Are we alone in the universe?

For most of humanity’s history, we didn’t believe ourselves to be alone. We filled the heavens with gods, monsters, and mythic creatures. It's only in the modern age that our species has started to worry about its place in the cosmos. In this edition of What’s Next in Tech, discover how technology is helping scientists hunt for life throughout the universe. Then, learn about a new AI model from Google DeepMind that predicts extreme weather faster and more accurately, and understand the extreme privacy and national security risks created by data brokers.

Save 25% when you subscribe today and receive full access to MIT Technology Review’s November/December issue on Hard Problems. Gain a deeper understanding of the complex issues shaping our world and the innovative solutions that can drive positive change.?

Scientists are training machine-learning models and designing instruments to hunt for life on other worlds.

The quest to determine if anyone or anything is out there has gained greater scientific footing over the past 50 years. Back then, astronomers had yet to spot a single planet outside our solar system. Now we know the galaxy is teeming with a diversity of worlds.

We’re now getting closer than ever before to learning how common living worlds like ours actually are. New tools, including artificial intelligence, could help scientists look past their preconceived notions of what constitutes life.?

Future instruments will sniff the atmospheres of distant planets and scan samples from our local solar system to see if they contain telltale chemicals in the right proportions for organisms to prosper. But determining whether these planets actually contain organisms is no easy task. Read the story.

Google DeepMind’s weather AI can forecast extreme weather faster and more accurately

This year the Earth has been hit by a record number of unpredictable extreme weather events made worse by climate change. Predicting them faster and with greater accuracy could enable us to prepare better for natural disasters and help save lives. A new AI model from Google DeepMind could make that easier.?

Traditionally, meteorologists use massive computer simulations to make weather predictions. They’re very energy intensive and time-consuming to run, because the simulations take into account many physics-based equations and different weather variables such as temperature, precipitation, pressure, wind, humidity, and cloudiness, one by one.?

Newly published research shows that Google DeepMind’s model, GraphCast, was able to predict weather conditions up to 10 days in advance, more accurately and much faster than the current gold standard. Read the story.

Sign up for The Algorithm, our exclusive AI newsletter, to demystify the latest AI breakthroughs and to cut through the hype.

It’s shockingly easy to buy sensitive data about US military personnel

For as little as $0.12 per record, data brokers in the US are selling sensitive private data about both active-duty military members and veterans, including their names, addresses, geolocation, net worth, and religion, and information about their children and health conditions.?

In an unsettling study published last week, researchers from Duke University approached 12 data brokers and purchased thousands of records about American service members with minimal vetting.

The study highlights the extreme privacy and national security risks created by data brokers. These companies are part of a shadowy multibillion-dollar industry that collects, aggregates, buys, and sells data, practices that are currently legal in the US, exacerbating the erosion of personal and consumer privacy. Read the story.

Get ahead with our most-discussed stories:

1. Noise-canceling headphones could let you pick and choose the sounds you want to hear — A neural network can recognize and filter out certain sounds, changing the way we choose to experience the world around us.
2. A man with Parkinson’s regained the ability to walk thanks to a spinal implant — The implant delivers bursts of electrical signals, stimulating his spinal cord to make his leg muscles move.?
3. This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI — The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models.?

Images: Ariel Davis; Stephanie Arnett/MITTR | Getty; Stephanie Arnett/MITTR | Getty