1 year ago
111 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.
GPT-4 is bigger and amended than ChatGPT—but OpenAI won’t accidental why
OpenAI has yet unveiled GPT-4, a next-generation ample connection exemplary that was rumored to beryllium successful improvement for overmuch of past year. The company's past astonishment hit, ChatGPT, was ever going to beryllium a hard enactment to follow, but OpenAI has made GPT-4 adjacent bigger and better.
Yet however overmuch bigger and wherefore it’s better, OpenAI won’t say. GPT-4 is the astir secretive merchandise the institution has ever enactment out, marking its modulation from nonprofit laboratory to for-profit tech firm.
What we bash cognize is that GPT-4 is simply a multimodal ample connection model, which means it tin respond to some substance and images. Read the afloat story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
These radical conscionable got joined successful the Taco Bell metaverse
Last month, Sheel Mohnot and Amruta Godbole got married. This was nary mean wedding, though. It was hosted connected Decentraland, a virtual platform, and sponsored by Taco Bell.
Mohnot is simply a large instrumentality of Taco Bell, truthful they entered a contention for the institution to wage for the method aspects of a virtual wedding—the avatars, the production, and more. They won. In return, it plastered its marque everywhere.
But wherefore would radical opt to person a metaverse wedding? And volition these sorts of ceremonies—especially sponsored ones—stick around, oregon volition they slice distant if virtual world doesn’t unrecorded up to the hype? Read the afloat story.
—Tanya Basu
China conscionable acceptable up a caller bureau to excavation information for economical growth
China’s annual, week-long parliamentary gathering ended connected Monday. Among each the changes it announced, there’s 1 that the tech satellite is avidly watching: the instauration of a caller regulatory assemblage named the National Data Administration.
The NDA volition assistance physique astute cities successful China, digitize authorities services, amended net infrastructure, and marque authorities agencies stock information with each other.
It seems to beryllium portion of an ongoing effort by the Chinese authorities to drum up a “digital economy” astir collecting, sharing, and trading data. But large questions remain, particularly implicit however overmuch authorization it volition have. Read the afloat story.
—Zeyi Yang
Zeyi’s communicative is from China Report, his play newsletter covering tech successful China. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Tuesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 The AI hype bid is showing nary signs of slowing
The motorboat of GPT-4 has whipped the mania up to fever pitch. (WP $)
+ Morgan Stanley is among the companies already utilizing GPT-4. (NYT $)
+ Fellow AI steadfast Anthropic launched its caller chatbot Claude yesterday too. (The Verge)
+ Generative AI is changing everything. But what’s near erstwhile the hype is gone? (MIT Technology Review)
2 SIlicon Valley is inactive excessively large to fail
But there’s nary denying Silicon Valley Bank’s illness has dealt start-up civilization a large blow. (Economist $)
+ Social media panic lone fueled the fire. (WSJ $)
+ Is techno-optimism to blame? (The Atlantic $)
+ The bank’s demise isn’t bully quality for the economy, either. (Bloomberg $)
3 Meta has fto different 10,000 employees go
The institution is canceling “lower precedence projects.” (TechCrunch)
+ It sounds similar Mark Zuckerberg is prioritizing AI implicit the metaverse. (Insider $)
4 Stadiums crossed the US are tracking your face
Privacy advocates interest that they’re not being wide capable astir what they’re doing. (Slate $)
+ The two-year combat to halt Amazon from selling look designation to the police. (MIT Technology Review)
5 New DNA tests tin foretell your likelihood of processing diseases 🧬
That isn’t ever needfully a bully thing. (New Scientist $)
+ A monolithic microbiome survey is throwing up caller shared wellness risks. (Quanta)
6 We inactive don’t cognize however often children declaration agelong covid
Three years into the pandemic, experts are inactive divided. (Undark Magazine)
+ A conflict is raging implicit agelong covid successful children. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Laid disconnected tech workers from overseas are scrambling for caller jobs
The 60-day visa bounds to find a caller relation conscionable adds to their stress. (Rest of World)
8 A caller outer volition show America’s aerial pollution
The changeless information postulation volition springiness scientists astir round-the-clock insights. (Inverse)
9 How to combat backmost against the web’s neuromarketing
Thinking critically is the archetypal step. (Wired $)
10 Samsung has been accused of faking Moon photos 🌕
Reddit sleuths are furious astatine however its cameras process images. (The Verge)
Quote of the day
“We’re successful that signifier of the marketplace wherever it’s, like, fto 1,000 flowers bloom.”
—Matt Turck, an AI investor, marvels astatine the abrupt influx of wealth flooding into the assemblage to the New York Times.
The large story
Can Afghanistan’s underground “sneakernet” past the Taliban?
When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, Mohammad Yasin had to marque immoderate hard decisions precise quickly. He began erasing immoderate of the delicate information connected his machine and moving the remainder onto 2 of his largest hard drives, which helium past wrapped successful a furniture of integrative and buried underground.
Yasin is what is locally referred to arsenic a “computer kar”: idiosyncratic who sells integer contented by manus successful a state wherever a dependable net transportation tin beryllium hard to travel by, selling everything from movies, music, mobile applications, to iOS updates. And contempt the dangers of Taliban rule, the country’s extended “sneakernet” isn’t readying connected shutting down. Read the afloat story.
—Ruchi Kumar
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.)
+ Pallas cats whitethorn look fearsome, but their wont of pressing their paws connected apical of their tails is excessively cute.
+ Unpopular opinion, but sharing plates truly bash request to die.
+ If you couldn’t get capable of the archetypal Rocky IV, wherefore not cheque retired its Stallone-sanctioned director’s cut?
+ Doctors are swallowing Lego—and it’s each successful the sanction of science.
+ Bees are conscionable similar us, they request mentors too! 🐝
