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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.
Here’s however a Twitter technologist says it volition interruption successful the coming weeks
On November 4, conscionable hours aft Elon Musk fired fractional of the 7,500 employees antecedently moving astatine Twitter, immoderate radical began to spot tiny signs that thing was incorrect with everyone’s favourite hellsite. And they saw it done retweets.
A fewer users who pressed the retweet fastener were met with a manual retweet, a crude, transcript and paste approximation of however the relation should appear. But its instrumentality wasn’t Musk’s latest effort to appease users. Instead, it was the archetypal nationalist ace successful the edifice of Twitter’s codebase—a blip connected the seismometer that warns of a bigger earthquake to come.
While galore of Musk’s detractors whitethorn privation the level goes done the equivalent of thermonuclear destruction, the illness of thing similar Twitter happens gradually. Here’s however it’s apt to play out.
—Chris Stokel-Walker
YouTube wants to instrumentality connected TikTok and enactment its Shorts videos connected your TV
What’s happening: YouTube Shorts, the video website’s TikTok-like feature, has go 1 of its latest obsessions, with much than 1.5 cardinal users watching short-form contented connected their devices each month. Now, YouTube wants to grow that fig by bringing full-screen, vertical videos into your TV.
Why it matters: The squad down the inaugural inactive isn’t afloat definite however adding short-form video into the YouTube connected TV acquisition volition beryllium embraced. The institution admits it’s been challenging to instrumentality what’s traditionally been a mobile format and uncovering the close mode to bring it to beingness connected TV. But its dedication to doing truthful suggests however important YouTube feels the short-form exemplary is to its future. Read the afloat story.
—Chris Stokel-Walker
Where volition AI spell next?
This twelvemonth we’ve seen a dizzying fig of breakthroughs successful generative AI, from AIs that tin nutrient videos from conscionable a fewer words to models that tin make audio based connected snippets of a song.
Melissa Heikkilä, MIT Technology Review’s elder AI reporter, stopped by Google’s caller Manhattan offices past week, wherever the institution announced a slew of advances successful generative AI, including a strategy that combines its 2 text-to-video AI models, Phenaki and Imagen.
While they’re awesome pieces of AI research, it’s unclear however Google could monetize them. Melissa spoke to respective of the apical executives astatine immoderate of the world’s starring AI labs to perceive astir the potential, and the limitations, of these sorts of models. Here’s what they had to say.
Melissa’s communicative is from The Algorithm, our play AI newsletter covering everything you request to cognize astir the industry’s movers and shakers. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Monday.
Podcast: Decoding a Future of Fire
We instrumentality a look astatine however AI and different tech is being utilized to assistance predict, detect, and pinpoint the determination of wildfires successful the second of a two-part series. Refresh your representation by listening to the first part of the bid connected Apple Podcasts, oregon wherever other you usually listen.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 There’s nary grounds that US voting machines person been tampered with
Humans thin to beryllium the weakest nexus successful the information chain. (New Yorker $)
+ Apps fashionable among immigrants are rife with governmental misinformation. (WP $)
+ The worst surge of misinformation could beryllium yet to come. (NYT $)
2 Cop27’s Wi-Fi successful Egypt is blocking quality rights websites
Global rights groups are struggling to entree their ain sites. (The Guardian)
+ Greece volition halt selling spyware pursuing a bid of accusations. (NYT $)
3 A German privateness activistic is warring Clearview AI implicit his face
Matthias Marx wants EU regulators to ace down connected information scrapers. (Wired $)
+ A UK radical has filed a akin ailment against PimEyes. (BBC)
+ The walls are closing successful connected Clearview AI. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Black Twitter influencers don’t cognize wherever to spell next
Many of the workers who forestall racially-fueled hatred code person been fired. (LA Times $)
+ Mastodon is buckling nether the influx of Twitter defectors. (Bloomberg $)
+ I made it large connected Twitter. Now I don’t deliberation I tin stay. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Apple is China’s astir profitable tech company
Its net outstrip autochthonal giants Alibaba and Tencent. (FT $)
+ But the narration betwixt the brace is increasing progressively fraught. (NYT $)
6 Inside the emergence of the humanoid robot 🤖
They whitethorn beryllium edging beyond the uncanny valley. (Economist $)
7 Self-driving cars whitethorn ne'er really self-drive
Which benignant of defeats the full point. (WSJ $)
+ The large caller thought for making self-driving cars that tin spell anywhere. (MIT Technology Review)
8 How TikTok ate the world
Attempting to mean videos is tough. TikTok’s detonation is making it adjacent tougher. (The Atlantic $)
9 How psychedelics could play a relation successful extremity of beingness care
Some doctors reason they trim anxiousness and summation optimism successful the look of death. (Slate $)
+ What bash psychedelic drugs bash to our brains? (MIT Technology Review)
10 The statement for warring implicit substance message 💬
You don’t person to telephone it a ‘fext,’ though. (NYT $)
Quote of the day
“We are connected a road to clime hellhole with our ft inactive connected the accelerator.”
—António Guterres, the caput wide of the UN, warns satellite leaders of the sedate dangers facing the satellite astatine the opening of the Cop27 clime acme successful Egypt, reports the Guardian.
The large story
April 2022
It was meant to beryllium a impermanent broadside job. Oskarina Fuentes Anaya signed up for Appen, an AI data-labeling platform, erstwhile she was inactive successful assemblage studying to onshore a well-paid presumption successful the lipid industry.
But past the system tanked successful Venezuela. Her broadside gig was present afloat time; the impermanent present the foreseeable future. Today Fuentes lives successful Colombia, 1 of millions of Venezuelan migrants and refugees.
But she’s trapped astatine home—both by a chronic unwellness that developed aft delayed entree to wellness attraction and by opaque algorithms that dictate erstwhile she works and however overmuch she earns.
Despite threats from Appen to retaliate against her, she chose to spell connected the grounds arsenic a named source. She wants radical to recognize what her beingness is similar to beryllium a captious portion of the planetary AI improvement pipeline yet for the beneficiaries of her enactment to besides mistreat her and marque her invisible. She wants the radical who bash this enactment to beryllium seen. Read the afloat story.
—Karen Hao and Andrea Paola Hernández
We tin inactive person bully things
A spot for comfort, amusive and distraction successful these weird times. (Got immoderate ideas? Drop maine a line or tweet 'em astatine me.)
+ These angelic piglets are guaranteed to lukewarm your heart.
+ Nothing but respect for these road crossing legends during the NYC marathon.
+ I’m sorry, you can’t improve connected perfection.
+ This highly cool-looking hotel is wrong a moving bid station.
+ Take a infinitesimal retired to unbend with these award-winning landscapes (thanks Charlotte!)
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