Technology, science, and the rules that shape them.
In the last two episodes, we talked about papers connecting AI and brain science. Now that we've talked about brain science, we decided to look into patent trends in that field.
Read article*This article was written together with Jin Hwa Lee, a researcher working in Professor Saxe's lab (The Thinking Lab, University College London), the author of the paper.
Read articleThere are questions that naturally come to mind when studying AI:
Read articleAccording to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the battery market has grown more than five times in four years from 180GWh in 2020 to 1,100GWh in 2024. The market for electric vehicles, which are the main users of batteries, is growing every year, and it is said that one in four cars sold in 2025 was an electric vehicle.
Read articleOn May 9, 2026, an article with this title was published in a domestic AI journal:
Read articleAround 2013, in Wisconsin, USA, a man named Eric Loomis stood trial on charges related to a drive-by shooting. Loomis was sentenced to a term of imprisonment without probation. At sentencing, the court referred to a “recidivism risk score.” What was unusual was that this score had been assigned by software called COMPAS, rather than by a judge.
Read articleWhen people discuss semiconductors, most think of manufacturing processes and capital expenditure. Yet one company has no factories and makes no finished products: the British semiconductor design business ARM (Arm Holdings).
Read articleThe fourth topic in “The world through patents” is space.
Read articleThe previous article examined German court cases. What, then, is happening in the United States, home to the major AI companies?
Read articleThe AI Basic Act discussed in the previous article concerned labeling generated material: regulation of output. But disputes surrounding AI have another front at the opposite end — input.
Read articleThe third topic in “The World Through Patents” is cancer treatment.
Read articleThe first technology topic in “The world through patents” is quantum technology.
Read articleIn this article, I will use patents to take a macro-level look at the state of technological development worldwide.
Read articleThe past four articles all discussed artificial intelligence. This time, let us turn to a different subject.
Read articleOn January 22, 2026, South Korea became the world’s first country to fully implement its AI Basic Act[1]. Although the EU enacted its AI Act earlier, its high-risk AI regulations begin phased application in August 2026. South Korea is therefore the first to put a comprehensive AI law fully into practice.
Read articleI concluded the previous article by noting that rules always lag one step behind technology. Some businesses, however, do not simply wait through that gap. They move ahead before rules are established and claim the empty space as a business opportunity.
Read articleIn the previous article, we saw how the EU, the United States, and Denmark address the same deepfake problem in different ways. This time, I will turn to East Asia to examine China and South Korea, and conclude by considering what these national differences tell us.
Read articleThe time when deepfakes could be dismissed as technological curiosities or occasional pranks is over. In a WIPO discussion, Professor Anderson Rocha reframed deepfakes and the technologies around them as “Synthetic Realities.” They are not simply technologies for making convincing fakes, but forces that change reality itself: society, law, and politics as a whole.
Read articleI have been writing one article each week about technology, science, and the rules surrounding them. I now plan to bring these articles into a more structured newsletter and publish them again, one each week. This will gather previously scattered pieces in one place and provide a home for future articles as well.
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