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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.
Why you shouldn’t spot AI hunt engines
Last week was the week chatbot-powered hunt engines were expected to arrive. The thought is for AI bots to make chatty answers to our questions, alternatively of conscionable returning lists of links. But things… are not going according to plan.
Straight aft Microsoft fto radical poke astir with its caller ChatGPT-powered Bing hunt engine, radical recovered that it responded to immoderate questions with incorrect answers. Google had an embarrassing infinitesimal erstwhile scientists spotted a factual mistake successful its ain advertisement for its chatbot Bard, which wiped $100 cardinal disconnected its stock price.
The occupation is that AI connection models are simply not acceptable to beryllium utilized similar this astatine this scale. They person nary cognition of what the sentences they spew really mean—making it incredibly unsafe to harvester them with search. Read the afloat story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
Melissa’s communicative is from The Algorithm, her play newsletter giving you the wrong way connected each things AI. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Monday.
How Rust went from a broadside task to the world’s most-loved programming language
Many bundle projects look because—somewhere retired there—a programmer had a idiosyncratic occupation to solve.
That’s much oregon little what happened to Graydon Hoare. In 2006, Hoare was a 29-year-old machine programmer moving for Mozilla. After a bundle clang broke the elevator successful his building, helium acceptable astir designing a caller machine language; 1 that helium hoped would marque it imaginable to constitute small, accelerated codification without representation bugs.
That connection developed into Rust, 1 of the hottest caller languages connected the planet. But portion it isn’t antithetic for idiosyncratic to marque a caller machine language, it’s incredibly uncommon for 1 to instrumentality clasp and go portion of the programming pantheon. How did Rust bash it? Read the afloat story.
—Clive Thompson
This communicative is from our forthcoming people issue, which dives into the intersection betwixt exertion and design. Sign up for a subscription to work the afloat variation erstwhile it comes retired aboriginal this month.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 The US has recovered sensors from China’s ‘spy balloon’
The FBI is present moving retired whether it’s the upwind monitoring instrumentality China insists it is. (BBC)
+ Beijing has been forced into damage-control mode. (The Atlantic $)
+ You’ve heard of abstraction trash, but what astir entity trash? (The Guardian)
+ We inactive don’t cognize if the information truly is retired there. (NY Mag $)
2 Long covid isn’t going anywhere
But attraction and knowing of its symptoms is inactive patchy. (The Atlantic $)
+ A caller app aims to assistance millions of radical surviving with agelong covid. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Crypto’s outlook is going from atrocious to worse
Regulators are circling, and a crackdown is imminent. (WSJ $)
+ Crypto is an casual people for US authorities. (Wired $)
+ What’s adjacent for crypto. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Deepfake porn victims are being harassed relentlessly
Speaking retired astir their experiences lone exacerbates the problem. (Motherboard)
+ Deepfake porn is ruining women’s lives. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Patients’ intelligence wellness information is up for sale
In the US there’s nary ineligible mode to halt it, either. (WP $)
+ Martin Shreli has likened his cause find bundle to a ‘recipe website.’ (Ars Technica)
6 Inside the unstoppable emergence of renewable energy
Coal, state and lipid are expensive. Renewable companies anticipation to capable the void. (Economist $)
+ Could recycling upwind turbine blades lick the industry’s integrative problem? (The Verge)
+ We person capable materials to powerfulness the satellite with renewable energy. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Teens person managed to shingle disconnected TikTok’s tics
They started experiencing sudden, explosive tics during the pandemic. Now, the bulk person recovered.(NYT $)
8 Amazon’s robotaxis are connected the move
Running astir a two-mile loop of roadworthy successful California. (TechCrunch)
+ A time successful the beingness of a Chinese robotaxi driver. (MIT Technology Review)
9 AI could amended our dating lives
That doesn’t mean it’ll marque them much interesting, though. (Inverse)
+ The tricky subject down palmy matchmaking. (Vox)
+ How convenient: liking crypto is attractive, according to a crypto study. (TechCrunch)
10 The ever-evolving mode we amusement emotion online 💘
Specifically done the ocular mean of a heart. (NYT $)
Quote of the day
“I don’t deliberation the American radical request to interest astir aliens.”
—John Kirby, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council, seeks to reassure the nationalist aft officials changeable down 3 unidentified flying objects implicit the weekend, the Financial Times reports.
The large story
What to expect erstwhile you’re expecting an other X oregon Y chromosome
Sex chromosome variations, successful which radical person a surplus oregon missing X oregon Y, hap successful arsenic galore arsenic 1 successful 400 births. Yet the bulk of radical affected don’t adjacent cognize they person them, due to the fact that these conditions tin alert nether the radar.
As much expectant parents opt for noninvasive prenatal investigating successful hopes of ruling retired superior conditions, galore of them are amazed to observe alternatively that their fetus has a acold little severe—but acold little well-known—condition.
And due to the fact that truthful galore enactment chromosome variations person historically gone undiagnosed, galore ob-gyns are not acquainted with these conditions, leaving families to navigate the unexpected quality connected their own. Read the afloat story.
—Bonnie Rochman
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.)
+ Insects don’t perceive similar us—their methods are acold cooler.
+ How bash I emotion thee? Let maine number the ways.
+ This is precise cool: however your caput processes a color that doesn’t really exist (thanks Steve!)
+ If you similar bananas arsenic overmuch arsenic I do, you’re successful for a treat.
+ Happy Valentine’s Day from everyone’s favourite 12-foot skeleton.
English (US) ·