Artificial Intelligence
The Man Who ‘AGI-Pilled’ GoogleKevin Roose and Casey Newton | The New York Times
“When he joined Google in 2014 through the acquisition of DeepMind, the artificial intelligence start-up he co-founded, [Demis] Hassabis was one of a handful of AI leaders taking the possibility of AGI seriously. Today, he is one of a growing number of tech leaders racing to build AGI… This week on ‘Hard Fork,’ we interviewed Mr. Hassabis about his views on AGI and the strange futures that might follow its arrival.”
Robotics
Waymo Hits 10 Million Paid RidesAlex Perry | The Information
“Waymo’s co-chief executive officer Tekedra Mawakana said at Google I/O Tuesday that the self-driving car company has completed 10 million paid rides, including rides on the Waymo One app and the Uber app. The company’s other chief executive officer, Dmitri Dolgov, said on X that half were from this year.”
Computing
China Begins Assembling Its Supercomputer in SpaceWes Davis | The Verge
“Each of the 12 satellites has an onboard eight-billion parameter AI model and is capable of 744 tera operations per second (TOPS)—a measure of their AI processing grunt—and, collectively, ADA Space says they can manage five peta operations per second, or POPS. That’s quite a bit more than, say, the 40 TOPS required for a Microsoft Copilot PC. The eventual goal is to have a network of thousands of satellites that achieve 1,000 POPs, according to the Chinese government.”
Biotechnology
World’s First Gene-Edited Spider Produces Red Fluorescent SilkJay Kakade | New Atlas
“The researchers developed a novel CRISPR solution containing the gene sequence for a red fluorescent silk protein and injected it into unfertilized spider eggs. …After recovery, the females were mated with males of the same species. The offspring spun silk infused with a red fluorescent protein, proof that the gene edits had taken hold without altering the silk assembly.”
CERN Gears Up to Ship Antimatter Across EuropeJohn Timmer | Ars Technica
“CERN decided that it might be good to determine how to move the antimatter away from where it’s produced. Since it was tackling that problem anyway, CERN decided to make a shipping container for antimatter, allowing it to be put on a truck and potentially taken to labs throughout Europe.”
Artificial Intelligence
Anthropic’s New Model Excels at Reasoning and Planning—and Has the Pokémon Skills to Prove ItKylie Robison | Wired
“The goal is to build AI that can handle increasingly complex, long-term tasks safely and reliably, Kaplan says, adding that the field is moving fast, past simple chatbots and toward AI that acts as a ‘virtual collaborator.’ It’s not there yet, and the key challenge for every AI lab is improving reliability long term. ‘It’s useless if halfway through it makes an error and kind of goes off the rails,’ Kaplan says.”
Computing
The Flaw in Altman’s Thesis for AI DevicesMartin Peers | The Information
“Whatever OpenAI is planning, can it really be simpler than using a device we already carry with us? …Now, Altman obviously knows all this. The real reason he is talking up the value of new devices is surely strategic: OpenAI, like Meta, doesn’t want to be dependent on smartphone makers—such as Apple—for distribution of its apps.”
Future
The Technology to End Traffic Deaths Exists. Why Aren’t We Using It?Michael White | Fast Company
“[Automatic emergency braking] alone cuts rear-end crashes by up to 50% and blind-spot monitoring reduces lane-change crash injuries by 23%. And yet, carmakers still sell models without them. …If we want to stop the daily slaughter on our roads, the bare minimum must be mandating that all cars in the US have this technology that corrects for human error. Immediately.”
Tech
Klarna Used an AI Avatar of Its CEO to Deliver Earnings, It SaidJulie Bort | TechCrunch
“Other than AI Siemiatkowski’s admission, it wasn’t obvious that this was AI. There were only a few subtle signs: AI Siemiatkowski didn’t blink as much as most humans do. The voice sync was good, but not perfect. The AI was also wearing a brown jacket that looked a lot like the one from a widely circulated corporate photo of his human self (though the shirt was different).”
Future
What if Making Cartoons Becomes 90% Cheaper?Brooks Barnes | The New York Times
“Toonstar, the start-up behind ‘StEvEn & Parker,’ uses AI throughout the production process—from honing story lines to generating imagery to dubbing dialogue for overseas audiences. ‘By leaning into the technology, we can make full episodes 80 percent faster and 90 percent cheaper than industry norms,’ said John Attanasio, a Toonstar founder.”
Robotics
Robots Are Starting to Make Decisions in the Operating RoomJustin Opfermann, Samuel Schmidgall, and Axel Krieger | IEEE Spectrum
“A scenario in which patients are routinely greeted by a surgeon and an autonomous robotic assistant is no longer a distant possibility, thanks to the imaging and control technologies being developed today. And when patients begin to benefit from these advancements, autonomous robots in the operating room won’t just be a possibility but a new standard in medicine.”
Energy
We Did the Math on AI’s Energy Footprint. Here’s the Story You Haven’t Heard.James O’Donnell and Casey Crownhart | MIT Technology Review
“New analysis by MIT Technology Review provides an unprecedented and comprehensive look at how much energy the AI industry uses—down to a single query—to trace where its carbon footprint stands now, and where it’s headed, as AI barrels towards billions of daily users.”
Tech
Bluesky Is Plotting a Total Takeover of the Social InternetKate Knibbs | Wired
“Graber sees Atmosphere as nothing less than the democratized future of the social internet, and she emphasizes to me that developers are actively building new projects with it. In her dreams, these projects are as big, if not bigger, than Bluesky. Her ambitions might not be kingly, in other words, but they are lofty.”
Tech
Zero-Click Searches: Google’s AI Tools Are the Culmination of Its HubrisRyan Whitwam | Ars Technica
“The shift toward zero-click search that began more than a decade ago was made clear by the March 2024 core update, and it has only accelerated with the launch of AI Mode. Even businesses that have escaped major traffic drops from AI Overviews could soon find that Google’s AI-only search can get much more overbearing.”
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