1 year ago
138 The news: Bill Gates’s climate-oriented task superior money is expanding its mission, adding adaptation to its concern categories and establishing a later-stage money to assistance clean-tech startups statesman gathering plants and scaling up their technologies. The announcement was made astatine the firm’s Breakthrough Energy Summit successful Seattle yesterday.
What it means: To date, the money has focused connected “climate mitigation,” which mostly concentrates connected driving down clime pollution. Climate adaptation refers to processing ways of bolstering protections against the dangers of clime change, alternatively than conscionable preventing it.
How it tin beryllium achieved: The firm’s caller absorption volition see ways to assistance farmers and communities grapple with progressively communal oregon terrible droughts, and helping crops stay productive arsenic the satellite becomes hotter, wetter, oregon drier; perchance done indoor farming and familial alteration. Strengthening the infrastructure of planetary ports, which look increasing threats from sea-level emergence and progressively almighty storms, volition besides beryllium investigated. Read the afloat story.
—James Temple
Read more:
Bill Gates, John Kerry, and US vigor caput Jennifer Granholm each struck cautiously affirmative notes astatine the conference, pointing retired that for each the advancement made successful tackling clime challenges successful the past fewer years, determination are inactive large obstacles to slashing emissions rapidly capable to debar clime change’s worst dangers. Read the afloat story.
Why scientists privation to assistance plants seizure much c dioxide
Last week, my workfellow Casey Crownhart sat down with Pamela Ronald, a works geneticist astatine the University of California, Davis, astatine ClimateTech, MIT Technology Review’s inaugural clime conference.
They discussed Ronald’s newest project, which focuses connected utilizing crops for c removal utilizing a fig of measures, including bully aged fashioned photosynthesis. Read the afloat story.
Casey’s communicative is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s caller play clime newsletter. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Wednesday.
A bias bounty for AI volition assistance to drawback unfair algorithms faster
What’s happening: While AI systems are deployed each the time, it tin instrumentality months oregon adjacent years until it becomes wide whether, and how, they’re biased. Today, a radical of AI and machine-learning experts are launching a caller bias bounty competition, which they anticipation volition velocity the process of uncovering embedded prejudices.
What’s up first? Taking inspiration from bug bounties successful cybersecurity, the archetypal bias bounty contention is going to absorption connected biased representation detection. The victor volition instrumentality location a $6,000 prize committed by Microsoft and startup Robust Intelligence, which has been hailed arsenic a beardown inducement for the instrumentality learning assemblage to winkle retired bias. Read the afloat story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
Should we judge in—or adjacent want—immortality?
Twenty years person passed since writer Jonathan Weiner archetypal met Aubrey de Grey, the antheral with the Methuselah beard. Back then, Aubrey was already a True Believer successful the quest for immortality. But helium wasn’t famous, oregon notorious, yet; helium wasn’t Aubrey!, arsenic helium would soon go to his fans successful the anti-aging crowd. And helium wasn’t yet a antheral successful disgrace.
Weiner archetypal met Aubrey successful 2002, erstwhile Aubrey was inactive moving arsenic a machine programmer successful the Department of Genetics astatine the University of Cambridge, successful England. He rapidly became a secular guru, a prophet of immortality—to the aggravated annoyance of astir of the scientists successful the aging field. But Aubrey’s eagerness to person believers they could unrecorded for centuries, millennia, oregon adjacent longer, if they were lucky, raises pertinent questions astir what it is to privation thing we whitethorn not adjacent judge in. Read the afloat story.
This portion is from our forthcoming mortality-themed issue, disposable from 26 October. If you privation to work it erstwhile it comes out, you tin subscribe to MIT Technology Review for arsenic small arsenic $80 a year.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 The bulk of US lithium is recovered adjacent tribal land
Native American communities are informing the appetite for EV batteries could travel astatine the disbursal of their ancestral homelands. (The Guardian)
+ Driving electrical cars yet cancels retired the contamination created by their production. (NYT $)
+ A bladed expanse of nickel could marque EV batteries recharge overmuch quicker. (IEEE Spectrum)
2 There’s inactive a batch we don’t cognize astir however antidepressants work
Medical guidance is inconsistent, and patients are suffering arsenic a result. (Economist $)
3 When you suffer weight, wherever does it go?
Essentially, you respire it retired (no, really!) (MIT Technology Review)
4 Supply chains are inactive a mess
We can’t blasted the pandemic anymore, either. (Vox)
+ How AI integer twins assistance upwind the world’s proviso concatenation nightmare. (MIT Technology Review)
5 What it’s similar to get hands-on with image-generating AI
Fun, and much than a small creepy. (WSJ $)
+ Neurodivergent workers are deftly grooming AI models. (Bloomberg $)
+ AI creation generators are ace Euro-centric. (Vox)
+ The AI assemblage has already moved onto the latest breakthrough: text-to-video. (MIT Technology Review)
6 How to equip cities to past deadly vigor waves
Cutting down connected cars is simply a bully spot to start. (Knowable Magazine)
+ How megacities could pb the combat against clime change. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Why US net speeds alteration truthful overmuch betwixt neighborhoods
Lower-income areas wherever residents are from number taste communities are apt to acquisition distinctly slower speeds. (The Markup)
8 Arranged matrimony apps aren’t truly for the bride and groom
In India, it’s their parents swiping for prospective matches. (Slate $)
9 How to halt accidentally turning connected your iPhone’s flashlight
It’s not conscionable you—it’s happening to everyone. (WP $)
10 Paper isn’t dormant yet
Just inquire immoderate American sorting retired their taxes. (FT $)
Quote of the day
“It volition instrumentality a agelong clip and tons of effort to summation backmost the spot that we person lost.”
—Namkoong Whon, co-chief enforcement of South Korean ace app Kakao, apologizes aft a occurrence astatine a information halfway caused an app outage for respective days, the New York Times reports.
The large story
The FBI accused him of spying for China. It ruined his life.
June 2021
In April 2018, Anming Hu, a Chinese-Canadian subordinate prof astatine the University of Tennessee, received an unexpected sojourn from the FBI. The agents wanted to cognize whether he’d been progressive successful a Chinese authorities “talent program,” offering overseas researchers incentives to bring their enactment backmost to Chinese universities.
Not excessively agelong ago, American universities encouraged their academics to physique ties with Chinese institutions, but the US authorities is present suspicious of these programs, seeing them arsenic a spy recruitment tool. Despite Hu’s denial helium was progressive successful specified programs, a small little than 2 years later, they showed up again—this clip to apprehension him. Read the afloat story.
—Karen Hao & Eileen Guo
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.)
+ Why we simply cannot defy stories astir what celebrities eat.
+ Meanwhile, successful Paris…
+ Life is short. Savor your clip with your kids, if you person them.
+ I deliberation I request to prevarication down aft speechmaking this Twitter thread.
+ You’d ideate an eight-day “Gone Girl” themed cruise would beryllium wholly deranged. You’d beryllium right.
