Corpse flower countdown: Stink Floyd nears bloom
The big picture: When? "That's the million-dollar question!" Reiman spokesperson Andrew Gogerty tells Axios.
"We know it's close, but that's all we know."
The intrigue: Corpse flowers, endangered plants originating from Sumatra, are the drama queens of the plant world — taking up to a decade to bloom for the first time and remaining unpredictable.
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Axios
3 days ago
- Axios
Heatwaves are melting students' ability to learn these subjects
A massive report studying nearly 14.5 million students in 61 countries found that long-term heat exposure is interfering with students' abilities to learn —and prolonged heat streaks are only getting worse. Why it matters: Increasingly high temperatures are worsening disparate educational outcomes, with the potential for long-term impacts on graduation rates and cognitive ability to grow as the globe continues to warm. Zoom in: The new systematic review of seven studies found that students' cognitive abilities were most likely to be impacted when doing complex tasks like math, over more "simpler ones" like reading. An analysis of over 12,000 U.S. districts found that long-term exposure to high temperatures during the day specifically reduced students' mathematics scores by 11%. Lower-income students are 6.2% more likely to attend schools with inadequate air conditioning when compared to those who live in high-income areas. One study estimated that by 2050, a potential temperature increase of 1.5°C (2.7° F) in the U.S. could reduce the performance of elementary school students, as measured by math and English tests grades, by 9.8%, if no adaptation measures are taken. Yes, but: Adaption by increasing the use of air conditioning appears to be successful at reducing the cognitive effects, as Axios has previously reported. "Without air conditioning, each 1° F increase in school year temperature reduces the amount learned that year by one percent," a separate study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found. A 2024 report from the Center for American Progress estimated that it'll cost more than $4.4 billion nationally for tens of thousands of public schools to install or upgrade energy-efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems to meet increased cooling needs. Zoom out: Millions of American children are attending school in "urban heat zones," according to a recent report by environmental advocacy group Climate Central. The group studied America's 65 largest cities, reviewing data collected from nearly 6.2 million enrolled students among more than 12,000 schools. Roughly 76% of students live in places where the built environment around them adds at least an additional 8°F of heat.
Axios
27-07-2025
- Axios
AI's global race in the dark
The U.S.'s great AI race with China, now freshly embraced by President Trump, is a competition in the dark with no clear prize or finish line. Why it matters: Similar "races" of the past — like the nuclear arms race and the space race — have sparked innovation, but victories haven't lasted long or meant much. The big picture: Both Silicon Valley and the U.S. government now agree that we must invest untold billions to build supporting infrastructure for an error-prone, energy-hungry technology with an unproven business model and an unpredictable impact on the economy and jobs. What they're saying:"America is the country that started the AI race. And as president of the United States, I'm here today to declare that America is going to win it," Trump said at a Wednesday event titled "Winning the AI Race." Policy experts and industry leaders who promote the "race" idea argue that the U.S. and China are in a head-to-head competition to win the future of AI by achieving research breakthroughs, establishing the technology's standards and breaking the AGI or "superintelligence" barrier. They suggest that the world faces a binary choice between free, U.S.-developed AI imbued with democratic values or a Chinese alternative that's under the thumb of the Communist Party. Flashback: The last time a scientific race had truly world-shaping consequences was during the Second World War, as the Manhattan Project beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb. But Germany surrendered well before the U.S. had revealed or made use of its discovery. The nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union that followed was a decades-long stalemate that cost fortunes and more than once left the planet teetering on an apocalyptic brink. The 1960s space race was similarly inconclusive. Russia got humanity into space ahead of the U.S., but the U.S. made it to the moon first. Once that leg of the race was over, both countries retreated from further human exploration of space for decades. State of play: With AI, U.S. leaders are once again saying the race is on — but this time the scorecard is even murkier. "Build a bomb before Hitler" or "Put a man on the moon" are comprehensible objectives, but no one is providing similar clarity for the AI competition. The best the industry can say is that we are racing toward AI that's smarter than people. But no two companies or experts have the same definition of "smart" — for humans or AI models. We can't even say with confidence which of any two AI models is "smarter" right now, because we lack good measures and we don't always know or agree on what we want the technology to do. Between the lines: The "beat China" drumbeat is coming largely from inside the industry, which now has a direct line to the White House via Trump's AI adviser, David Sacks. "Whoever ends up winning ends up building the AI rails for the world," OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane said at an Axios event in March. Arguing for controls on U.S. chip exports to China earlier this year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei described competitor DeepSeek as "beholden to an authoritarian government that has committed human rights violations, has behaved aggressively on the world stage, and will be far more unfettered in these actions if they're able to match the U.S. in AI." Yes, but: In the era of the second Trump administration, many Americans view their own government as increasingly authoritarian. With Trump himself getting into the business of dictating the political slant of AI products, it's harder for America's champions to sell U.S. alternatives as more "free." China has been catching up to the U.S. in AI research and development, most tech experts agree. They see the U.S. maintaining a shrinking lead of at most a couple of years and perhaps as little as months. But this edge is largely meaningless, since innovations propagate broadly and quickly in the AI industry. And cultural and language differences mean that the U.S. and its allies will never just switch over to Chinese suppliers even if their AI outruns the U.S. competition. In this, AI is more like social media than like steel, solar panels or other fungible goods. The bottom line: The U.S. and China are both going to have increasingly advanced AI in coming years. The race between them is more a convenient fiction that marshals money and minds than a real conflict with an outcome that matters.
Axios
21-07-2025
- Axios
Chatbots' new job: minding tots
Young children who directly interact with chatbots face new developmental risks, pediatricians and psychologists warn. Why it matters: Assessing the impacts early could help protect a new generation from becoming guinea pigs for tech we don't fully understand. The big picture: Most kids under five aren't using voice-based AI yet. Young kids already see AI-generated content — but on its own, that isn't necessarily a new problem. Low-quality images and videos commonly known as AI slop don't differ that much from the low end of mass-produced kids' media that's been around for decades. The real concern is interaction with live AI, which can be both powerfully engaging and confusing at the same time. Imagine "Blue's Clues," but the character answers in real time and adapts to a child's input. Talking with AI could shape children's brain development and social connections in unknown ways. Chatbot use — especially among young children — is still new. There are no long-term studies on its impact, but we do know a lot about how screen time and tech use affect child development. The amount of time kids spend on devices is disrupting or arresting other important developmental milestones, Scott Kollins, psychologist and chief medical officer at family software company Aura, told Axios. "We've seen that with older kids. And with kids between zero and five, their brains are developing faster, and they're hitting these super important social milestones more frequently." Interacting with AI chatbots, Kollins warns, has "the potential to be even that much more disruptive" — but right now, "it is all conjecture in terms of this specific type of interaction." What they're saying: Interaction with generative AI could "fundamentally change the human brain," says Dana Suskind, a pediatric physician and expert on early childhood and early language development. Suskind says teenagers and adults are already forming relationships with AI companions. The same could happen with younger kids. "The content and experience that kids are exposed to in early years isn't just sort of changing things the same way social media impacted adolescent brains," Suskind told Axios. "It is actually changing the foundational wiring of the human brain." "Children naturally anthropomorphize," Suskind wrote in an email, "but with responsive AI, we're entering uncharted territory for how this might shape their developing sense of reality and relationships." Between the lines: Some child development researchers worry that chatbots could reshape how children learn trust, empathy and connection. A small study from 2024 showed that kids ages 3-6 were more likely to trust a robot than a human, even when that robot had proven to be less reliable than the human. Trust is a particularly thorny problem for those who rely on AI, since many researchers argue that these tools might always be prone to making things up. Chatbots also tell people what they want to hear. They're trained to please, which means they're unlikely to say "no" — a word that small children need to learn to deal with. "It changes the way that kids learn about the cadence and the natural progression of interaction with others," Kollins says. "That's a problem if [young kids] don't learn how responding in a certain way or broaching particular kinds of topics might be met with certain reactions." The other side: AI can make up stories, answer questions or generate elaborate images at the whim of a creative child. Many parents are already using chatbots to ease the stress of parenting, including helping to satisfy kids' boundless curiosity. Amazon's smart home devices — now with Alexa+ boosted AI — come in styles aimed at the youngest users and promise that "kids can create unique stories they dream up with Alexa." Some early studies show that when children engage in story-based dialogues with AI, rather than just listening passively, they learn more vocabulary and comprehend content better. In some cases, researchers found these gains were comparable to those from human interactions. Kollins says that as adults our responsibility to provide our young children with all the information and content that's meaningful or stimulating will be reduced, and that's not all bad. "Why should [our children] rely just on this narrow sliver of what dad knows, versus the universe of content?" Kollins says. Yes, but: AI interactions may crowd out important human interactions and activities for young children. CNN tech reporter Samantha Murphy Kelly wrote in 2018 that because she used Amazon's voice assistant so often, "Alexa" was among the first four words her toddler understood. Some scientists also worry that even if AI tools do benefit some kids, those gains could just deepen existing educational disparities. "The one thing that makes us uniquely human," Kollins says, "whether it's for younger kids or even for older kids, is just the entire range of non-verbal communication... subtle facial expressions and body language... that you miss when you're in front of a screen."
