I find this article pretty annoying and frankly just misleading trash.
The author seems to clearly not know almost even the basics of batteries and power so they are trying to ham fistedly find applications for this device. With even the researcher telling them "This will probably never leave the lab".
But a journalist has to sensationalize so "Imagine charging your ev in 2 seconds while you drive!"
I mean, good on them for mentioning that the researcher is skeptical... but my god you should have actually double checked your understanding before writing the article (maybe ran it past the researcher first).
This is one of those cases where an LLM does a better job.
I prompted sonnet with 'Write a news article about "quantum batteries"' and included the names of the researchers and it wrote a better and more accurate article than the BBC article.
It looked up the published articles and dumbed them down but also didn't misrepresent the facts.
Here's just one paragraph from the output.
That framing matters for where the technology might actually end up first. Rather than replacing the battery in your laptop, quantum batteries are more likely to find a niche whenever a system needs an extremely fast, tightly controlled burst of energy on a very small scale — potentially useful for future quantum computers or quantum sensors that already operate in the same ultra-cold, carefully isolated environments these batteries require.
Sure, but you don't work for the BBC. It's acceptable that it does a better job than you, it isn't acceptable that it did a better job than a journalist on the BBC payroll
Oh I totally agree. That was my point. Someone hired as a scientific reporter should be able to do as good or better than an LLM. The fact that they were far worse is an indictment.
Comments
I find this article pretty annoying and frankly just misleading trash.
The author seems to clearly not know almost even the basics of batteries and power so they are trying to ham fistedly find applications for this device. With even the researcher telling them "This will probably never leave the lab".
But a journalist has to sensationalize so "Imagine charging your ev in 2 seconds while you drive!"
I mean, good on them for mentioning that the researcher is skeptical... but my god you should have actually double checked your understanding before writing the article (maybe ran it past the researcher first).
It's sad to see over the past six months or so how even the BBC is resorting more and more to sensationalism and LLM-style writing
This is one of those cases where an LLM does a better job.
I prompted sonnet with 'Write a news article about "quantum batteries"' and included the names of the researchers and it wrote a better and more accurate article than the BBC article.
It looked up the published articles and dumbed them down but also didn't misrepresent the facts.
Here's just one paragraph from the output.
Sure, but you don't work for the BBC. It's acceptable that it does a better job than you, it isn't acceptable that it did a better job than a journalist on the BBC payroll
Oh I totally agree. That was my point. Someone hired as a scientific reporter should be able to do as good or better than an LLM. The fact that they were far worse is an indictment.