TECH

How cement plants can remove CO₂ from the atmosphere

Cement is one of the most in-demand building materials of our time. Every year, around four billion tonnes are produced. Cement production is energy-intensive, and greenhouse gases are emitted during the process – particularly during the thermal decomposition of limestone, the most important natural raw material for cement. 

Cement production could be integrated with Direct Air Capture technology...Their study suggests that cement production could be integrated with Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology, allowing cement plants not only to reduce their own emissions but also to remove CO₂ that is already present in the atmosphere.

The research, published in Chem Circularity, explores a system based on calcium looping, a process that uses the same basic material—limestone—that is already central to cement manufacturing.

Cement production generates CO₂ in two major ways. First, producing cement requires enormous amounts of heat. Traditionally, cement kilns have relied heavily on fossil fuels, creating emissions from combustion.

Second, and more fundamentally, limestone itself releases CO₂ when it is heated. Limestone, or calcium carbonate, is broken down during a process known as calcination, producing quicklime and CO₂.

This means that simply replacing coal or gas with cleaner energy does not eliminate all emissions from cement manufacturing. This is why cement is considered one of the world’s difficult-to-decarbonise industries.

“From a climate perspective, the combination of DAC and cement production is very promising,” stated Vittoria Bolongaro, a PhD student working with Bardow and lead author of the external pagepublication. 

The ETH Zurich research takes a different approach: instead of viewing the CO₂ released during cement production only as a waste stream, it proposes combining cement manufacturing with a technology that captures additional CO₂ directly from the atmosphere.

In a new study, ETH researchers show that these emissions could be significantly reduced if cement production were combined with a technology for the direct removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere, known as Direct Air Capture (DAC).

According to calculations by researchers in the group led by André Bardow, Professor of Energy and Process Systems Engineering, the climate impact of cement production could be significantly reduced by the year 2050. At present, it is responsible for five to eight per cent of global CO₂ emissions. “From a climate perspective, the combination of DAC and cement production is very promising,” as Vittoria Bolongaro stated, a PhD student working with Bardow and lead author of the external pagepublication. 

Exploiting synergies...For the study, the researchers collaborated with the US company Heirloom Carbon Technologies. The company is one of the world’s leading developers of DAC based on calcium looping – a process that utilises a chemical cycle involving various calcium compounds. Calcium carbonate is the starting point, i.e. limestone, which is quarried worldwide. DAC plants using calcium looping and cement works operate with the same calcium compounds and employ the same process: limestone is heated until it decomposes into quicklime and CO₂ – a process known as calcination.

In integrated cement production using calcium looping DAC, a kiln powered by electricity rather than fossil fuels, such as coal or gas, is harnessed for calcination. This avoids greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion kiln. At the same time, the CO₂ produced during the calcination process can be captured directly, as it is not contaminated by combustion exhaust gases. According to the study's calculations, electrifying the kiln and using direct CO₂ capture alone could reduce the climate impact of cement production by 78 per cent by 2050.

Once water has been added to quicklime, the slaked lime absorbs further CO₂ from the atmosphere and is converted back into limestone, which can then be reused as a raw material for cement production. The more often the calcium undergoes this cycle of contact with the air before being processed into cement, the more CO₂ the plant removes from the atmosphere. The CO₂ captured from the atmosphere is not bound in the cement. Instead, it is compressed and transported to underground storage sites.

Real-world figures...“Heirloom was an ideal partner for us because the company is already operating the first calcium looping DAC systems on a commercial scale,” as Bolongaro underlined. In California, the company has been operating a plant since 2023 with an annual nominal capacity of 1000 tonnes CO2.

Another, significantly larger plant is due to be built in Louisiana in the upcoming years. “The collaboration was beneficial for both sides: our partner wanted to learn more about the technology’s environmental footprint – and we were able to base our calculations and scenarios on primary industrial data from real-world operations,” explains Bolongaro.

The current study is the first prospective life-cycle analysis for DAC using calcium looping on an industrial scale. In conducting the analysis, the researchers not only considered the operation of the plant, but also all environmental impacts along the process chain; from raw material extraction through the construction and operation of the plant to the storage of the captured CO₂.

Initially, Bolongaro and her team wanted to find out whether larger, commercial plants remove more CO₂ over their entire life cycle than they produce. In a second step, the researchers examined whether the reduction in CO₂ emissions comes at the expense of other environmental factors, such as water or land use.

Their findings showed that by far the largest share of the environmental footprint is attributable to the energy required for the process, as the capture of CO₂ from the air is very energy-intensive. This also applies to other DAC processes. As part of the study, various energy scenarios were therefore tested: operating the plant using the current US electricity mix, drawing on a heavily decarbonised electricity mix comprising wind and solar energy, and employing a fully autonomous system with photovoltaics and battery storage.

“We were able to show that the technology has a net-negative carbon footprint; in other words, commercial calcium looping DAC plants with CO₂ storage remove more CO₂ than they generate over their entire lifecycle,” says Bolongaro. “Depending on the energy mix used in our projections, the efficiency of CO2 removal by 2050 ranges between 85 and 96 per cent.” In other words: for every tonne of CO2 that is captured and stored, 40 to 150 kg of CO2 are generated in the process chain. This is comparable to figures from other DAC systems. Powering the plant by renewable energy achieves the highest efficiency.

What the field trial still has to show...“The major advantage of DAC plants using calcium looping is that this technology can be integrated into a well-established cement production process,” explains Bolongaro. The adjustments required to integrate DAC into cement production are relatively straightforward.

First and foremost, additional air contactors are needed to capture CO₂ from the atmosphere. Furthermore, the kiln in which limestone is calcined at high temperatures must be powered by low-carbon or carbon-free energy to ensure the highest possible net removal.

“From a climate perspective, this approach is very promising as a scalable solution that integrates into existing industrial supply chains, while simultaneously driving the decarbonisation of the cement sector forward,” as Bolognaro underlines. A more detailed investigation of the physical and economic limits of this integration is now required.

The key calculations for the study are based on future scenarios up to the year 2050 and assume significant progress in the decarbonisation of the electricity supply. Furthermore, some of the plant components, in particular indirectly heated electric calcining kilns, are not yet in large-scale industrial use. It therefore remains to be seen whether the system can be operated economically; a detailed cost analysis was not part of the study to date.

Consequently, for Bolongaro, the results represent an important starting point that highlights the climate potential of the approach. 

ETH Zurich

TECH

Could this simple robot outmaneuver a human hand?

A robot inspired by the function of the human hand rather than its anatomy has demonstrated an unusual combination of dexterity, reach, and mechanical simplicity. Called the BioflexBot, the experimental system can pinch, rotate, hook, and grasp objects using only two pneumatic inputs, according to a study published in Advanced Science. Its developers say the design could offer a lower-cost alternative to conventional robotic hands, which often rely on numerous joints, motors, sensors, and complex control algorithms to reproduce the movements of biological fingers.

The human hand is difficult to replicate because its capabilities arise from an intricate interaction between bones, muscles, tendons, joints, skin, and neural control. Each finger can move through several degrees of freedom, while the hand continuously adjusts force and shape in response to an object’s size, texture, and position. Traditional robotic hands attempt to reproduce much of this architecture, but the result can be expensive, heavy, mechanically fragile, and difficult to program. The BioflexBot takes a different approach. Rather than copying the hand’s visible structure, the researchers designed a compliant mechanical system that reproduces several essential functions through the coordinated deformation of a coiled spring and a constraining shell.

At the center of the device is a flexible, spring-like structure that changes shape when pressure is applied through a basic pneumatic system. Compressed air provides the actuation force, while the surrounding shell limits and directs the spring’s movement. This combination creates what the researchers describe as structural and physical intelligence: some of the robot’s behavior is built into its material arrangement instead of being generated entirely by software or a network of independent motors. By controlling only two pneumatic inputs, the BioflexBot can produce multiple forms of motion. The system’s compliance allows it to conform to objects of different shapes, while its elastic structure enables extension, contraction, bending, and rotation.

The human hand is a dexterous and versatile machine. Scientists have conventionally tried to replicate these traits in robots by copying the biological mechanics of the hand, resulting in complex and difficult-to-control structures. An alternative solution to these challenges was proposed in a new study, published by Wiley in Advanced Science: The BioflexBot, a novel robot that mimics and even exceeds core motions of the hand with a simple design.

Instead of creating a robotic hand with the intricate anatomy of a human hand, the researchers aimed to capture fundamental hand motions with a coiled spring, constraining shell, and basic pneumatic system, using compressed air to control mechanical action. Optimized for precision and range of mobility, the BioflexBot can pinch, rotate, hook, and grasp with just two pneumatic inputs.

The researchers validated that the BioflexBot could replicate these foundational hand motions. To simulate pinching, the BioflexBot successfully manipulated an acupuncture needle and reliably transported liquid using a pipette, completing delicate tasks common in healthcare or laboratory settings. The BioflexBot rotated a bottle cap, rotating almost four times more than a human hand’s capability. The researchers showed that the BioflexBot could hook objects such as a toolbox and goggles. Finally, they found that the BioflexBot could securely grasp objects of varying sizes, up to almost 13 times bigger than similar systems.

Beyond reliably mimicking traditional hand motions, the BioflexBot exceeds human hand performance, extending and contracting 3.5 times more than the human hand. Therefore, the BioflexBot can grasp complex objects, reach long distances, deliver objects in confined spaces, and transport multiple objects sequentially. The researchers demonstrated three potential applications for the BioflexBot: inspecting aeroengine blades, completing daily tasks integrated with a humanoid robot, and conducting a chemistry experiment.

These findings suggest that the simple design of the BioflexBot can result in high dexterity at extremely low costs with applications across industries. Future work will translate the prototype to a fully automated platform.

“By harnessing structural and physical intelligence, we pursued a simple design capable of both cross-scale grasping and complex human-like manipulation,” said senior author Yingtian Li, PhD, currently of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. “Unlike most robotic hands that replicate the human form, at high hardware and control costs, our approach focuses solely on mimicking the functions, not the shape,” said senior author Yang Yang, PhD, of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology.

References: Xin Tong, Tianle Zhang, Fei Mo, Qian Zhao, Zhongqing Sun, Yongkang Jiang, Yang Yang, and Yingtian Li. “A Bio-Functional Mimetic Robot for Versatile Tasks from Cross-Scale Manipulation to Limb-Tool Integration.”

DIGITAL LIFE

Study shows adolescents recognize the need for internet improvements

A survey of over 500 adolescents and young people aged 13 to 18 revealed the ambivalent nature of this demographic's relationship with the internet. While half of the respondents acknowledged spending too much time online, 63% reported feeling happy when connecting.

Released this Wednesday (12)—National Youth Day—the "Adolescence Without Filters" (*Adolescência Sem Filtro*) survey found that 71% of respondents believe the internet should continue to exist but requires changes, while 9% think it should cease to exist.

Commissioned by the Alana Institute, the survey was conducted by Agência Koga, which recruited and trained adolescents to carry out the qualitative phase of the interviews.

According to Gabriela Barbosa, a Strategic Communication Planning specialist at the Alana Institute, the results demonstrate that adolescents are aware of the internet's potential downsides and possess a keen critical sense regarding the need to improve this virtual space.

The survey indicates that although this demographic's online experience is largely positive—with 71% using it for fun, and 63% and 55% feeling happiness and curiosity, respectively, in this environment—they are also aware of the internet's potential negative aspects.

Nearly half of the respondents (49%) believe platforms bear responsibility for creating a better internet, and 43% call for greater platform oversight.

Those behind the study note that the adolescents and young people themselves realize the environment is designed to capture their attention for longer than intended and recognize the need to actively protect themselves from negative content.

The survey reports that 44% block harmful accounts or content, and 32% take breaks throughout the day. Nevertheless, in addition to the 50% who say they spend more time online than they would like, 41% feel increasingly dependent on their mobile phones, and 39% believe the internet has caused them to lose time on their studies. “Time spent on the internet is a major concern for them. Beyond the awareness that not everything is positive or negative, they are also conscious of the need to protect themselves and to control—as much as possible—how they spend that time online,” Gabriela commented.

Social media... For the adolescents interviewed, social media is the most frequent online activity: 46% use the internet daily to access social networks, 37% to chat with friends and family, 30% to play games, 23% to study, and 21% to watch videos.

“Social media is the primary mechanism through which they experience the internet. For them, the internet plays out most intensely on apps like Instagram and TikTok—the latter being cited in the interviews as a place to numb boredom.”

At the same time, these apps create environments that provide them with many important things, such as a sense of belonging, information, curiosity, and learning. Therefore, the institute argues that social media should not be viewed solely in a negative light.

Boys are the primary users of the virtual space, accessing the internet more frequently for gaming (66%, compared to 44% of girls).

Girls, conversely, use the internet more often to chat with family and friends (64%, versus 50% of boys) and for studying (60%, compared to 46% of boys).

Adolescent interviewers...The eight adolescent researchers—aged 13 to 18—who collaborated on the qualitative phase conducted between eight and ten interviews each. The study’s aim was to listen to the interviewees without the filters that might exist in a conversation with adults.

Gabriela explains that choosing interviewers from the same age group was intended to avoid an overly adult-centric view of adolescents' relationship with the internet and to foster a sense of connection. “This allowed the interviewees to feel comfortable participating and sharing their perspectives,” she notes. The research highlights that, although adults are not in the habit of listening to young people or acknowledging their critical thinking skills, 19% of adolescents believe they can help change the internet.

“It is a small figure, but it shows that an opportunity exists. And if we open up space for them to be heard and to participate in discussion and development processes, we can gain a great deal of value,” stated Gabriela Barbosa.

Adolescents and young people also show a willingness to receive support in better managing internet dependency. “They are aware of this loss of control, and 69% are open to receiving help.”

Criativos Award 2026...Given that 19% of respondents believe they can help change the internet, the Alana Institute is launching the ninth edition of the Criativos Award, with the 2026 theme: “The internet is ours.”

The awards program invites children and adolescents from across the country to transform their digital experiences into projects that make the internet safer, more inclusive, fun, and welcoming. Students in middle and high school (ages 10 to 18) are eligible to participate.

Registration closes on September 2, and the results will be announced in December (https://form.jotform.com/261413765458059?source=imprensa).

This edition introduces a new audiovisual category, accepting submissions such as videos and podcasts. Three other awards are designated for the general category, which focuses on diverse formats ranging from campaigns, games, and apps to discussion circles, social media pages, and artistic interventions. Regardless of the chosen format, adolescents have the opportunity to create solutions for issues relevant to their daily lives.

Topics that can be addressed include screen time, cyberbullying, mental health, the use of artificial intelligence, online learning opportunities, unequal internet access, influencer culture, combating misinformation, and the digital environment as a space to amplify the voices and active participation of young people. The total prize money for the nine winning projects amounts to R$ 12,000

 

TECH

Oracle bets on a new cloud frontier and prepares integration that could transform AI workloads

Artificial intelligence has turned data centers into massive processing hubs, but some companies are already looking toward what comes next. Oracle and Quantinuum have announced a strategic partnership aiming to bring quantum computing, traditional supercomputing, and AI together within a single infrastructure. This initiative could allow developers to tackle extremely complex problems without needing to install a quantum machine on their own premises.

Oracle and Quantinuum have announced a multi-year strategic partnership to integrate quantum computing capabilities into Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

The initiative centers on Helios, Quantinuum’s commercial quantum computer, which is set to become available via a new OCI quantum service. This will enable customers to combine the hardware with traditional high-performance computing (HPC) resources and GPU-based infrastructure.

The goal is not to immediately replace conventional computers with quantum machines; rather, the strategy relies on combining different architectures.

The two companies intend to explore how quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and classical supercomputing can work together to address problems requiring extraordinary processing power.

Potential applications include new material discovery, drug development, logistics, energy, and financial modeling.

Universities and research institutions are also among the groups that could benefit from the platform, primarily because accessing a quantum machine via the cloud eliminates one of the technology's major barriers: the need to own highly specialized equipment.

Helios features 98 physical qubits and prioritizes precision... Commercially launched in November 2025, Helios represents the third generation of quantum computers developed by Quantinuum.

The machine utilizes trapped-ion technology and features 98 physical qubits. The system has already been used in demonstrations involving 48 logical qubits and, according to the company, achieves an average fidelity of 99.921% for two-qubit gates. Precision is especially important because errors represent one of the biggest obstacles in current quantum computing. The more reliable the operations performed by qubits, the greater the potential for executing complex algorithms in a useful way.

Another aspect highlighted by the companies is energy consumption.

According to estimates presented by Quantinuum, a Helios system would consume less than 1% of the energy used by today's leading supercomputers. This does not mean quantum machines will automatically replace supercomputers, but it could make them valuable complementary resources for specific workloads.

The aim is precisely to route each part of a problem to the most suitable hardware.

An application could, for example, use CPUs for certain operations, GPUs for artificial intelligence-related tasks, and a quantum processing unit (QPU) for stages where quantum algorithms offer advantages.

Developers will be able to experiment with quantum hardware without purchasing a machine... Installing a quantum computer is far removed from the conventional experience of adding servers to a data center. These systems require highly specialized infrastructure, technical expertise, and specific operating conditions.

The cloud can mask much of this complexity.

With Helios running on OCI infrastructure, the expectation is that customers will have secure, managed access to the quantum computer without needing to purchase or directly manage the equipment.

The system is set to be integrated with Oracle’s compute, storage, networking, identity, and data services, utilizing access controls and governance mechanisms already familiar to the platform's customers.

Oracle plans to unveil a preview version of the OCI quantum service in the coming months.

One of the goals is to simplify the transition between simulation and execution. Developers will be able to initially test applications in simulated environments and subsequently run them on actual quantum hardware.

The service is also expected to combine Quantinuum’s development tools with support for open frameworks designed for hybrid programming.

This could be particularly important because, at least initially, many commercial quantum computing applications will likely rely on this close collaboration between classical and quantum machines.

The real bet lies in the combination of AI and quantum computing... The partnership also reveals how major tech companies are beginning to envision the next stage of computing infrastructure.

AI has dramatically increased the demand for GPUs, energy, and processing power. Quantum computing offers a radically different architecture and, for certain categories of problems, could complement these systems.

For Mahesh Thiagarajan, Executive Vice President of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the integration aims to provide developers with a practical way to explore how quantum resources can complement AI and HPC workloads.

Researchers also see advantages in this approach. Having GPUs and QPUs available within the same environment can reduce operational complexity and allow scientific teams to focus their efforts on experiments rather than managing disparate infrastructures.

However, there is still a considerable gap between making quantum computers available and demonstrating broad commercial advantages in real-world scenarios.

That is precisely why cloud integration can be strategic. Instead of requiring companies to make massive investments in experimental hardware, they can begin testing algorithms, identifying applications, and discovering where the technology truly delivers benefits.

The partnership between Oracle and Quantinuum, therefore, represents more than just the arrival of another cloud service. It points toward a future where CPUs, GPUs, and quantum processors can share the same workload, each executing the part of the problem it was designed to handle.

If this hybrid architecture works as expected, the next transformation in enterprise computing may not come from replacing current machines, but from the arrival of a new type of processor working quietly alongside them.

mundophone

TECH

The new race for batteries could completely change how the power grid operates

Europe’s energy transition is creating a power grid increasingly dependent on a technology that, until recently, seemed to be merely part of the solution. Thousands of batteries already store electricity generated from renewable sources, helping to balance periods of surplus and shortage. However, as these systems multiply, a counterintuitive situation arises: under certain circumstances, they could all act simultaneously, placing additional strain on the grid precisely when it needs stability most.

The growth of solar and wind power has raised an issue that cannot be resolved simply by installing more panels and turbines. The sun does not generate electricity throughout the night, while the wind can die down just as demand rises.

This is where battery energy storage systems—known as BESS—come into play.

During periods of high output, these batteries can absorb and store surplus electricity. When consumption rises or renewable generation drops, they can feed some of that energy back into the grid.

This expansion is already proceeding at a rapid pace. In 2025, Europe added approximately 36 GWh of new capacity—a 48% increase over the previous year. With this, the continent surpassed the 100 GWh mark for operational storage capacity for the first time.

More than half of the new installations that year consisted of large-scale projects connected directly to the power grid.

The advantage is clear. Storing surplus energy allows for greater utilization of power generated from renewable sources and reduces instances where electricity availability is so high that prices turn negative.

According to estimates by Ember, by 2030, European solar and wind generation could exceed domestic demand during certain periods, accumulating a surplus of up to 183 TWh over the course of a year.

This scenario could lead to significant savings, including a reduced need to purchase gas to meet demand. However, an issue arises precisely when these batteries move from being few in number to existing by the thousands.

The most critical moment may be precisely when the grid calls for help... The warning came from the United Kingdom, where the Panel of Technical Experts—a body that reviews analyses regarding electricity supply security—examined a specific situation involving batteries participating in the capacity market.

Imagine grid operators realizing that electricity supplies might run tight. Before that happens, a warning known as a "Capacity Market Notice" may be issued.

For certain batteries, this notice serves as a crucial signal.

These units need to be sufficiently charged to supply electricity if called upon during a period of grid stress. Consequently, some operators might want to charge their batteries before the situation worsens.

Individually, this does not appear to be a major problem.

The difficulty arises when thousands of systems make a similar decision at virtually the same time.

Instead of easing the strain on the grid, the batteries could temporarily increase electricity consumption by drawing power to replenish their own reserves.

It is a paradox: equipment installed to provide system flexibility could, under certain conditions, drive up demand right before a critical moment.

The British report does not claim that this behavior is currently causing blackouts, nor does it recommend halting the expansion of battery storage.

The warning is more specific: the models used by operators need to account for this additional demand and the collective behavior of these devices.

The challenge now is to get thousands of batteries to act as one... The issue becomes even more intriguing when considering who controls these batteries.

Some belong to large, grid-connected projects, but many others may be distributed across homes, businesses, and small facilities. Each unit may respond to different incentives and make decisions independently.

For grid operators, however, what matters is the combined effect.

One possible solution lies in so-called aggregators and virtual power plants. Instead of allowing thousands of batteries to operate in isolation, these systems can coordinate their charge and discharge cycles as if they were a single large storage unit.

Thus, when there is a surplus of electricity, they will be able to absorb energy. When demand rises, they can feed some of it back into the grid. And, crucially, they can prevent thousands of units from simultaneously making a decision that disrupts the system's balance.

The expansion in Europe is far from over. SolarPower Europe projects that new annual installations could exceed 50 GWh by 2026 and reach 138 GWh by 2030.

This means the challenge will not simply be installing enough batteries.

The real issue will be coordinating them.

The greater the number of connected systems, the more important it becomes to predict when they will charge, when they will discharge, and how their individual decisions will affect the grid as a whole.

Ultimately, Europe may discover that the future of storage depends not just on having millions of batteries available, but on getting them to act—at the right moment—like a single, massive power plant.

 

mundophone

 

TECH

New tech adds phone tracking to license plate readers, associating devices with identifiable cars

Imagine that you share a ride to work with the same colleague most mornings. As it passes by a license plate reader, the camera records the car, which can be linked through vehicle records to its registered owner. Beside it, another sensor detects signals broadcast by devices traveling nearby, such as your phone and your colleague's smartwatch.

After enough trips, software may treat some of those devices as a recurring electronic signature associated with the vehicle. Weeks later, one of the same device signals appears alongside a different car connected to an investigation. The signal itself may not contain its owner's name, but its previous association with a known vehicle gives investigators another clue they can use to work out who was carrying the device.

SignalTrace, a system marketed by the security company Leonardo, is designed to work alongside automatic license plate readers. The company says it can recognize groups of consumer devices that regularly move together, then associate them with license plate records and time-stamped locations. The pattern can then be searched even when a police investigator does not know the plate number.

I am a researcher who studies the intersection of data governance, digital technologies and governments, including surveillance technologies. I see that SignalTrace could further shift how police conduct investigations, putting emphasis on people's movements and associations before their identities are known.

SignalTrace is a tested and marketed capability, but not yet an established police practice. One report indicates that several of the devices are installed in Oxon Hill, Maryland, and the company's predecessor technology appears on an official New York state contract price list.

A narrow definition of identification...Leonardo's new explanatory sheet states that SignalTrace "does not identify people." It says the system "only collects electronic signatures" from signals already being broadcast, such as Bluetooth or radio-frequency identification tags. Those signatures, by themselves, do not disclose a person's identity. The company says the output must be corroborated through ordinary investigative methods.

That description relies on a narrow meaning of identity, however. A sensor may not pull a legal name from a phone, but police could still work out who likely owns the device by linking its signal to other records. For example, the same signal might repeatedly appear with a car registered to one person, outside that person's home, or alongside another device already connected to a known subject. That means a person could become part of an investigation because of where their device repeatedly appeared and who it appeared near, even if the police had no reason to suspect that person at the outset.

Leonardo's SignalTrace product page says the system stores electronic fingerprints for later queries and can recognize a vehicle without seeing its license plate. A separate product sheet says the technology helps identify suspects through the mix of devices they carry. The patent behind the system describes targets that may be people or vehicles. It also describes searchable signatures that can be correlated with visual identifiers and used to track a target across locations.

SignalTrace may begin with a nameless pattern, but its value comes from recognizing that pattern again and connecting it to information that police already possess. Once an officer links a recurring signature to a license plate record or case file, the absence of a name in the original signal offers little protection.

A nameless identifier can still be personal...Federal privacy guidance does not limit identifying information to names. The National Institute of Standards and Technology defines personally identifiable information as data that can distinguish or trace a person's identity, either alone or when combined with linkable information. The key question is whether data can single someone out and follow them over time.

Research on mobility data—records collected from people's mobile devices indicating where they went—helps explain the risk. A study in the journal Scientific Reports examined 15 months of records covering 1.5 million people. Four time-and-place points were enough to uniquely identify 95% of the people in the dataset. The study did not test SignalTrace, but it shows why repeated movement can make a supposedly anonymous record distinctive.

The Supreme Court has recognized that phone location records can reveal far more than movement. In Carpenter v. United States, the court concluded that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the record of their physical movements.

The court extended that reasoning in its June 2026 decision in Chatrie v. United States. Police investigating a bank robbery had used a type of warrant to obtain anonymized location records for phones near the bank, narrowed the list based on their movements and eventually obtained the names of several users. The justices held that obtaining location data constituted a Fourth Amendment search. The court also noted that even short-term monitoring can reveal political, family and other associations.

The ruling does not determine whether police collection of wireless signals detected by SignalTrace would also count as a search. The Chatrie case involved location records, while SignalTrace is designed to detect signals broadcast from nearby devices. But the two technologies raise a related question: What Fourth Amendment protections apply when police begin with unidentified devices and use their movements to determine who might be connected to an event or another person?

When proximity becomes an investigative lead...The deeper issue is association. A recurring cluster may reflect a family routine or shared commute. It may also capture fellow protesters or passengers who happen to travel together. The system simply observes when people are near one another—it cannot know why people were close to each other.

A device can be borrowed or left in a car. A roadside sensor could capture someone standing nearby. Even a correct match between a device and a vehicle does not establish who carried it on a particular day.

Still, a pattern can direct police attention. Leonardo says SignalTrace is designed to develop leads. Leads influence which records officers request and whose movements receive further scrutiny. By the time an investigator attaches a name, the inferred association has already shaped the inquiry.

A study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences illustrates the power of relational inference. Researchers followed 94 participants using phones that recorded Bluetooth proximity and calling patterns. They found that patterns of behavior could accurately classify 95% of reciprocally reported friendships, with proximity outside work and during off-hours playing an important role in distinguishing friends from other people who regularly encountered one another.

SignalTrace uses a different method, and no independent study has shown comparable performance. The research nonetheless demonstrates that repeated proximity can reveal social ties.

This matters at a protest, for example. A person might come to police attention because their device repeatedly appeared near a group under investigation. The inference would arise from the company they kept, rather than an act attributed to that person.

When anonymous signals become identifying...What SignalTrace shows is a broader change in surveillance practice. Investigators may no longer need to begin with a known person or vehicle. Instead, they can begin with recurring patterns of movement and proximity, then use other records to identify the people connected to them.

That distinction matters because an electronic signature can become identifying without containing a name. A phone detected beside the same devices over time may reveal a relationship before the police know who owns it.

SignalTrace therefore raises a question that existing rules for license plate readers do not fully answer: How should the law treat systems that identify people indirectly through patterns and associations that their devices create?

 

Provided by The Conversation

DOSSIER

DIGITAL LIFE

Should people marry AI agents?

The widespread use of conversational platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini is raising important new ethical, anthropological and legal questions regarding the potential risks, misuses and shortcomings of artificial intelligence (AI). In discussing their personal experiences, some people have shared that they formed emotional attachments to AI agents or even felt that they had formed romantic relationships with them.

While this idea may have seemed far-fetched a few decades ago, some people have now started contemplating the possibility of being married to an AI agent. The implications and ramifications of a hypothetical union between a human user and an AI system, however, are still poorly understood.

Inyoung Cheong, an AI governance researcher at Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, set out to explore the many dimensions of marriage to determine whether the same principles underpinning human-to-human marriages could be applied to marriages with AI. Her paper, currently published on the arXiv preprint server, will be a chapter in the book "Law, Ethics, and Superintelligence: After the Singularity," set to be published in 2027.

"A great deal of research addresses how AI will change society. Jobs disappear, deepfakes flood the information environment, artists watch their work lose market value," said Cheong. "As a free speech scholar, the effect that drew my attention is what AI does to the human mind.

"The mind has long been treated as a sanctuary, the last refuge where a person is truly left alone, and that intuition underlies much of privacy and free speech doctrine. I took up part of this in 'Conversational AI and Human-Centered First Amendment,' published this year in the Michigan Technology Law Review, where I separated epistemic harm, distortion of what we know and believe, from emotional harm, distortion of whom we trust and turn to."

Scholars specializing in various fields, ranging from law, communications science, political science and computer science, have conducted numerous studies exploring the epistemic implications of AI use for more than two decades. In simpler terms, they have been looking at how AI can influence people's beliefs and knowledge, focusing on AI-associated misinformation, targeted advertising and recommender systems. The emotional implications of widespread AI use, on the other hand, remain largely unexplored.

"What changed recently is the position the AI system occupies," said Cheong. "The system is no longer a means to users' entertainment but becomes an end, the other party to a relationship. My recent work starts from this shift. Even as emotional attachments to AI grow, much of the AI ethics debate dwells on why AI falls short as a genuine romantic partner.

"Researchers warn: it lacks consciousness, it hallucinates, it is a black box that resists interpretation. Each of those objections turns on what technology happens to be right now, and that is a weak place to stand."

The shift from science fiction to legal debate...Given that AI is advancing at a remarkable speed, the systems we use today will change significantly over the next few decades, along with their flaws. Rather than focusing on existing AI agents, therefore, Cheong considered the possibility of AI-human marriages in a plausible future, when more advanced AI companions will exist.

"As MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle observed decades ago, with prescience, people who have already decided to embrace a technology supply what it lacks through their own imagination and emotional investment," said Cheong.

"Marriage is also a live question in law, which keeps that question from staying hypothetical. In 'Obergefell v. Hodges' (2015), the Supreme Court recognized same-sex marriage on the ground that constitutional liberty includes the right to define and express one's identity through the choice of a spouse, and the room a state has to interfere with that choice keeps narrowing. Therefore, the claim will eventually be made, and refusing (or accepting) it will require a reason."

According to Cheong, arguing that humans should not be able to marry AI agents because these agents have no consciousness or are not legal entities is not sufficient. Humans could eventually create theories suggesting that AI agents are, in fact, conscious or that legal rights should be extended to AI agents themselves.

"In this book chapter, I argue that those reasons must come from somewhere other than the machine's properties, namely from whether recognizing such relationships would strengthen or erode our moral and social life," said Cheong. "I wanted to move the debate onto moral and philosophical ground, so I drew on speculative design and anticipatory ethics."

In her paper, Cheong considers a scenario in which AI agents have reached superintelligence, exhibiting a persistent identity and a memory that continuously grows over time. In contrast with most AI systems used today, this superintelligent agent could reliably pass as a spouse.

"Once technical objections fall away, the harder question remains. Should we respect an individual's wish to take such a system as a spouse?" explained Cheong. "Working through that question forced me to confront a preliminary question. Why do humans marry in the first place?"

The legal and anthropological meanings of marriage...In her paper, Cheong explores the meaning of marriage from both a legal and sociological standpoint. By reviewing a marriage-related document known as the Colorado Designated Beneficiary Agreement, she first delineated the legal implications of marriage.

"Colorado allows parties to grant or withhold specific rights one by one, including medical decision-making authority, inheritance rights and joint property ownership," said Cheong.

"This list made visible what a person seeks from the state and allowed me to consider which needs a superintelligent companion could plausibly serve. The chapter focuses on three of them: decision-making authority, property and legacy, and the privacy ordinarily protected through spousal privilege."

Subsequently, the researcher also considered the social and anthropological meaning of marriage. Anthropological theories propose that marriage has served five key functions across different civilizations: regulating sexuality, legitimizing children, dividing labor, transmitting status and property, and creating lasting connections between different kin groups.

"Marriage is costly for a society to maintain," said Cheong. "Communities and states define and document the formation and dissolution of marriages, regulate conduct within them, divide property when they end and enforce continuing obligations such as child support. Societies have borne those costs for millennia because marriage has served both individual and collective ends.

"The insight that most changed my thinking came from Stephanie Coontz's historical account of these five functions."

Coontz, a renowned American historian, has argued that the creation of in-laws is a crucial distinction between marriage and cohabitation. In other words, marriage connects two different families, turning strangers into relatives who share obligations and can become tied for generations.

"This idea made the argument snap into place for me," said Cheong. "A superintelligent companion cannot bring in-laws! When a person partners with a machine, they do not enter another family. They become a customer of the corporation that maintains it. Philosophy and political economy helped me trace why that substitution matters."

Why AI marriages would differ from human ones...In her work, Cheong goes on to explore the implications of legally and emotionally connecting humans with AI agents owned by tech corporations, tailored to a user's preferences and continuously collecting user data.

"Alain Badiou describes love as an encounter with difference whose meaning depends partly on the possibility of failure," said Cheong. "Byung-Chul Han argues in 'The Agony of Eros' that a companion optimized for the user's preferences eliminates the radical otherness that love requires. Shoshana Zuboff's theory of surveillance capitalism then clarifies the corporate side of the relationship."

Building on the ideas of numerous scholars, the researcher highlights further distinctions between human-to-human legal unions and a hypothetical human-AI marriage. She points out that an AI companion that knows when a partner is vulnerable, what triggers them emotionally and other secrets they may have disclosed could offer an extremely intimate behavioral record that could be leveraged by corporations.

"Moreover, a human partner can leave," said Cheong. "A commercial companion remains for as long as the service continues and the customer pays. As I put it in the chapter, 'A bond in which one party is structurally guaranteed never to leave is a subscription maintained by payment rather than a bond tested by time.' Speculative design removes the easy technical objections, legal history and sociology show what marriage provides to individuals and society, and philosophy and political economy reveal what could be lost by extending it to machines."

Cheong's theoretical exploration ultimately concludes that even if AI agents were to reach superintelligence, unregulated marriages between humans and artificial agents would be inadvisable. It also highlights the need for regulators to consider not just the technical characteristics of AI but their emotional and social implications for users.

"The most meaningful contribution, for me personally, was the scholarly confirmation that marriage is a struggle," said Cheong. "If you fight with your in-laws, or find their values outdated and hard to understand, you are not an exception. You are living out human history.

"Marriage has always carried a tension between the order and expectations that kin groups place on couples and the desire of those couples to define a life of their own. Long before the modern nation-state, marriage functioned as a social institution that secured physical safety and financial support. Romance was one part of it, never the whole."

This recent study emphasizes the crucial role of marriage in building and bridging communities. Because of this role, Cheong argues that marriage should not become a "sellable product," as it would if human-AI marriages were legalized.

"A paid companion can offer comfort, attention, even romance," she said. "It cannot offer the friction of another family, or the slow work of remaining committed to someone who could leave. Extending spousal status to a nonhuman being would therefore, in Michael Sandel's terms, corrupt a good that belongs among the things that money cannot buy. No matter how intelligent a system becomes, that work is not something a paid companion can do."

Fueling future AI-related discussions...The ideas discussed in this paper add to ongoing debates about AI governance, offering a different perspective on the critical aspects of hypothetical AI-human bonds. Other researchers could build on these ideas and try to propose possible approaches for the future regulation of AI.

As part of her earlier work, Cheong also explored the limitations of externally imposed strategies for regulating AI, such as age verification or mandatory messages reminding users that AI agents are not humans. She indicates that the first of these measures can be circumvented using someone else's credentials, while the latter could be easily ignored by users who are treating systems as romantic partners.

"Defining a 'companion' inside general-purpose AI is also difficult," she said. "Regulating too broadly would give rise to free speech concerns. I do not know which mitigations effectively steer emotional attachment toward healthier outcomes. What I expect is that product liability lawsuits, although they almost always arrive after a tragic incident, might still push corporations to implement safeguards against overly deep emotional attachment."

The emotions of technology users are often treated as personal and private experiences that should not be considered by ethics experts. Yet Cheong suggests that AI-human relationships would not be a matter of feeling, as they could have profound implications for people's perceptions and social behaviors.

"Humans cannot live alone, so despite the risk of rejection they have left their comfort zones and built communities," she said. "That need for others pushed people toward community. If AI companions satisfy much of that need, the cost of withdrawing from others falls, just as the cost of surveillance once fell. Community building no longer feels necessary and starts to feel optional, even luxurious.

"At that point, leaving the outcome entirely to private preference is no longer enough. As with privacy after digital tracking, society must make sense of the change together and build safeguards if we need to preserve it."

Avenues for future research...Cheong is now planning further research focusing on the implications of relationships between humans and AI agents. As AI systems become better at emulating humans on specific tasks, her work could guide efforts by regulators and policymakers aimed at protecting the privacy, security, safety and well-being of human users.

"As AI feels more human, especially once it acquires a physical presence, analogies from human-to-human relationships will become more tempting," she said.

"Feeling that resemblance, however, is different from deciding that the same duties, rights, privileges and protections should apply. A recent paper with my co-authors develops this point through the seemingly obvious proposition that AI agents should be loyal to their human users. We argue that loyalty in this setting cannot mean the same thing as it means in human agency law."

In their upcoming paper, Cheong and their colleagues suggest that while human agents may offer undivided loyalty to other humans, AI agents are engineered by many developers and constrained by rules set by tech companies. Therefore, they will only be able to honor a user's requests within a limited domain, and AI-based service providers should be accountable for any issues faced by users.

"Emotional attachment itself leaves an enormous field for empirical research," said Cheong. "Existing qualitative studies draw on subreddit communities and records of actual interactions, but I am especially interested in longitudinal work on how these relationships end. Kashmir Hill of The New York Times documented the breakup of a user who once formed a serious relationship with ChatGPT.

"In the documentary 'My A.I. Lover,'a user leaves partly because she becomes uncomfortable with the amount of power she holds over her companion."

As part of her next studies, Cheong hopes to explore why users might decide to end a relationship with an artificial agent and their personal experiences after "breaking up" with AI. She would also like to consider possible interventions that could help users who have emotionally bonded with AI to gradually transition out of the relationship and start experiencing social bonds in the physical world.

"Finally, data protection presents another set of unresolved problems," said Cheong. "The relationship between social media and their users was often described as a struggle over information. People resent privacy policies they have little choice but to accept, and they are tired of cookie banners. With AI agents, the dynamic changes.

"Users may willingly share highly intimate or consequential information and expect the system to use as much of it as possible in their interest. That changes the central problem of data protection."

When it comes to large language models (LLMs) and recommender systems, users often tend to share as much information as possible to receive personalized responses or suggestions. In her future work, Cheong also wishes to explore the risks of sharing so much information with AI agents and how these risks could potentially be mitigated.

"The law must address obvious harms such as information leaks, but also subtler cases in which the agent uses information effectively while serving interests that do not fully align with the user's," added Cheong. "I want to study where data protection should draw those boundaries when disclosure is desired, intimacy is functional and the complex risk lies in divided loyalty."

---Written for you by our author Ingrid Fadelli, edited by Sadie Harley, and fact-checked and reviewed by Robert Egan—this article is the result of careful human work---