The Top 50 Tech Stories Of 2011

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Boeing’s space capsule developed more leaks during its first test flight with astronauts as it closed in on the International Space Station on Thursday. The Starliner capsule already had one small helium leak when it rocketed into orbit Wednesday. Boeing and NASA managers were confident they could manage the propulsion system despite the problem and that more leaks were unlikely.

From its towering white steeple and red-brick facade to its Sunday services filled with rousing gospel hymns and evangelistic sermons, First Baptist Church of Alexandria, Virginia, bears many of the classic hallmarks of a Southern Baptist church. On a recent Sunday, its pastor for women and children, Kim Eskridge, urged members to invite friends and neighbors to an upcoming vacation Bible school — a perennial Baptist activity — to help “reach families in the community with the gospel.” But because that pastor is a woman, First Baptist’s days in the Southern Baptist Convention may be numbered. At the SBC’s annual meeting June 11-12 in Indianapolis, representatives will vote on whether to amend the denomination’s constitution to essentially ban churches with any women pastors — and not just in the top job.

SpaceX’s mega Starship rocket blasted off from Texas on Thursday, the fourth test flight for the spaceship that NASA and Elon Musk are counting on to get humanity to the moon and Mars. The world’s largest and most powerful rocket — almost 400 feet (121 meters) tall — was empty as it soared above the Gulf of Mexico and headed east on a planned hourlong flight.

Artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT could soon run out of what keeps making them smarter — the tens of trillions of words people have written and shared online. A new study released Thursday by research group Epoch AI projects that tech companies will exhaust the supply of publicly available training data for AI language models by roughly the turn of the decade — sometime between 2026 and 2032. Comparing it to a “literal gold rush” that depletes finite natural resources, Tamay Besiroglu, an author of the study, said the AI field might face challenges in maintaining its current pace of progress once it drains the reserves of human-generated writing. In the short term, tech companies like ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Google are racing to secure and sometimes pay for high-quality data sources to train their AI large language models – for instance, by signing deals to tap into the steady flow of sentences coming out of Reddit forums and news media outlets. In the longer term, there won’t be enough new blogs, news articles and social media commentary to sustain the current trajectory of AI development, putting pressure on companies to tap into sensitive data now considered private — such as emails or text messages — or relying on less-reliable “synthetic data” spit out by the chatbots themselves. “There is a serious bottleneck here,” Besiroglu said.

Travelers headed to Denver International Airport Tuesday morning won’t be able to use the commuter train — at least, not all the way. Related Articles Transportation | No ballot measure to fund Front Range passenger rail this year Transportation | RTD ends free rides to contain summer air pollution; free rides for youth continue Transportation | Part of RTD A Line to be replaced by shuttle buses Saturday for maintenance Transportation | Major RTD construction work in downtown Denver starts this weekend Transportation | Flying out of Denver for Memorial Day weekend?

A motorcyclist died Wednesday after his bike veered off the road and struck a fence in Fort Collins, police said. Fort Collins officers responded to reports of a crash in the 1000 block of East Drake Road around 7:26 p.m. Wednesday, according to a news release from the police department. When officers arrived at the scene, they found a single vehicle crash and a motorcycle rider with life threatening injuries, the release stated.