For most of the past decade, consumer electronics have marched toward ever-smarter, ever-more-personal roles in our daily lives. We followed the trends for many years, but the latest shift is more surprising than any step counter or sleep tracker: everyday gadgets are starting to behave like medical devices. The idea that a pair of mass-market earbuds can assist with mild hearing loss, or that a wristwatch can detect atrial fibrillation, […]

For a brief moment in early 2022, it felt as if humanity had finally learned to collaborate with one of the planet’s sharpest non-human minds. A tiny Swedish startup called Corvid Cleaning AB suggested a scheme so irresistibly clever that it launched a thousand headlines: teach wild crows to pick up cigarette butts, reward them with food, and watch as nature’s most mischievous problem-solvers outsmart our waste problem. It sounded […]