Zoë Corbyn

San Francisco

Journalist at Freelance

Freelance journalist writing about science, technology, research, higher education and ideas. [email protected]

Articles

Move fast, kill things: the tech startups trying to reinvent defence with Silicon Valley values

4 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Zoë Corbyn

Visit tech startup Skydio’s headquarters on the San Francisco peninsula in California and you’re likely to find flying robots buzzing on the roof overhead. Docking stations with motorised covers open to allow small drones that resemble the TIE fighters from Star Wars films to take off; when each drone lands back again, they close. The drones can fly completely autonomously and without GPS, taking in data from onboard cameras and using AI to execute programmed missions and avoid obstacles.
Reid Hoffman: ‘Start using AI deeply. It is a huge intelligence amplifier’

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Zoë Corbyn

Reid Hoffman is a prominent Silicon Valley billionaire entrepreneur and investor known for co-founding the professional social networking site LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft. He’s also staunchly anti-Trump. The longtime Democrat donor threw his support behind Kamala Harris in the race for the White House. Hoffman spoke to the Observer about technology in the new political milieu and his new book about our future with artificial intelligence, Superagency.
How AI can spot diseases that doctors aren't looking for

Jan 16, 2025 | yahoo.com | Zoë Corbyn

This is the sixth feature in a six-part series that is looking at how AI is changing medical research and treatments. When 58-year-old Will Studholme ended up in accident and emergency at an NHS hospital in Oxford in 2023 with gastrointestinal symptoms, he wasn't expecting a diagnosis of osteoporosis. The disease, strongly associated with age, causes bones to become weak and fragile, increasing the risk of fracture.
How AI uncovers new ways to tackle difficult diseases

Jan 9, 2025 | businessandamerica.com | Zoë Corbyn

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How AI uncovers new ways to tackle difficult diseases

Jan 9, 2025 | yahoo.com | Zoë Corbyn

This is the fourth feature in a six-part series that is looking at how AI is changing medical research and treatments. Over a video call, Alex Zhavoronkov holds up a small, green, diamond-shaped pill. It has been developed by his company to treat a rare progressive lung disease for which there is no known cause or cure. The new drug has yet to be approved, but in small clinical trials has shown impressive efficacy in treating idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
Up close with the 300 tonne driverless trucks

Nov 7, 2024 | yahoo.com | Zoë Corbyn

It doesn't get much more remote than this. I'm in inland Western Australia, at Rio Tinto’s Greater Nammuldi iron ore mine. It's about a two-hour flight north from Perth in a region called the Pilbara. No-one lives permanently here. Around 400 workers are on the site at any one time, and they are flown in, working between four and eight days, depending on their shift pattern, before flying home.
‘When we reached the bottom, we saw a beer bottle’

Oct 12, 2024 | msn.com | Zoë Corbyn

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Oceanographer Dawn Wright: ‘When we reached the bottom, we saw a beer bottle’

Oct 12, 2024 | theguardian.com | Zoë Corbyn

The American oceanographer Dawn Wright is the first Black person and only the 27th human to have been to the deepest spot on the planet. Challenger Deep, at the southern end of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, is 10.9km (6.8 miles) below sea level – deeper than Mount Everest (8.8km [5.5 miles]) is tall. Wright’s summer 2022 descent is documented in a new book, Mapping the Deep, written with her input.
‘Wolf and human societies have intriguing parallels’

Sep 21, 2024 | msn.com | Zoë Corbyn

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Wildlife biologist Diane Boyd: ‘Wolf and human societies have intriguing parallels’

Sep 21, 2024 | theguardian.com | Zoë Corbyn

The grey wolf (Canis lupus) has generated fear and hatred. Seen as a danger to livestock and people, the once widespread predator was nearly completely eradicated from western Europe and most of the contiguous US in the 19th and 20th centuries. Pro- and anti-wolf groups now duel over how the species should be managed as populations have rebounded in places over the past few decades.