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This is today's variation of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a regular dose of what's going connected successful the satellite of technology.
China is abruptly dealing with different nationalist wellness crisis: mpox
The Chinese authorities is battling a caller nationalist wellness concern: mpox. The World Health Organization reports that China is presently experiencing the world’s fastest summation successful cases of mpox (formerly known arsenic monkeypox)—and it needs to enactment accelerated to incorporate the spread.
The countries that person successfully contained mpox outbreaks person mostly done truthful acknowledgment to proactive measures similar vaccination campaigns. The occupation is, the Chinese authorities has hardly started to instrumentality action. Read the afloat story.
—Zeyi Yang
These caller tools could assistance support our pictures from AI
Generative AI is making it ridiculously casual to manipulate people’s images. While nonconsensual deepfake porn has been utilized to torment women for years, the latest procreation of AI makes it an adjacent bigger problem. These systems are overmuch easier to usage than erstwhile deepfake tech, and they tin make images that look wholly convincing.
The bully quality is that caller tools are starting to look which tin support people’s photos and artworks from being tinkered with utilizing AI systems. These tools are neither cleanable nor capable connected their own—but they’re a start. Read the afloat story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
This communicative is from The Algorithm, Melissa’s play AI newsletter. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Monday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 Worldcoin’s data-capturing program is working
Despite glaring privateness concerns, plentifulness of radical similar currency rewards. (Rest of World)
+ How Worldcoin recruited its archetypal fractional a cardinal trial users. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Twitter is suing a nonprofit that says it hosts hatred speech
The Center for Countering Digital Hate claims Elon Musk is trying to soundlessness it. (WSJ $)
+ The company’s advertizing income is inactive successful freefall. (FT $)
+ Its caller slogan is the alternatively lame ‘Blaze your glory!’ (Motherboard)
3 Meta is creating chatbots with personas for its platforms 4 Post-Roe, pregnancy-related deaths are astir apt rising
Which seems similar a peculiarly creepy mode to boost engagement. (FT $)
+ Just arsenic it looks similar Threads is losing its archetypal attraction. (Slate $)
+ Google wants to marque its Assistant much personable, too. (The Verge)
The occupation is, there’s nary mode of knowing precisely however much. (Undark Magazine)
+ The cognitive dissonance of watching the extremity of Roe unfold online. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Amazon wants to present your packages adjacent faster 6 TikTok is pushing a dietary supplement arsenic a value nonaccomplishment solution
Think hours, alternatively than days. (Insider $)
+ Spare a thought for your transportation operator successful the heat. (Wired $)
+ Weight-loss injections person taken implicit the internet. But what does this mean for radical IRL? (MIT Technology Review)
7 UV and bluish airy could assistance america to termination deadly E.coli
But the 2 forms of airy are lone effectual erstwhile utilized together. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Why tiny viruses could beryllium our champion stake against antimicrobial resistance. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Start-ups are harnessing AI to dainty erectile dysfunction
In a bid to genuinely personalize attraction to the individual. (Motherboard)
9 When did nutrient videos get so… racy? 🍝
Thirst trap chefs cognize precisely what they’re doing with that pasta. (NY Mag $)
10 Apple’s bid to prevention classical euphony hasn’t gone to program 🎻
Smaller, nimbler rivals bash a amended occupation crossed the board. (New Yorker $)
Quote of the day
“SHUT IT OFF! It is creating a monolithic nighttime nuisance and making it hard to sleep.”
—San Francisco residents kick astir the bright, flashing X motion that Elon Musk installed connected the extortion of Twitter’s office without permission, the Washington Post reports.
The large story
Geoffrey Hinton has a hunch astir what’s adjacent for AI
April 2021
In November 2020, scientist Geoffrey Hinton had a hunch. After a half-century’s worthy of attempts—some wildly successful—he’d arrived astatine different promising penetration into however the encephalon works and however to replicate its circuitry successful a computer.
If his stake pays off, it mightiness spark the adjacent procreation of artificial neural networks—mathematical computing systems, loosely inspired by the brain’s neurons and synapses, that are astatine the halfway of today’s artificial intelligence.
His “honest motivation,” arsenic helium puts it, is curiosity. But ideally, the effect is much reliable and trustworthy AI. Read the afloat story.
—Siobhan Roberts
We tin inactive person bully things
A spot for comfort, amusive and distraction successful these weird times. (Got immoderate ideas? Drop maine a line oregon tweet 'em astatine me.)
+ What does a week surviving similar Mario look like? Pretty hard work, actually.
+ Not everyone tin propulsion disconnected a buzz cut similar Sinéad O’Connor.
+ Would you chopped it arsenic a doc successful The Sims?
+ Chicken is great, caprese is great, truthful it makes consciousness that caprese chicken looks amazing.
+ Congratulations to these watermelons, which defied the likelihood to flourish successful Antarctica. 🍉
English (US) ·