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Since 2021, NASA's Perseverance rover has achieved a number of historic milestones, including sending back the first audio recordings from Mars. Now, nearly five years after landing on the Red Planet, it just achieved another feat. This past December, Perseverance successfully completed a route through a section of the Jezero crater plotted by Anthropic's Claude chatbot, marking the first time NASA has used a large language model to pilot the car-sized robot. Between December 8 and 10, Perseverance drove approximately 400 meters (about 437 yards) through a field of rocks on the Martian surface mapped out by Claude. As you might imagine, using an AI model to plot a course for Perseverance wasn't as simple as inputting a single prompt. As NASA explains, routing Perseverance is no easy task, even for a human. "Every rover drive needs to be carefully planned, lest the machine slide, tip, spin its wheels, or get beached," NASA said. "So ever since the rover landed, its human operators have painstakingly laid out waypoints they call it a 'breadcrumb trail' for it to follow, using a combination of images taken from space and the rovers onboard cameras." To get Claude to complete the task, NASA had to first provide Claude Code, Anthropic's programming agent, with the "years" of contextual data from the rover before the model could begin writing a route for Perseverance. Claude then went about the mapping process methodically, stringing together waypoints from ten-meter segments it would later critique and iterate on. This being NASA we're talking about, engineers from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) made sure to double check the model's work before sending it to Perseverance. The JPL team ran Claude's waypoints through a simulation they use every day to confirm the accuracy of commands sent to the rover. In the end, NASA says it only had to make "minor changes" to Claude's route, with one tweak coming as a result of the fact the team had access to ground-level images Claude hadn't seen in its planning process. "The engineers estimate that using Claude in this way will cut the route-planning time in half, and make the journeys more consistent," NASA said. "Less time spent doing tedious manual planning and less time spent training allows the rovers operators to fit in even more drives, collect even more scientific data, and do even more analysis. It means, in short, that well learn much more about Mars."While the productivity gains offered by AI are often overstated, in the case of NASA, any tool that could allow its scientists to be more efficient is sure to be welcome. Over the summer, the agency lost about 4,000 employees accounting for about 20 percent of its workforce due to Trump administration cuts. Going into 2026, the president had proposed gutting the agency's science budget by nearly half before Congress ultimately rejected that plan in early January. Still, even with its funding preserved just below 2025 levels, the agency has a tough road ahead. It's being asked to return to the Moon with less than half the workforce it had during the height of the Apollo program. For Anthropic, meanwhile, this is a major feat. You may recall last spring Claude couldn't even beat Pokémon Red. In less than a year, the company's models have gone from struggling to navigate a simple 8-bit Game Boy game to successfully plotting a course for a rover on a distant planet. NASA is excited about the possibility of future collaborations, saying "autonomous AI systems could help probes explore ever more distant parts of the solar system."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/nasa-used-claude-to-plot-a-route-for-its-perseverance-rover-on-mars-203150701.html?src=rss
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Americas once-promising EV transition may have taken a U-turn, but at least some in Hollywood are trying to do their part. Rivian partnered with Greys Anatomy to make a custom electric ambulance for the long-running series.The ambulance is a modified version of Rivians Commercial Van. The custom vanbulance serves a dual purpose: preventing on-set exhaust fumes (which could harm the cast and crew) and integrating a green storyline. As an added benefit, the elimination of engine noise brought a welcome quiet while cameras were rolling, Rivan wrote in a blog post.Among other modifications, it has rear double doors instead of a roll-up one.RivianThe vehicle includes some production-specific touches. Its walls and roof panels are removable, allowing cameras to reach angles required for interior shots. In addition, Rivian replaced the standard vans rear roll-up door with double doors while adding a side entry to the cargo area. The company also added custom lighting and an exterior wrap reading Seattle Emergency Response Services.The team consulted with the Huntington Beach Fire Department and the Los Angeles Fire Department to inform the interior layout. Their feedback was invaluable to understand how first responders actually use their vehicles, Rivian wrote.At least Hollywood's fictional worlds are transitioning to electric.RivianThe Hollywood Reporter notes that the electric ambulance debuted in the November 13, 2025, episode of Greys Anatomy. However, it was featured more prominently in Thursdays episode hence Rivian choosing this week to highlight it.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/rivian-made-an-electric-ambulance-for-greys-anatomy-194358967.html?src=rss
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The Sundance documentary Ghost in the Machine boldly declares that the pursuit of artificial intelligence, and Silicon Valley itself, is rooted in eugenics. Director Valerie Veatch makes the case that the rise of techno-fascism from the likes of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel is a feature, not a bug. That may sound hyperbolic, but Ghost in the Machine, which is built around interviews with philosophers, AI researchers, historians and computer scientists, leaves little room for doubt.If you've been following the meteoric rise of AI, or Silicon Valley in general, Veatch's methodical deconstruction of the technology doesn't really unearth anything new. The film begins with the utter failure of Microsoft's Tay chatbot, which wasted no time in becoming a Hitler-loving white supremacist. It retreads the environmental impacts of AI datacenters, as well as the ways tech companies have relied on low-wage workers from Africa and elsewhere to improve their algorithms. But even I was surprised to learn that we can trace the impact of eugenics in tech all the way back to Karl Pearson, the mathematician who pioneered the field of statistics, and who also spent his life trying to quantify the differences between races. (Guess who he believed was superior.) His legacy was continued by William Shockley, a co-creator of the transistor, an avowed white supremacist who spent his later years espousing (now debunked) theories around IQ and racial differences. An early robot toy.Valerie Veatch for "Ghost in the Machine"As a Stanford engineering professor, Shockley fostered a culture of prioritizing white men over women and minorities, which ultimately shaped the way Silicon Valley looks today. His line of thinking could have had an influence on John McCarthy, the Stanford researcher who coined the term artificial intelligence in 1955, With roots like that, Elon Musk known to spout bigotry online, foster a reportedly racist work environment at Tesla and throw the occasionaly few Nazi salute looks less like an anomaly than part of a pattern. Ghost in the Machine asks a simple question: How can we trust men like this (and it's almost always men that look like Musk) with our future?Through its many interviews, which include the likes of AI researcher Dr. Emily Bender, historian Becca Lewis and media theorist Douglass Rushkoff, Ghost in the Machine paints the rise of AI as a fascistic project that aims to demean humans and establish the techno-elite as our de facto rulers. Given how much our lives are already dominated by gadgets and social networks from companies that have pioneered addictive engagement over user safety, it's easy to imagine history repeating itself with AI. Ghost in the Machine doesn't leave any room for considering potential benefits around AI, which could lead proponents of the technology to dismiss it as a hit-job. But we're currently at the apex of the AI hype cycle, after Big Tech has invested hundreds of billions of dollars on this technology, and after it has spent years shoving it down our throats without proving why its actually useful to many people. AI should be able to withstand a bit of criticism.Ghost in the Machine is available to view at the Sundance Film Festivals website and streaming apps from today through the end of Sunday, February 1st. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/sundance-doc-ghost-in-the-machine-draws-a-damning-line-between-ai-and-eugenics-180613367.html?src=rss
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