IEEE Spectrum

If you’ve ever wondered how Claude and similar AI agents can answer complex questions in seconds and where they get the information, you’re not alone. Gurmeet Saran works to find that answer every day as an engineer at Anthropic in San Francisco, the AI research company behind Claude. The IEEE senior member is developing an infrastructure to understand the mechanics behind the chatbot’s behavior and to ensure its underlying architecture produces reliable outputs. Gurmeet Saran Employer Anthropic

This article was originally published by Canary Media. The geothermal startup Fervo Energy is now selling power to the grid from its Cape Station project in Utah — marking the first time a utility-scale, next-generation geothermal facility has achieved such a feat worldwide. The Houston-based firm turned on an initial 33-megawatt unit late last week and has been testing and ramping up output since then. On Thursday, Fervo will officially begin commercial operations, supplying carbon-free electri

This White Paper provides roboticists and control engineers with a comprehensive overview of how motion planning and motion tracking can be decoupled to preserve professional athletic style in humanoid robots, and why adaptive, speed-aware control is essential for closing the gap between simulation and real-world deployment. What you will learn about: Why combining a professional athlete’s motion style with reliable task performance remains an open challenge in humanoid ball-sports robotics, and

Today’s engineers face an unprecedented acceleration in AI hardware complexity, as explained in the recent research article “Revisiting Edge AI: Opportunities and Challenges.” The article examines the rapid growth of edge AI and the challenges it creates, including resource constraints, model architecture limitations, and network demands across edge-AI deployments. The acceleration is driven by a fundamental shift in how modern AI models are built and scaled. As the models have become much large

In mid-September, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei joined a growing group of researchers calling for the AI industry to slow down. While some have questioned these researchers’ motivation for voicing concerns about the rapid pace of development, the plea highlighted a key tension between safety and speed. The underlying problem is not simply a technical error, but a sociotechnical failure: Pressure to move quickly has made it hard for engineers to fully assess and manage new risks of increasingly powe

By 2028, genetic engineering and gene therapy will be used frequently to treat a variety of diseases, thanks to advances in artificial intelligence, according to the recently released 2030 Technology Megatrends Report from IEEE. “We are seeing a fundamental shift in how technology evolves,” says IEEE Fellow Dejan Milojicic, chair of the IEEE Future Directions Committee’s Industry Advisory Board, the group responsible for the report. “Artificial intelligence is no longer operating in a vacuum; it

This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Parsity and delivered to your inbox for free! When I changed careers at 30 to become a software engineer, I expected it to be hard. I expected to struggle to fit in, and I expected to bomb a lot of interviews (I did). What I didn’t expect was how few people would support me. As a parent, I get it

This White Paper gives robotics researchers and engineers an overview of a new large-scale motion capture dataset built to close the data gap limiting humanoid robot learning. It also shows how policies trained on the dataset transfer to a real humanoid robot. What you will learn about: Why humanoid robot learning, a central problem in embodied AI and Physical AI, needs data that internet video and existing motion capture datasets cannot provide. How FrameNet, a linguistic framework for human ac

Happy IEEE Day 2026! IEEE Day is an annual event that celebrates the first time in history when engineers worldwide gathered to share their technical ideas in 1884. One of the IEEE Day’s objectives is to show the ways IEEE members, in local communities, join together to collaborate on ideas that leverage technology for a better tomorrow. IEEE Day 2026 - October 6, 2026. Stay tuned as we continue this journey of innovation, connection, and global celebration.IEEE Celebrate IEEE Day with colleague

For the first 10 years of my career, I worked in product management and data analytics by myself. I wrote database queries that pulled numbers out of corporate systems, built statistical models to predict what customers would buy, and shipped data pipelines that moved information between business systems. I built and scaled analytics teams at Best Buy and Target, studying how customers shop and what stores should stock. Today I lead enterprise AI transformation at Lowe’s, the Fortune 100 home im

Christos Cassandras has spent more than 40 years studying how computers and machines make decisions. Lately, his work has focused on a problem nearly every driver knows well: sitting at a red light with no cross traffic in sight, wondering why it takes so long for the light to turn green. Cassandras, an IEEE Life Fellow, is a professor at Boston University, where he headed its systems engineering division, a graduate program he helped create. Christos Cassandras Employer Boston University Title

Dielectric metasurfaces have moved to the forefront of nanophotonics, offering flat, low-loss alternatives to conventional bulk optical elements for controlling the amplitude, phase, and polarization of light. These structures are of growing interest to researchers and engineers working on sensing, energy harvesting, and flat optics, as their performance hinges on precisely engineered optical resonances. Full-wave finite element simulation, combined with semianalytical multipole decomposition in

It’s disheartening how much power gets generated and then promptly lost as it travels through grid networks. This leaking of electricity happens when it vanishes as heat as well as when it is pilfered by thieves and nonpaying customers. More than half of the countries that track these metrics lost at least 10 percent of their electricity in 2023, according to the World Bank. Losses topped 20 percent for 24 of those nations. Two countries lost more than half of what they generated. With numbers t

Every year, IEEE recognizes individual researchers, innovators, and collaborative teams whose technical achievements and leadership have made a lasting impact on technology, engineering, and society worldwide with its Technical Field Awards. The honorees are selected by the IEEE Awards Board based on their extraordinary technical achievements, societal impact, and leadership in specialized engineering disciplines and are approved by the IEEE Board of Directors. “The 2027 IEEE Technical Field Awa

Financial markets have always relied on timely information, and the drive for timeliness has always adapted to the latest technology. From clipper ships transiting the oceans to telegraph wires connecting cities to fiber-optic cables conducting trades in microseconds, traders have embraced any advantage to get the most up-to-date information. Indeed, the history of finance is really a story about how fast you can move information and who controls the interface. It’s only natural that people also

Seventeen years ago, cell biologist Donald Ingber and his colleagues at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering submitted a paper to the journal Science describing their model human lung. It was smaller than a USB stick and made of a clear polymer slab containing narrow channels, which were lined with the type of cells that line a lung’s air sacs and blood vessels. When air was pumped through hollow chambers beside the channels, the device rhythmically expanded

Learn how engineers can shift from manually managing tools and handoffs to defining objectives and supervising AI-driven execution across the silicon development lifecycle. Key Takeaways Explore four critical technologies enabling silicon design autonomy Understand how autonomous AI accelerates complex engineering workflows See real-world impact across semiconductor design and verification Gain practical insights from Ambiq’s deployment of autonomous AI in production Register now for this free w

Building useful robots starts with understanding the people who use them. For Charlie Kemp, cofounder and chief technology officer of Hello Robot, that means developing assistive robots that can help people with everyday tasks and support greater independence. In this Robots Guide profile, Kemp shares his path from studying artificial intelligence at MIT to building Stretch, explains how working with people with disabilities has shaped his approach, and offers advice for aspiring roboticists. Re

IEEE TryEngineering is dedicated to inspiring intellectual curiosity in children. The technologies shaping our world, including in the realms of artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and ocean exploration, are evolving rapidly. Helping young learners understand the concepts is essential to preparing the next generation of problem-solvers, creators, and engineers. TryEngineering has introduced a STEM book series for youngsters ages 8 to 12 through the Lerner Publishing Group. The series, To

It’s 6 a.m. on a cold January morning in 2002 in New Delhi. It’s still dark outside, and I’m in the kitchen preparing breakfast, packing lunches, and getting my two children ready to catch the school bus when, for the third time in a week, the power goes out. No lights, no mixer to finish my daughter’s puttu—her favorite rice dish—no kettle, no toaster. The bathroom is dark, and the kids are upset. It will probably be hours before the power comes back on, so I grab a flashlight and light the can