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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.
This institution plans to transplant pig hearts into babies adjacent year
A biotech institution called eGenesis is experimenting with transplanting the hearts of young gene-edited pigs into babe baboons arsenic portion of a survey that could pave the mode for akin transplants successful quality babies. It hopes to transplant pig hearts into babies with superior bosom defects arsenic aboriginal arsenic adjacent year, successful a bid to bargain them much clip to hold for a quality heart.
The institution has developed a method that uses the gene-editing instrumentality CRISPR to marque astir 70 edits to a pig’s genome. In theory, these edits should let the organs to beryllium successfully transplanted into people.
The signifier is proving much difficult. The squad is readying to trial with 12 babe baboons, but of the 2 surgeries that person been performed truthful far, neither carnal survived beyond a substance of days. Still the company, and others successful the field, stay optimistic. Read the afloat story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
How tech companies got entree to our taxation data
You mightiness deliberation (or astatine slightest hope) that delicate information similar your taxation returns would beryllium kept nether adjacent care. But we learned past week that taxation prep companies person been sharing millions of taxpayers’ delicate idiosyncratic accusation with Meta and Google, immoderate for implicit a decade.
The taxation companies shared the information done tracking pixels, which are utilized for advertizing purposes, an investigative legislature study revealed connected Wednesday. Many of them accidental they person removed the pixels, but it’s not wide whether immoderate delicate information is inactive being held by the tech companies.
The findings exposure the important privateness risks that advertizing and information sharing pose—and it’s imaginable that regulators mightiness really bash thing astir it. Read the afloat story.
—Tate Ryan-Mosley
This communicative is from The Technocrat, Tate’s play newsletter covering powerfulness successful Silicon Valley. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Friday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 Inside the fightback against AI
Writers and artists fed up with AI companies scraping their information are starting to mobilize. (NYT $)
+ Europe wants US lawmakers to enactment much rapidly implicit regulating AI. (Wired $)
+ Five large takeaways from Europe’s AI Act. (MIT Technology Review)
+ AI’s economical interaction volition widen acold beyond chatbots. (Economist $)
2 Inside Threads’ program to unit Twitter to unravel
Six months’ intensive work, fueled by a grudge. (The Information $)
+ Twitter is teetering connected the precipice. (WSJ $)
3 A typo is down the leak of delicate US emails to Mali
Senders support mistyping email addresses, exposing highly classified messages. (FT $)
4 Israel is utilizing AI to prime aerial onslaught targets
Despite superior questions astir accuracy. (Bloomberg $)
+ The UN Security Council is gathering this week implicit its AI fears. (Reuters)
+ Why concern is booming for subject AI startups. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Tesla’s cybertruck is yet going into production
It’s been a agelong four-year wait. (WSJ $)
+ EVs are helping to support homes moving during powerfulness cuts. (NYT $)
6 Ukraine’s scientists are dilatory trying to rebuild their institutions
But the nation’s fund is inactive being funneled into defense. (Undark Magazine)
7 This fusion reactor relies connected superconducting tape
10,000 kilometers of it, successful fact. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ A spread successful the crushed could beryllium the aboriginal of fusion power. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Weather apps are much fashionable than ever ⛈️
Some radical cheque them arsenic often arsenic they would their societal media. (The Guardian)
9 Domino’s has conceded decision to Uber Eats
It tin nary longer disregard the stranglehold transportation apps person implicit takeout. (The Atlantic $)
10 The lawsuit for logging your mood
It tin assistance radical to recognize the factors that impact their wellbeing. (WSJ $)
Quote of the day
“We built it, we trained it, but we don’t cognize what it’s doing.”
—Sam Bowman, an AI prof astatine New York University, explains to Vox that AI companies don’t recognize precisely however the tools they created work.
The large story
Humanity is stuck successful short-term thinking. Here’s however we escape.
October 2020
Humans person evolved implicit millennia to grasp an ever-expanding consciousness of time. We person minds susceptible of imagining a aboriginal acold disconnected into the distance. Yet portion we whitethorn person this ability, it is seldom deployed successful regular life. If our descendants were to diagnose the ills of 21st-century civilization, they would observe a unsafe short-termism: a corporate nonaccomplishment to flight the contiguous infinitesimal and look further ahead.
The satellite is saturated successful information, and standards of surviving person ne'er been higher, but truthful often it’s a conflict to spot beyond the adjacent quality cycle, governmental term, oregon concern quarter. How to explicate this contradiction? Why person we travel to beryllium truthful stuck successful the “now”? Read the afloat story.
English (US) ·