Neural implants, geothermal AI, and the exomoon that changed everything

This week in tech: progress that's actually happening

Max Hodak, who spent years as president of Neuralink, is now building something he describes as even more ambitious: biohybrid neural interfaces that could reach patients by 2035. The technology sits somewhere between biological tissue and silicon—a hybrid that Hodak believes will "really deform the world in interesting ways." It's the kind of quiet confidence that comes from someone who's already done the hard part once.

Meanwhile, at OpenAI, co-founder Ilya Sutskever is joining a growing group of researchers questioning whether reinforcement learning—the technique that's powered much of recent AI progress—can actually get us to artificial general intelligence at a human expert level. It's a sober moment in a field that rarely pauses to ask if it's chasing the right path. The skepticism itself is progress.

When technology sees what we can't

Augmented reality ski goggles have crossed a threshold this week. The new version can capture landscape details and textures invisible to the naked eye, rendering them in enhanced 3D with less than 30 milliseconds of latency—fast enough that your brain doesn't notice the lag. It's the kind of technology that sounds flashy until you realize it could literally save lives by showing you hazards before your eyes register them.

In manufacturing, a new 3D printing technique called cold metal fusion is making titanium components stronger, faster, and cheaper than traditional methods. The practical implication: parts that were expensive or impossible to produce are suddenly within reach.

The stranger discoveries

Astronomers have now confirmed 6,000 exoplanets. But this week, they may have found something rarer: an exomoon—a moon orbiting an exoplanet. If confirmed, it would be the first ever detected. The universe keeps being more interesting than we expect.

In geothermal energy, a startup called Zanskar is using AI to locate hidden geothermal resources. They've identified what they claim is a commercially viable site for a geothermal power plant—the first such discovery in decades. It's a reminder that the most promising energy solutions sometimes hide in plain sight, waiting for the right tools to find them.

Varda Space Industries says it's proven that manufacturing in orbit actually works. The CEO predicts that within 10 years, specialized spacecraft will routinely return to Earth carrying pharmaceuticals and other products made in the microgravity environment. Within 15 to 20 years, they argue, sending a worker to orbit for a month could cost less than keeping them on Earth. It sounds like science fiction until you realize the math is already working.

The cautions and the reversals

California's ban on self-driving trucks is about to end. Regulators have released revised rules allowing companies to test and deploy autonomous trucks on public highways—a significant shift from where the conversation was even a year ago.

But not everything is moving forward. Meta is considering cutting up to one-third of its metaverse budget next year, pivoting instead toward AI. It's a quiet admission that one bet didn't pay off as expected, and a reallocation toward what actually captures attention.

On the AI-as-your-web-browser front, the pitch sounds compelling: AI agents that can navigate the internet as well as or better than humans. The reality, for now, remains elusive. The gap between the promise and the product is still substantial—a useful reminder that not every technology announcement is equal.