial intelligence in the enterprise. Electric air taxis could be ferrying passengers across American cities as early as June — before they're even fully certified. A federal pilot program is making it happen, and the piece is clear-eyed about what that means and what it doesn't. Apple's $59...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning navigation technology, Apple history, and budget consumer hardware. GPS is under siege. Cheap jamming devices are blinding ships, planes, and guided weapons — and a reporter surveys the scramble to replace a system the world built everything on. The answer, it turns out, isn't one technology. It's several working together. A new book trac...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning teen safety, smartphone security, and AI fitness coaching. Instagram is now alerting parents when their teenagers repeatedly search for self-harm or suicide terms — a move that lands as governments worldwide debate whether to ban social media for minors altogether. The piece asks whether this is genuine protection or a platform still play...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning elder care technology, gut health research, and the battle for the family living room. Keeping tabs on an aging parent from a distance is one of the quiet anxieties of modern life — and a new generation of in-home radar systems, discreet wearables, and location trackers is trying to help families do it without turning mom or dad's home in...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning cellular reliability, email overload, and AI-powered product development. Verizon went dark for ten hours across the country, and a columnist found herself stranded an hour and a half from home with no directions, no way to call her family, and an SOS icon where her signal bars used to be. The piece is part personal frustration, part poin...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate one article spanning brain-computer interface technology. A retired French schoolteacher who lost the ability to read due to macular degeneration can now read again — thanks to a two-millimeter chip implanted directly on her retina. Her story opens a sweeping look at the race to merge computers with the human brain, and what that technology could eventually mean...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate four articles spanning smartphone automation, Silicon Valley rivalry, artificial intelligence in the boardroom, and subscription overload. Apple's Shortcuts app has quietly become one of the most powerful tools on your phone — and a new integration with Apple Intelligence makes it more useful than ever. A writer shows how to build automations that can pull detai...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning the future of work, AI wearables, and the surprise toy of the year. AI is going to eliminate jobs — but it's also going to create ones that don't exist yet. A writer sketches four plausible new roles: the person who explains AI decisions to judges and regulators, the expert who helps companies choose the right AI for the right task, the a...

This week on Tech Pulse, we narrate three articles spanning assistive technology, smart home innovation, and the space race. Meta's AI glasses were designed for mainstream consumers — but blind and visually impaired users have found ways to make them genuinely useful, from reading menus aloud to identifying objects in real time. The piece profiles one legally blind athlete who says the glasses mak...