ChatGPT workout plans, and cleaning up aviation

When I opened the email telling me I’d been accepted to run the London Marathon, I felt elated. And then terrified. Barely six months on from my last marathon, I knew how dedicated I’d have to be to keep running day after day, week after week, month after month, through rain, cold, tiredness, grumpiness, and hangovers.

The marathon is the easy part. It’s the constant grind of the training that kills you—and finding ways to keep it fresh and interesting is part of the challenge. Some exercise nuts think they’ve found a way to live their routines up: by using the AI chatbot ChatGPT as a sort of proxy personal trainer.

Its appeal is obvious. ChatGPT answers questions in seconds, saving the need to sift through tons of information, and asking follow-up questions will give you a more detailed and personalized answer. But is ChatGPT really the future of how we work out? Or is it just a confident bullshitter? Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

How new technologies could clean up air travel

Aviation is a notorious “hard-to-decarbonize” sector. It makes up about 3% of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions, and airline traffic could more than double from today’s levels by 2050.

When it comes to flying, the technical challenge of cutting emissions is especially steep. Fuels for planes need to be especially light and compact, so planes can make it into the sky and still have room for people or cargo. But the industry has some promising ideas for cleaning up its act—and some of them are already taking off. Read the full story.