Microsoft is making a big bet on artificial intelligence. The company announced “the third phase” of its relationship with OpenAI — the creators of ChatGPT and Dall-E 2, among other impressive/concerning AI demos — which includes “a multiyear, multibillion dollar investment” and the commitment that Microsoft will be the exclusive cloud provider for the AI company.

Taken on its own, this is a natural extension of pre-existing financial relationship, but in the context of the last two weeks of brutal tech layoffs — including major cuts to Microsoft’s own augmented and virtual reality teams — it seems as good a signal as any that Microsoft considers offering AI-enabled services to be a much more viable future than the metaverse.

Before humans can land on Mars or probe distant, icy worlds in our Solar System, we’ll need new technologies to get us there.

Every year, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program awards grant money to scientists and engineers to explore new technology concepts that could boost future space missions.

At this point, the concepts are just that — concepts. These new technologies aren’t a reality yet. But with financial support from the competition, teams hope to actually build and test them.

Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor star in a sci-fi satire that could’ve used more edge.

In the not-so-distant future of The Pod Generation, technology threatens to render nature obsolete. Sophia Barthes’ gentle, pastel-hued sci-fi film introduces a quasi-utopian society in which ever-present AI assistants prepare the morning coffee, monitor “bliss indexes,” and conduct therapy sessions in Zen-like wellness chambers.

Instead of going to the countryside to take in the great outdoors, people unwind in nature pods and swing by fresh air bars to enjoy deep inhales from oxygen masks. Everything feels comfortable and pleasant, because it’s been designed that way.