Tag: download

The Download: Sam Altman’s big longevity bet, and how CRISPR is changing lives

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This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Sam Altman invested $180 million into a company trying to delay death

When a startup called Retro Biosciences eased out of stealth mode in mid-2022, it announced it had secured $180 million to bankroll an audacious mission: to add 10 years to the average human lifespan. 

The business has always been vague about where its money had come from. Now MIT Technology Reveal can reveal that the entire sum was put up by Sam Altman, the 37-year-old startup guru and investor who is CEO of OpenAI. 

The amount is among the largest ever invested by an individual into a startup pursuing human longevity, and will fund Retro’s “aggressive mission” to stall aging, or even reverse it. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

If you’d like to read more about OpenAI:

+ Read the inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it.
+ Sam Altman: This is what I learned from DALL-E 2. 

Forget designer babies. Here’s how CRISPR is really changing lives

Gene editing is a technology many people tend to associate with its ethically-fraught ability to create designer babies. But that’s also a distraction from the real story of how the technology is changing people’s lives through treatments used on adults with serious diseases. 

There are now more than 50 experimental studies underway that use gene editing in human volunteers to treat everything from cancer to HIV and blood diseases, according to a tally shared with MIT Technology Review.

But these first generation of treatments will be hugely expensive and tricky to implement—and they could be quickly superseded by a next generation of improved editing drugs. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

How China takes extreme measures to keep teens off TikTok

The American people and the Chinese people have much more in common than either side likes to admit. Take the shared concern about how much time children and teenagers are spending on TikTok (or its Chinese domestic version, Douyin).

Several US senators have pushed for bills that would restrict underage users’ access to apps like TikTok. But ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is no stranger to those requests. In fact, it has been dealing with similar government pressures in China since at least 2018. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

Zeyi’s story is from China Report, his weekly newsletter covering China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Google developed a powerful chatbot years before ChatGPT
However, it got spooked that the system didn’t meet safety and fairness standards.(WSJ $)+ How tech’s AI obsession masks abuses of power. (Bloomberg $)
+ In theory, copyright law could derail generative AI. (Insider $)
+ ChatGPT is everywhere. Here’s where it came from. (MIT Technology Review)

2 A pro-Ukrainian group may have orchestrated the Nord Stream pipeline attack
But there’s no evidence that Ukrainian officials were involved. (NYT $)
+ Ukraine has denied any involvement in the attack last year. (BBC)
+ Here’s how the Nord Stream gas pipelines could be fixed. (MIT Technology Review)

3 How the FBI pushed for more powerful facial recognition
It could be used to fuel a vast surveillance network. (WP $)
+ Faked CCTV footage is on the rise, too. (Wired $)
+ South Africa’s private surveillance machine is fueling a digital apartheid. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Crypto startups are scrambling for funding 
Times are tougher than ever since things went south for the industry’s favorite bank. (The Information $)

5 Meta’s large language model been leaked on 4Chan
It’s the first model from a major company to leak. (Motherboard)
+ Why Meta’s latest large language model survived only three days online. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Japan was forced to blow up its own rocket
The vehicle’s second engine failed to ignite during takeoff. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s next in space. (MIT Technology Review)

7 YouTube just can’t get rid of Andrew Tate
His misogynistic videos keep being re-uploaded, despite an existing ban. (The Atlantic $)

8 The hidden risks of the share economy
When almost anything can be rented out to strangers, not everyone is well-meaning. (The Guardian)

9 TikTok’s viral drinks leave a bad taste in the mouth
Users are making increasingly outlandish concoctions in a bid for views. (FT $)
+ The porcelain challenge didn’t need to be real to get views. (MIT Technology Review)

10 The work phone is making a comeback
Partly because of companies cracking down on TikTok. (Bloomberg $)

Quote of the day

“I independently made my money, as opposed to say, inherited an emerald mine.”

—Halli, a recently laid-off Twitter worker, fires back at his former boss Elon Musk, who accused Halli of shirking his work responsibilities.

The big story

Why can’t tech fix its gender problem?

August 2022

Despite the tech sector’s great wealth and loudly self-proclaimed corporate commitments to the rights of women, LGBTQ+ people, and racial minorities, the industry remains mostly a straight, white man’s world.

It wasn’t always this way. Software programming once was an almost entirely female profession. As recently as 1980, women held 70% of the programming jobs in Silicon Valley, but the ratio has since flipped entirely. While many things contributed to the shift, from the educational pipeline to the tiresomely persistent fiction of tech as a gender-blind “meritocracy,” none explain it entirely. What really lies at the core of tech’s gender problem is money. Read the full story.

—Margaret O’Mara

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Aww, Dave Grohl has cemented his status as the nicest man in rock.
+ These photos of a cheetah cub and a puppy are the cutest thing you’ll see today.
+ If you enjoy nosing through tech executives’ emails, this Twitter account is the one for you.
+ The 10 things that actor Jeremy Strong can’t live without are typically unhinged.
+ This story sent a shiver down my spine.



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The Download: risks to Reddit, and the potential return of the dodo

Post By Science And Technology , , ,

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

How the Supreme Court ruling on Section 230 could end Reddit as we know it

When the Supreme Court hears a landmark case on Section 230 later in February, all eyes will be on the biggest players in tech—Meta, Google, Twitter, YouTube.

The case might have a range of outcomes. One of the potential consequences is that these companies may be forced to transform their approach to community content moderation.

Many sites rely on users for community moderation to edit, shape, remove, and promote other users’ content online—think Reddit’s upvote, or changes to a Wikipedia page. If those users were forced to take on legal risk every time they made a content decision, experts warn that it could have a catastrophic effect on online speech communities. Read the full story.

—Tate Ryan-Mosley

A de-extinction company is trying to resurrect the dodo

The news: The dodo bird was big, flightless, and pretty tasty, too—all of which help to explain why it went extinct around 1662. Now a US biotechnology company says it plans to bring the dodo back into existence.

Why a dodo? It’s the third species picked by Colossal Biosciences, of Austin, Texas, for what it calls a process of technological “de-extinction.” The company is also working on using large-scale genome engineering to morph modern elephants back into wooly mammoths and resurrect the Tasmanian tiger. 

How are they doing it? The company recovered detailed DNA information from 500-year-old dodo remains held at a museum in Denmark. It plans to try to modify the bird’s closest living relative, the Nicobar pigeon, turning it step by step into a dodo and possibly “re-wilding” the animal in its native habitat. The problem is that while it is easy to gene-edit bird cells in the lab, it’s hard to turn carefully edited cells back into a bird. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

Who gets to be a tech entrepreneur in China?

We live in an age where the concept of being an entrepreneur is increasingly broad. It’s often hard to slot occupations—hosting a podcast, driving for Uber, even having an OnlyFans account—into the traditional definitions of employment vs. entrepreneurship.

Of course, this is not a strictly Western phenomenon; it’s happening all over the world. And in China, it’s also transforming how people work—but with the country’s own twists. 

Our China reporter Zeyi Yang has spoken with author Lin Zhang about her new book that explores the rise and social impact of Chinese people who have succeeded (at least temporarily) as entrepreneurs. Read the full story.

This story is from China Report, Zeyi’s weekly newsletter covering all the latest news from China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 OpenAI has released a tool that detects AI-generated text
Unfortunately, it’s not very good. (WSJ $)
+ The tool returns a lot of both false positives and false negatives. (Axios)
+ It identified only 26% of AI-written text correctly. (Bloomberg $)
+ What the human brain can teach us about AI. (The Atlantic $)
+ Google is apparently testing its own ChatGPT rivals. (CNBC)
+ A watermark for chatbots can expose text written by an AI. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The US defense industry is struggling to arm Ukraine
Its supply chains are straining under the sheer demand for weapons. (FT $)
+ How Russia is sneakily bypassing oil sanctions. (Economist $)

3 Elon Musk’s Twitter feed is an echo chamber
Despite his insistence that the broader platform should be more open and diverse. (NYT $)
+ Twitter isn’t happy at the cost of private jets. (Bloomberg $)
+ We’re witnessing the brain death of Twitter. (MIT Technology Review)

4 A streamer was caught watching deepfake porn of his colleagues  
The non-consensual videos demonstrate the dangers of the technology. (Motherboard)
+ A horrifying new AI app swaps women into porn videos with a click. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Covid appears to be scrambling our immune systems
Even mild infections seem to disrupt our ability to fight off diseases. (Slate $)
+ How to work out how healthy your immune system is. (New Scientist $)

6 Tracking truckers hasn’t made long-haul driving safer
It has, however, ushered in a new era of surveillance. (New Yorker $)

7 What’s next for laid-off tech workers?
Their skills are highly prized—especially by businesses outside tech. (Vox)
+ Anonymous app Blind is the hottest place to search for work. (CNN)
+ The US is weaning itself off being a nation of workaholics. (The Atlantic $)

8 Assembling iPhones in Foxconn’s factory is a thankless task
It pays well, but the grueling working conditions challenge employees daily. (Rest of World)

9 Airport protocols are getting faster
E-gates and biometric passports are making it easier to speed through. (WP $)

10 It’s easier than ever to report a UFO sighting 🛸
Simply fire up Enigma Labs’ app. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“As I kept looking, it was hard not to laugh out loud at the absurdity of those hands and teeth.”

—Programmer Miles Zimmerman recalls a nightmarish experiment with generative AI model Mindjourney, which created images of people with too many fingers and teeth, he tells BuzzFeed.

The big story

This $1.5 billion startup promised to deliver clean fuels as cheap as gas. Experts are deeply skeptical.

April 2022

Last summer, Rob McGinnis, the founder and chief executive of startup Prometheus Fuels, gathered investors and staged a theatrical demonstration of his technology. Prometheus promises to transform the global fuel sector by drawing greenhouse gas out of the air and converting it into carbon-neutral fuels that are as cheap as dirty, conventional ones.

But while investors have thrown money at the company, pushing it up to a valuation of more than $1.5 billion, there is little evidence it can actually live up to its lofty claims. Read the full story.

—James Temple

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ It’s fair to say that I didn’t see the twist in any of these agony aunt letters coming (thanks Jess!)
+ Some choices are too tough to contemplate, and this is one of them.
+ What can board games teach us? More than you might think, actually. 
+ Keep an eye out for the green comet passing close to Earth tonight—if you miss it, you’ll have to wait another 50,000 years.
+ A coffee date with these three angels is my idea of the perfect day.



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The Download: 2022’s best stories, and what’s next for AI

Post By Science And Technology , ,

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Our favorite stories of 2022

We like to think we’ve had a great year here at MIT Technology Review. Our stories have won numerous awards (this story from our magazine won Gold in the AAAS awards) and our investigations have helped shed light on unjust policies.

So this year we asked our writers and editors to comb back through the past 12 months and try to pick just one story that they loved the most—and then tell us why. This is what they said.

What’s next for AI

In 2022, AI got creative. AI models can now produce remarkably convincing pieces of text, pictures, and even videos, with just a little prompting. It’s only been nine months since OpenAI set off the generative AI explosion with the launch of DALL-E 2, a deep-learning model that can produce images from text instructions. That was followed by a breakthrough from Google and Meta: AIs that can produce videos from text. And it’s only been a few weeks since OpenAI released ChatGPT, the latest large language model to set the internet ablaze with its surprising eloquence and coherence.

The pace of innovation this year has been remarkable—and at times overwhelming. Who could have seen it coming? And how can we predict what’s next?

Our in-house experts Will Douglas Heaven and Melissa Heikkilä tell us the four biggest trends they expect to shape the AI landscape in 2023. Read the full story

Brain stimulation might be more invasive than we think

Today, there are lots of neurotechnologies that can read what’s going on in our brains, modify the way they function, and change the wiring. Deep brain stimulation, for example, involves implanting electrodes deep into the brain to stimulate neurons and control the way brain regions fire. It’s considered pretty invasive, in the medical sense.

Other treatments, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, which involves passing a device shaped like a figure 8 over a person’s head to deliver a magnetic pulse to parts of the brain and to interfere with its activity, are considered “noninvasive” because they act from outside the brain. But if we can reach into a person’s mind, even without piercing the skull, how noninvasive is the technology really? Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

Jessica’s story is from The Checkup, her weekly newsletter covering everything worth knowing in biotech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

Podcast: the future of farming lies in space

AI is used in agriculture to precisely target weeds and optimize irrigation practices. It’s also being used in ways you might not expect, like for tracking the health of cow pastures—from space. We travel from test farms to orchards in the first of a two-part series on agriculture, AI, and satellites.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or wherever you normally get your podcasts.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Sam Bankman-Fried has been released on $250 million bail
He’s facing home detention while he awaits trial. (BBC)
+ It’s one of the largest bails in US history. (Bloomberg $)
+ Crypto Twitter is not impressed by his cushy conditions. (CoinTelegraph)

2 A severe storm is forcing US airlines to cancel flights
+ Disrupting Christmas travel left, right, and center. (WSJ $)
+ It’s due to sweep across most of the US and into Canada. (Wired $)

3 We don’t know how effective nasal covid vaccines are
And because we’re not collecting the right kind of data, we may never know. (The Atlantic $)
+ Two inhaled covid vaccines have been approved—but we don’t know yet how good they are. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Life expectancy in the US has fallen again. (Axios)

4 Twitter is starting to show how many people have seen your tweets
It’s yet another of Elon Musk’s wheezes. (TechCrunch)
+ Twitter looks like it’s crumbling right now. (The Atlantic $)
+ We’re witnessing the brain death of Twitter. (MIT Technology Review)

5 ByteDance has been tracking journalists 
Its staff improperly gained access to their IP addresses to try and work out if they’d crossed paths with ByteDance workers. (Forbes)
+ After all that, the company failed to find any leaks. (FT $)
+ TikTok is desperately trying to curry favor in the US. (Reuters)

6 NFTs are at a crossroads
Their value has plummeted, but evangelists are refusing to give up. (Wired $)
+ Some of the crypto faithful are trying to take their losses on the chin. (Vice)

7 Immigrant tech workers who’ve been laid off are caught in limbo
Losing their jobs means their families are also unable to work, leaving many with no choice but to leave the US. (The Guardian)
+ For this startup founder, his business going bust came as a bit of a relief. (The Information $)

8 This has been a landmark year for EVs 
They’re not just synonymous with Tesla any more. (Vox)
+ Why EVs won’t replace hybrid cars anytime soon. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Japan’s space agency is sending a toy-like rover to the moon
The cute ball is designed by popular toymaker Tomy. (New Yorker $)
+ The Perseverance rover has dropped off its first sample tube. (The Register)

10 We’re living through the first ever BeReal Christmas
Unfortunately, originality is vanishingly rare. (Vice)

Quote of the day

“Against all odds, and doom and gloom scenarios, Ukraine didn’t fall. Ukraine is alive and kicking.” 

—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanks the US Congress for its financial support of Ukraine and its people 10 months after Russia invaded, CNN reports.

The big story

Startups are racing to reproduce breast milk in the lab

December 2020

Like many mothers, Leila Strickland found breastfeeding difficult. She struggled to feed her son, and three years later, her daughter, and spent all day, every day, nursing or pumping to stimulate her milk flow.

Strickland, a professor of vascular physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, began thinking about how she might be able to use a process like that pioneered by Dutch food technology company Mosa Meat to create artificial beef, but for cells that produce breast milk.

For years she struggled to keep the project funded, and she came close to abandoning the idea. But in May 2020, Biomilq, a company she had founded, received $3.5 million from a group of investors led by Bill Gates. Biomilq is now in a race with competitors to shake up the world of infant nutrition in a way not seen since the birth of the now $42 billion formula industry. Read the full story.

—Haley Cohen Gilliland

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ I must admit, I hadn’t heard of flirting with onion emojis until now. 🧅
+ Even millennials are starting to find millennials cringe.
+ An intrepid guide to all Netflix’s cheesy festive movies—watch at your peril. 
+ This chef is bravely reimagining the Italian Christmas classic panettone, with a little Silician flair.
+ How to make new year’s resolutions you’ll actually stick to.



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