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What the singularity is, why it is hard to keep up, and how Singularity Nightly helps, in plain English.
What is "the singularity"?
Think of a snowball rolling down a hill. The more snow it picks up, the bigger it gets, and the bigger it gets, the faster it picks up more. Before long it is moving faster than anyone can run.
Technology now works the same way. Smart computers help scientists make discoveries. Those discoveries help build even smarter computers, which make the next discoveries come even faster. Scientists and science fiction writers gave a name to the moment that snowball rolls so fast that life changes faster than anyone can predict: the singularity.
Many people who study it believe we are now in its early days. You can see it in the news every week: computers that can write and reason, medicines for diseases that had no cure, rockets that land themselves so they can fly again, and robots learning to help at home.
You do not need a science degree to follow it. You only need someone to tell you what happened, in plain words, and what it could mean for you.
Why we are called Singularity Nightly
Singularity is the snowball: the speed-up we are all living through. Nightly is our promise: every weeknight at 8:00 PM Eastern, we gather up everything new that happened that day and explain it, so nobody gets left behind.
Why it is so hard to keep up
A few years ago, a major breakthrough came along a few times a year. Now there are several a day. The news about them is often written by experts for other experts, full of words most people never use. It is easy to feel left behind.
That is not your fault. It is a lot.
What Singularity Nightly does
Every weeknight at 8:00 PM Eastern, we close out the day:
- In 60 Seconds: the three or four things worth knowing tonight, at the very top.
- Why it matters: every story ends with a short box that says what it could change in your life, your work, your health or your wallet, and when.
- Dotted words: if a word is underlined with dots, tap or click it for a short definition. Every one of them is also in the Glossary.
- The Dashboard: a page of big numbers that shows how fast things are moving, like how many rockets have launched this year.
Every Saturday morning, The Week sums up the biggest advances of the past seven days.
What we cover
- A computer program trained on large amounts of data to recognize patterns and produce answers, text, images or actions. Chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude run on AI models. In the Glossary: the computer programs that can write, talk, draw and reason, and how fast they are improving.
- Launches and Satellites: rockets, spacecraft and the satellites that give us internet, GPS and weather forecasts.
- Air Mobility: electric A small aircraft, usually an eVTOL, meant to carry a few passengers on short trips across or between cities, booked much like a ride-hailing car. In the Glossary and flying cars, and when you might ride in one.
- Medicine: new drugs, cures and treatments as they are approved.
- Defense: new military technology, from public sources only.
- Law and Policy: the rules governments write for new technology.
- Something of value, such as a bond, a fund share or a building, whose ownership is recorded as a digital token on a blockchain so it can be traded and settled at any hour. In the Glossary: money and investments moving onto new digital systems. Never investment advice.
- Wildcard: robots, new kinds of power plants, computer chips and more.
Our promise
We tell you what actually happened, with a link to where it came from. We explain it without jargon. We look at the future with wonder, and when something truly great happens, like a cure, a cheaper ride to space or a robot that can really help at home, we celebrate it. We never exaggerate, and we do not try to scare you. When something is uncertain, or still years away, we say so.
Nobody knows exactly where all of this goes. We will help you watch it happen.