The Download: AI replicas, and China’s climate role

That is at this time’s version of The Download, our weekday publication that gives a each day dose of what’s occurring on the planet of know-how.

AI can now create a reproduction of your character

Think about sitting down with an AI mannequin for a spoken two-hour interview. A pleasant voice guides you thru a dialog that ranges out of your childhood, your formative recollections, and your profession to your ideas on immigration coverage. Not lengthy after, a digital reproduction of you is ready to embody your values and preferences with gorgeous accuracy.

That’s now possible, in response to a brand new paper from a group together with researchers from Stanford and Google DeepMind.

They recruited 1,000 individuals and, from interviews with them, created agent replicas of all of them. To check how nicely the brokers mimicked their human counterparts, contributors did a sequence of assessments, video games and surveys, then the brokers accomplished the identical workouts. The outcomes had been 85% comparable. Freaky. Read our story about the work, and why it matters.

—James O’Donnell

China’s sophisticated position in local weather change

“However what about China?”

In debates about local weather change, it’s normally solely a matter of time till somebody brings up China. Typically, it is available in response to some assertion about how the US and Europe are addressing the difficulty (or how they must be).

Typically it may be carried out in dangerous religion. It’s a rhetorical technique to throw up your fingers, and primarily say: “in the event that they aren’t taking accountability, why ought to we?” 

Nevertheless, there are some simple info: China emits extra greenhouse gases than another nation, by far. It’s one of many world’s most populous international locations and a climate-tech powerhouse, and its financial system remains to be creating. 

With many sophisticated elements at play, how ought to we take into consideration the nation’s position in addressing local weather change? Read the full story. 

—Casey Crownhart

This story is from The Spark, our weekly publication providing you with the within observe on all issues power and local weather. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Wednesday.

4 methods to guard your artwork from AI 

Because the begin of the generative AI increase, artists have been nervous about dropping their livelihoods to AI instruments.

Sadly, there’s little you are able to do in case your work has been scraped into an information set and utilized in a mannequin that’s already on the market. You may, nonetheless, take steps to stop your work from getting used sooner or later. Here are four ways to do that. 

—Melissa Heikkila

That is a part of our How To sequence, the place we provide you with sensible recommendation on how you can use know-how in your on a regular basis lives. You may learn the remainder of the sequence here.

MIT Know-how Assessment Narrated: The world’s on the verge of a carbon storage increase

In late 2023, one in every of California’s largest oil and fuel producers secured draft permits from the US Environmental Safety Company to develop a brand new sort of nicely in an oil subject. If permitted, it intends to drill a sequence of boreholes all the way down to a sprawling sedimentary formation roughly 6,000 ft beneath the floor, the place it should inject tens of hundreds of thousands of metric tons of carbon dioxide to retailer it away perpetually.

Tons of of comparable initiatives are looming throughout the state, the US, and the world. Proponents hope it’s the beginning of a kind of oil increase in reverse, kick-starting a course of by way of which the world will finally bury extra greenhouse fuel than it provides to the ambiance. However opponents insist these efforts will extend the lifetime of fossil-fuel crops, enable air and water air pollution to proceed, and create new well being and environmental dangers.

That is our newest story to be become a MIT Know-how Assessment Narrated podcast, which we’re publishing every week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Simply navigate to MIT Know-how Assessment Narrated on both platform, and comply with us to get all our new content material because it’s launched.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the web to search out you at this time’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.

1 How the Trump administration may hack your telephone
Adware acquired by the US authorities in September may pretty simply be turned by itself residents. (New Yorker $)
+ Right here’s how one can struggle again towards being digitally spied upon. (The Guardian)

2 The DOJ is attempting to power Google to unload Chrome
Whether or not Trump will hold pushing it by way of is unclear, although. (WP $)
+ Some monetary and authorized consultants argue that simply promoting Chrome shouldn’t be sufficient to handle antitrust points. (Wired $)

3 There’s a booming ‘AI pimping’ business
Persons are stealing movies from actual grownup content material creators, giving them AI-generated faces, and monetizing their our bodies. (Wired $)
+ This viral AI avatar app undressed me—with out my consent. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Right here’s Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy plan for federal workers
Massive-scale firings and an finish to any type of distant work. (WSJ $)

5 The US is scaring everybody with its response to hen flu
It’s carried out remarkably little to indicate it’s attempting to comprise the outbreak. (NYT $)
+ Virologists are getting more and more nervous about the way it may evolve and unfold. (MIT Technology Review)

6 AI may increase the efficiency of quantum computer systems 
A brand new mannequin created by Google DeepMind is excellent at correcting errors. (New Scientist $)
+ However AI may additionally make quantum computer systems much less vital. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Biden has permitted the usage of anti-personnel mines in Ukraine
It comes simply days after he gave the go-ahead for it to make use of long-range missiles inside Russia. (Axios)
+ The US army has given a surveillance drone contract to a little-known provider from Utah. (WSJ $) 
+ The Danish army stated it’s protecting an in depth eye on a Chinese language ship in its waters after knowledge cable breaches. (Reuters $)

8 The variety of new cellular web customers is stalling
Solely about 57% of the world’s inhabitants is linked. (Rest of World)

9 All of life on Earth descended from this single cell
Our “final common frequent ancestor” (or LUCA for brief) was a surprisingly complicated organism residing 4.2 billion years in the past. (Quanta)
+ Scientists are constructing a catalog of each sort of cell in our our bodies. (The Economist $)

10 What it’s prefer to stay with a fluffy AI pet 
Attempt as we would, it appears we will’t assist however kind attachments to cute companion robots. (The Guardian) 

Quote of the day

“The free pumpkins have introduced pleasure to many.”

—An instance of the kind of stilted remarks made by a now-abandoned AI-generated information broadcaster at native Hawaii paper The Backyard Island, Wired studies. 

 The large story

How Bitcoin mining devastated this New York city

April 2022

In the event you had taken of venture in 2017 and bought Bitcoin, at this time you is perhaps a millionaire many occasions over. However whereas the business has offered windfalls for some, native communities have paid a excessive worth, as individuals began scouring the world for affordable sources of power to run massive Bitcoin-mining farms.

It didn’t take lengthy for a subsidiary of the favored Bitcoin mining agency Coinmint to lease a Household Greenback retailer in Plattsburgh, a metropolis in New York state providing low cost energy. Quickly, the corporate was often drawing sufficient energy for about 4,000 properties. And whereas different miners had been fast to comply with, the issues had already taken root. Read the full story.

—Lois Parshley

We are able to nonetheless have good issues

A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction to brighten up your day. (Received any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Cultivating gratitude is a confirmed technique to make your self happier.
+ You may’t beat a hot toddy when it’s chilly exterior.
+ In the event you like deserted locations and overgrown ruins, Jonathan Jimenez is the photographer for you. 
+ Loads modified between Gladiator I and II, not least Hollywood’s model of the male supreme. 

Source link

#Obtain #replicas #Chinas #local weather #position