This is right now’s version of The Download, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a each day dose of what is going on on in the world of know-how.
Amazon is about to go face to face with SpaceX in a battle for satellite web dominance
What’s coming: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are about to lock horns as soon as once more. Last month, the US Federal Communications Commission authorised the closing facets of Project Kuiper, Amazon’s effort to ship high-speed web entry from house. In May, the firm will check its satellites in an effort to tackle SpaceX’s personal enterprise, Starlink, and faucet right into a doubtlessly very profitable market.
The catch: The key distinction is that Starlink is operational, and has been for years, whereas Amazon doesn’t plan to begin providing Kuiper as a service till 2024, giving SpaceX a substantial head begin. Also, none of the rockets Amazon has purchased a trip on has but made it to house. Read the full story.
—Jonathan O’Callaghan
These new instruments allow you to see for your self how biased AI picture fashions are
The information: A set of recent interactive on-line instruments permit folks to look at biases in three well-liked AI image-generating fashions: DALL-E 2 and the two current variations of Stable Diffusion. The instruments, constructed by researchers at AI startup Hugging Face and Leipzig University, are detailed in a non-peer-reviewed paper.
Why it issues: It’s well-known that AI image-generating fashions are inclined to amplify dangerous biases and stereotypes. For instance, the researchers discovered that DALL-E 2 generated white males 97% of the time when given prompts like “CEO” or “director.” Now, folks don’t simply need to take the consultants at their phrase: they’ll use these instruments to see the drawback for themselves. Read the full story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
Taking inventory of our local weather previous, current, and future
Earlier this week, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) printed a serious local weather report digging deep into the state of local weather change analysis.
The IPCC works in seven-year cycles, give or take. Each cycle, the group appears to be like in any respect the printed literature on local weather change and places collectively a handful of reviews on completely different subjects, main as much as a synthesis report that sums all of it up. This week’s launch was a kind of synthesis reviews.
Because these reviews are a type of abstract of present analysis, our local weather reporter Casey Crownhart has been looking at the place we’ve come from, the place we’re, and the place we’re occurring local weather change. What she discovered was surprisingly heartening. Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
This story is from The Spark, Casey’s weekly e-newsletter providing you with the inside monitor on all issues local weather. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to seek out you right now’s most enjoyable/essential/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.
1 How ChatGPT stole Alexa’s thunder
The once-ubiquitous voice assistant’s capabilities pale compared to language mannequin AIs. (The Information $)
+ Conservatives are constructing political chatbots to counter ‘woke AI.’ (NYT $)
+ Why the companies banning ChatGPT may really profit from utilizing it. (WSJ $)
+ Google’s Bard isn’t as thrilling as its fancier rivals. (Vox)
+ Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation nightmare. (The Verge)
+ The inside story of how ChatGPT was constructed from the individuals who made it. (MIT Technology Review)
2 TikTok stars are protesting the app’s potential ban
They’ve united in Washington forward of the agency’s Congress listening to right now. (WSJ $)
+ The firm’s CEO is going through a tricky few hours. (TechCrunch)
3 Celebrities have been charged over crypto endorsements
The SEC claims they illegally touted the currencies to followers on-line. (The Guardian)
+ It’s additionally warned change Coinbase that it could have violated US regulation. (CNBC)
4 Chipmakers are becoming a member of forces to struggle the US ‘forever chemicals’ crackdown
Controversial chemical substances are key parts in the chip manufacturing course of. (FT $)
+ These easy design guidelines may flip the chip business on its head. (MIT Technology Review)
5 What it’ll take to make fusion energy viable
A handful of optimistic corporations are assured their stations will likely be practical by the early 2030s. (Economist $)
+ What you really want to learn about that fusion information. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Crypto’s local weather emissions are nonetheless appalling
The business could also be down, however its carbon footprint remains to be crazily excessive. (The Atlantic $)
+ Ethereum moved to proof of stake. Why can’t Bitcoin? (MIT Technology Review)
7 The secret menace lurking inside picture cropping instruments
A bug is revealing folks’s location knowledge, even after they’d intentionally eliminated it. (Wired $)
8 Inside China’s aspirational ‘little red book’ app 🛍️
Xiaohongshu sells its customers a shiny life-style that hundreds of thousands covet. (Rest of World)
9 Blockbuster is again, perhaps 📼
Its web site has mysteriously reactivated, a decade after the firm shut down. (WP $)
10 What it’s wish to be dumped by a chatbot
People are mourning the lack of their AI companions. (Bloomberg $)
+ Would you let ChatGPT write your wedding ceremony vows? These folks would. (Vice)
Quote of the day
“A lot of this is a game of chicken.”
—James A. Lewis, who runs the cyberthreats program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tells the New York Times he doesn’t consider the US will really ban TikTok.
The large story
We used to get enthusiastic about know-how. What occurred?
October 2022
As a thinker who research AI and knowledge, Shannon Vallor’s Twitter feed is at all times crammed with the newest tech information. Increasingly, she’s realized that the fixed stream of knowledge, detailing every part from Mark Zuckerberg’s dead-eyed metaverse cartoon avatar, from Amazon’s Ring Nation surveillance actuality present, is now not inspiring pleasure, however a way of resignation.
Joy is lacking from our lives, and from our know-how. Its absence is feeding a rising unease being voiced by many who work in tech or research it. Fixing it is determined by understanding how and why the priorities in our tech ecosystem have modified, triggering a sea change in the total mannequin for innovation and the incentives that drive it. Read the full story.
We can nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre instances. (Got any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ Pride and Prejudice reenacted with pinecones? Absolutely.
+ Wow, labradors are now not the USA’s favourite canine—however who’s the substitute?
+ Virginia Woolf’s tackle Sex and the City courtesy of ChatGPT is….fairly one thing.
+ This cat actually, actually wished to play in the orchestra.
+ Stone the crows: why rock is such a preferred medium for artists nowadays.
…. to be continued
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