1 year ago
109 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.
Amazon is astir to spell caput to caput with SpaceX successful a conflict for outer net dominance
What’s coming: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are astir to fastener horns erstwhile again. Last month, the US Federal Communications Commission approved the last aspects of Project Kuiper, Amazon’s effort to present high-speed net entree from space. In May, the institution volition trial its satellites successful an effort to instrumentality connected SpaceX’s ain venture, Starlink, and pat into a perchance precise lucrative market.
The catch: The cardinal quality is that Starlink is operational, and has been for years, whereas Amazon doesn’t program to commencement offering Kuiper arsenic a work until 2024, giving SpaceX a sizeable caput start. Also, nary of the rockets Amazon has bought a thrust connected has yet made it to space. Read the afloat story.
—Jonathan O'Callaghan
These caller tools fto you spot for yourself however biased AI representation models are
The news: A acceptable of caller interactive online tools let radical to analyse biases successful 3 fashionable AI image-generating models: DALL-E 2 and the 2 caller versions of Stable Diffusion. The tools, built by researchers astatine AI startup Hugging Face and Leipzig University, are elaborate successful a non-peer-reviewed paper.
Why it matters: It’s well-known that AI image-generating models thin to amplify harmful biases and stereotypes. For example, the researchers recovered that DALL-E 2 generated achromatic men 97% of the clip erstwhile fixed prompts similar “CEO” oregon “director.” Now, radical don’t conscionable person to instrumentality the experts astatine their word: they tin usage these tools to spot the occupation for themselves. Read the afloat story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
Taking banal of our clime past, present, and future
Earlier this week, the UN Intergovernmental Panel connected Climate Change (IPCC) published a large clime study digging heavy into the authorities of clime alteration research.
The IPCC works successful seven-year cycles, springiness oregon take. Each cycle, the radical looks astatine each the published lit connected clime alteration and puts unneurotic a fistful of reports connected antithetic topics, starring up to a synthesis study that sums it each up. This week’s merchandise was 1 of those synthesis reports.
Because these reports are a benignant of summary of existing research, our clime newsman Casey Crownhart has been taking a look astatine wherever we’ve travel from, wherever we are, and wherever we’re going connected clime change. What she recovered was amazingly heartening. Read the afloat story.
—Casey Crownhart
This communicative is from The Spark, Casey’s play newsletter giving you the wrong way connected each things climate. Sign up to person it successful your inbox each Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.
1 How ChatGPT stole Alexa’s thunder
The once-ubiquitous dependable assistant’s capabilities airy successful examination to connection exemplary AIs. (The Information $)
+ Conservatives are gathering governmental chatbots to antagonistic ‘woke AI.’ (NYT $)
+ Why the businesses banning ChatGPT could really payment from utilizing it. (WSJ $)
+ Google’s Bard isn’t arsenic breathtaking arsenic its fancier rivals. (Vox)
+ Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing each different successful a misinformation nightmare. (The Verge)
+ The wrong communicative of however ChatGPT was built from the radical who made it. (MIT Technology Review)
2 TikTok stars are protesting the app’s imaginable ban
They’ve agreed successful Washington up of the firm’s Congress proceeding today. (WSJ $)
+ The company’s CEO is facing a pugnacious fewer hours. (TechCrunch)
3 Celebrities person been charged implicit crypto endorsements
The SEC claims they illegally touted the currencies to fans online. (The Guardian)
+ It’s besides warned speech Coinbase that it whitethorn person violated US law. (CNBC)
4 Chipmakers are joining forces to combat the US ‘forever chemicals’ crackdown
Controversial chemicals are cardinal elements successful the spot manufacturing process. (FT $)
+ These elemental plan rules could crook the spot manufacture connected its head. (MIT Technology Review)
5 What it’ll instrumentality to marque fusion powerfulness viable
A fistful of optimistic firms are assured their stations volition beryllium functional by the aboriginal 2030s. (Economist $)
+ What you truly request to cognize astir that fusion news. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Crypto’s clime emissions are inactive appalling
The manufacture whitethorn beryllium down, but its c footprint is inactive crazily high. (The Atlantic $)
+ Ethereum moved to impervious of stake. Why can’t Bitcoin? (MIT Technology Review)
7 The concealed menace lurking wrong photograph cropping tools
A bug is revealing people’s determination data, adjacent aft they’d deliberately removed it. (Wired $)
8 Inside China’s aspirational ‘little reddish book’ app 🛍️
Xiaohongshu sells its users a glossy manner that millions covet. (Rest of World)
9 Blockbuster is back, possibly 📼
Its website has mysteriously reactivated, a decennary aft the institution unopen down. (WP $)
10 What it’s similar to beryllium dumped by a chatbot
People are mourning the nonaccomplishment of their AI partners. (Bloomberg $)
+ Would you fto ChatGPT constitute your wedding vows? These radical would. (Vice)
Quote of the day
“A batch of this is simply a crippled of chicken.”
—James A. Lewis, who runs the cyberthreats programme astatine the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tells the New York Times helium doesn’t judge the US volition really prohibition TikTok.
The large story
We utilized to get excited astir technology. What happened?
As a philosopher who studies AI and data, Shannon Vallor’s Twitter provender is ever filled with the latest tech news. Increasingly, she’s realized that the changeless watercourse of information, detailing everything from Mark Zuckerberg’s dead-eyed metaverse cartoon avatar, from Amazon’s Ring Nation surveillance world show, is nary longer inspiring joy, but a consciousness of resignation.
Joy is missing from our lives, and from our technology. Its lack is feeding a increasing unease being voiced by galore who enactment successful tech oregon survey it. Fixing it depends connected knowing however and wherefore the priorities successful our tech ecosystem person changed, triggering a oversea alteration successful the full exemplary for innovation and the incentives that thrust it. Read the afloat story.
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.)
+ Pride and Prejudice reenacted with pinecones? Absolutely.
+ Wow, labradors are nary longer the USA’s favourite dog—but who’s the replacement?
+ Virginia Woolf’s instrumentality connected Sex and the City courtesy of ChatGPT is….quite something.
+ This cat really, truly wanted to play successful the orchestra.
+ Stone the crows: wherefore rock is specified a fashionable mean for artists these days.
