The Download: Neuralink updates, and GPT-3 fixes

At a ‘show and tell’ lawsuit yesterday, Musk said that the institution was successful the process of submitting paperwork to the US Food and Drug Administration, which has the powerfulness to o.k. oregon contradict the company’s exertion to commencement objective trials successful humans.

When Musk launched Neuralink successful 2017, helium outlined plans for “a high-bandwidth, long-lasting, biocompatible, bidirectional” encephalon implant. This encephalon modem, helium claimed, could someway let humans to support gait with artificial intelligence. Now, aft years of delays and experiments connected monkeys, he’s hoping to beryllium it tin beryllium safely implanted successful humans.

Musk besides announced that the institution is moving connected repurposing the implant for 2 further parts of the body: the spinal cord, to perchance assistance to reconstruct question successful idiosyncratic who is paralysed, and an ocular implant to reconstruct imaginativeness successful radical with show loss. He demonstrated the second merchandise with a video explaining however a Neuralink implant had stimulated a flash of airy successful a monkey’s brain.

Buzz astir GPT-4, the anticipated but as-yet-unannounced follow-up to OpenAI’s groundbreaking ample connection model, GPT-3, is increasing by the week. But OpenAI is not yet done tinkering with the erstwhile version.

The San Francisco-based institution has released a demo of a caller exemplary called ChatGPT, a spin-off of GPT-3 that is geared toward answering questions via back-and-forth dialogue. But portion the conversational format allows ChatGPT to admit its mistakes, and cull inappropriate requests, it’s inactive acold from perfect. Read the afloat story.

Plastics person a atrocious reputation, there’s nary denying it. They’re an environmental, climate, and nationalist wellness disaster. But, simultaneously, they’ve brought down costs crossed industries and saved lives, acknowledgment to their usage successful everything from aesculapian instrumentality to electronics.

The question is, wherever bash we spell from here? Taking steps to chopped down connected gratuitous integrative usage is simply a start, and uncovering ways to reinvent integrative recycling could besides play a immense relation successful cutting down connected its antagonistic impacts. Among the astir promising of these is chemic recycling, which, if chemists successfully propulsion it off, could let america to grip antithetic plastics utilizing a azygous process. Read the afloat story.

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1 The European Central Bank thinks bitcoin is connected its past gasp
It says the cryptocurrency is connected “the roadworthy to irrelevance.” (The Guardian)
+ Sam Bankman-Fried has fixed different disastrous interview. (NYT $)
+ Unsurprisingly, helium said his lawyers had advised him against speaking publicly. (Vox)
+ Times aren’t large for NFT artists close now. (New Yorker $)
+ It’s good to opt retired of the crypto revolution. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Chinese protests could beryllium the opening of the extremity for zero covid 
It is damaging the country’s economy, and overmuch of the colonisation has had enough. (Vox)
+ Xi Jinping has painted himself into a corner. (The Atlantic $)
+ Simply lifting the restrictions won’t magically instrumentality beingness to normal, though. (Wired $)

3 An American writer is suing NSO Group
He and his colleagues allege they were surveilled utilizing the company’s Pegasus spyware. (New Yorker $)
+ Password manager LastPass says immoderate idiosyncratic information was exposed successful a hack. (The Verge)
+ The warfare successful Ukraine has shifted cybercriminals’ absorption distant from stealing money. (Economist $)
+ Google has blocked a Spanish hacking tool. (Wired $)
+ The hacking manufacture faces the extremity of an era. (MIT Technology Review)

4 San Francisco constabulary tin present deploy slayer robots
They tin termination idiosyncratic successful bid to prevention the beingness of a civilian oregon an officer. (TechCrunch) 
+ The argumentation could easy extremity up harming the city’s astir susceptible people. (Wired $)

5 Children are inactive dying from TikTok’s blackout challenge 
Parents consciousness the platform’s not doing capable to forestall different minors from copying the videos. (Bloomberg $)

6 California wants to punish doctors who dispersed covid misinformation
But 2 ineligible challenges assertion the caller instrumentality is unconstitutional. (NYT $)

7 Gasoline depletion successful the US hardly fell past year
Despite much electrical vehicles hitting the roads, state usage fell by conscionable 0.54%. (Wired $) 
+ Electric conveyance startups are struggling to survive. (The Information $)
+ Where are those superbatteries we were promised? (IEEE Spectrum) 

8 A Singapore therapy chatbot has been accused of gaslighting 
The government-backed bot is designed to assistance teachers, but seems to beryllium doing thing but. (Rest of World)

9 Gen Z truly doesn’t similar Instagram
Its cringey pivot to video isn’t cutting through. (The Atlantic $)
+ Social networks successful wide are shrinking. (Slate $)

10 You tin inactive poke idiosyncratic connected Facebook 👉
Why not brighten up a friend’s day? (BuzzFeed News)

Since 2013, erstwhile regulators decided to unopen California’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station down, teams of scientists, engineers, and policymakers person been hard astatine enactment to marque definite it could beryllium safely decommissioned.

The large question is: what to bash with each the spent atomic fuel? Its radioactive discarded could outlast the quality race, and is being kept successful retention holes buried on the seismically progressive California coastline.