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This is as we speak’s version of The Download, our weekday publication that gives a day by day dose of what’s occurring on the planet of know-how.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into an organization making an attempt to delay demise
When a startup referred to as Retro Biosciences eased out of stealth mode in mid-2022, it introduced it had secured $180 million to bankroll an audacious mission: so as to add 10 years to the common human lifespan.
The enterprise has all the time been imprecise about the place its cash had come from. Now MIT Technology Reveal can reveal that all the sum was put up by Sam Altman, the 37-year-old startup guru and investor who’s CEO of OpenAI.
The quantity is among the many largest ever invested by a person right into a startup pursuing human longevity, and can fund Retro’s “aggressive mission” to stall growing old, and even reverse it. Read the full story.
—Antonio Regalado
If you’d wish to learn extra about OpenAI:
- Read the inside story of how ChatGPT was constructed from the individuals who made it.
+ Sam Altman: This is what I discovered from DALL-E 2.
Forget designer infants. Here’s how CRISPR is basically altering lives
Gene enhancing is a know-how many individuals are inclined to affiliate with its ethically-fraught skill to create designer infants. But that’s additionally a distraction from the actual story of how the know-how is altering folks’s lives by remedies used on adults with severe ailments.
There at the moment are greater than 50 experimental research underway that use gene enhancing in human volunteers to deal with every little thing from most cancers to HIV and blood ailments, in response to a tally shared with MIT Technology Review.
But these first technology of remedies can be vastly costly and difficult to implement—they usually might be rapidly outdated by a subsequent technology of improved enhancing medicine. Read the full story.
—Antonio Regalado
How China takes excessive measures to maintain teenagers off TikTok
The American folks and the Chinese folks have way more in widespread than both aspect likes to confess. Take the shared concern about how a lot time kids and youngsters are spending on TikTok (or its Chinese home model, Douyin).
Several US senators have pushed for payments that might prohibit underage customers’ entry to apps like TikTok. But ByteDance, the guardian firm of TikTok, isn’t any stranger to these requests. In truth, it has been coping with comparable authorities pressures in China since a minimum of 2018. Read the full story.
—Zeyi Yang
Zeyi’s story is from China Report, his weekly publication overlaying China. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Tuesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to search out you as we speak’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.
1 Google developed a strong chatbot years earlier than ChatGPT
However, it acquired spooked that the system didn’t meet security and equity requirements.(WSJ $)+ How tech’s AI obsession masks abuses of energy. (Bloomberg $)
+ In principle, copyright legislation may derail generative AI. (Insider $)
+ ChatGPT is in every single place. Here’s the place it got here from. (MIT Technology Review)
2 A professional-Ukrainian group could have orchestrated the Nord Stream pipeline assault
But there’s no proof that Ukrainian officers had been concerned. (NYT $)
+ Ukraine has denied any involvement within the assault final 12 months. (BBC)
+ Here’s how the Nord Stream gasoline pipelines might be mounted. (MIT Technology Review)
3 How the FBI pushed for extra highly effective facial recognition
It might be used to gas an unlimited surveillance community. (WP $)
+ Faked CCTV footage is on the rise, too. (Wired $)
+ South Africa’s personal surveillance machine is fueling a digital apartheid. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Crypto startups are scrambling for funding
Times are harder than ever since issues went south for the business’s favourite financial institution. (The Information $)
5 Meta’s massive language mannequin been leaked on 4Chan
It’s the primary mannequin from a serious firm to leak. (Motherboard)
+ Why Meta’s newest massive language mannequin survived solely three days on-line. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Japan was pressured to explode its personal rocket
The automobile’s second engine didn’t ignite throughout takeoff. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s subsequent in area. (MIT Technology Review)
7 YouTube simply can’t do away with Andrew Tate
His misogynistic movies preserve being re-uploaded, regardless of an present ban. (The Atlantic $)
8 The hidden dangers of the share financial system
When nearly something will be rented out to strangers, not everyone seems to be well-meaning. (The Guardian)
9 TikTok’s viral drinks depart a foul style within the mouth
Users are making more and more outlandish concoctions in a bid for views. (FT $)
+ The porcelain problem didn’t should be actual to get views. (MIT Technology Review)
10 The work telephone is making a comeback
Partly due to corporations cracking down on TikTok. (Bloomberg $)
Quote of the day
“I independently made my cash, versus say, inherited an emerald mine.”
—Halli, a lately laid-off Twitter employee, fires back at his former boss Elon Musk, who accused Halli of shirking his work obligations.
The massive story
Why can’t tech repair its gender drawback?
Despite the tech sector’s nice wealth and loudly self-proclaimed company commitments to the rights of ladies, LGBTQ+ folks, and racial minorities, the business stays principally a straight, white man’s world.
It wasn’t all the time this fashion. Software programming as soon as was an nearly solely feminine occupation. As lately as 1980, girls held 70% of the programming jobs in Silicon Valley, however the ratio has since flipped solely. While many issues contributed to the shift, from the tutorial pipeline to the tiresomely persistent fiction of tech as a gender-blind “meritocracy,” none clarify it solely. What actually lies on the core of tech’s gender drawback is cash. Read the full story.
—Margaret O’Mara
We can nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre occasions. (Got any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
- Aww, Dave Grohl has cemented his standing because the nicest man in rock.
+ These images of a cheetah cub and a puppy are the cutest factor you’ll see as we speak.
+ If you take pleasure in nosing by tech executives’ emails, this Twitter account is the one for you.
+ The 10 issues that actor Jeremy Strong can’t dwell with out are sometimes unhinged.
+ This story despatched a shiver down my backbone.
