Each Saturday we put up a selection of articles from the week. With 2023 nearing its finish, we dug by way of all these posts once more to floor 25 tales price revisiting. Right here you’ll discover a deep dive on OpenAI, a have a look at the approaching golden age in medication, a stunning clarification of Nvidia’s AI success, a surprising snapshot of SpaceX’s orbital dominance, an ode to bodily encyclopedias, and a few back-of-the-napkin math on Dyson spheres.
Blissful studying. See you in 2023.
Does Sam Altman Know What He’s Creating?
Ross Andersen | The Atlantic
“i‘We may have gone off and simply constructed this in our constructing right here for 5 extra years,’ [Altman] mentioned, ‘and we might have had one thing jaw-dropping.’ However the public wouldn’t have been capable of put together for the shock waves that adopted, an final result that he finds ‘deeply disagreeable to think about.’ Altman believes that individuals want time to reckon with the concept we could quickly share Earth with a robust new intelligence, earlier than it remakes all the things from work to human relationships. ChatGPT was a approach of serving discover.”
Suddenly, It Looks Like We’re in a Golden Age for Medicine
David Wallace-Wells | The New York Instances
“Hype springs everlasting in medication, however these days the horizon of recent chance appears nearly blindingly brilliant. …’It’s gorgeous,’ says the immunologist Barney Graham, the previous deputy director of the Vaccine Analysis Middle and a central determine within the improvement of mRNA vaccines, who has these days been writing a few ‘new period for vaccinology.’ ‘You can’t think about what you’re going to see over the following 30 years. The tempo of development is in an exponential section proper now.’i”
Humanoid Robots Are Coming of Age
Will Knight | Wired
“Eight years in the past, the Pentagon’s Protection Superior Analysis Initiatives Company organized a painful-to-watch contest that concerned robots slowly struggling (and sometimes failing) to carry out a collection of human duties, together with opening doorways, working energy instruments, and driving golf carts. …At present the descendants of these hapless robots are much more succesful and swish. A number of startups are growing humanoids that they declare may, in only a few years, discover employment in warehouses and factories.”
The Secret to Nvidia’s AI Success
Samuel Ok. Moore | IEEE Spectrum
“[Nvidia] has managed to extend the efficiency of its chips on AI duties a thousandfold over the previous 10 years, it’s raking in cash, and it’s reportedly very onerous to get your arms on its latest AI-accelerating GPU, the H100. How did Nvidia get right here? …Moore’s Legislation was a surprisingly small a part of Nvidia’s magic and new quantity codecs a really massive half. Put all of it collectively and also you get what Dally known as Huang’s Legislation (for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang).”
Open Your Mind to Unicorn Meat
Annie Lowrey | The Atlantic
“Is it hen? It’s hen greater than it’s the rest. To be particular, it’s what occurs once you take a hen’s cells, place them in a vat full of a slurry of vitamins and amino acids, allow them to multiply, wash them, chill them, form them, and cook dinner them. This type of meat is the long run, or at the least a part of the long run. Throughout the previous decade, cultivated meat has gone from science-fictional to hyper-expensive to market-ready, fueled by billions of {dollars} of start-up spending.”
The End of the Googleverse
Ryan Broderick | The Verge
“Google formally went on-line…in 1998. It shortly turned so inseparable from each the best way we use the web and, ultimately, tradition itself, that we nearly lack the language to explain what Google’s affect over the past 25 years has really been. It’s like asking a fish to clarify what the ocean is. And but, throughout us are indicators that the period of ‘peak Google’ is ending or, presumably, already over.”
Next Up for CRISPR: Gene Editing for the Masses?
Jessica Hamzelou | MIT Expertise Evaluation
“We all know the fundamentals of wholesome dwelling by now. A balanced food plan, common train, and stress discount may also help us keep away from coronary heart illness—the world’s largest killer. However what in case you may take a vaccine, too? And never a typical vaccine—one shot that may alter your DNA to offer lifelong safety? That imaginative and prescient shouldn’t be far off, researchers say. Advances in gene modifying, and CRISPR know-how specifically, could quickly make it potential.”
I Just Bought the Only Physical Encyclopedia Still in Print, and I Regret Nothing
Benj Edwards | Ars Technica
“Each morning as I look forward to the children to prepare for varsity, I pull out a random quantity and browse. I’ve refreshed my information on many topics and benefit from the deliberate stability of the knowledge expertise. I really feel assured utilizing it as an occasional private reference as the net world slides additional into AI-augmented noise. And it’s positively extra correct than an AI massive language mannequin in the intervening time.”
What Happens When AI Has Read Everything?
Ross Andersen | The Atlantic
“Synthetic intelligence has lately proved itself to be a fast examine, though it’s being educated in a way that may disgrace essentially the most brutal headmaster. Locked into hermetic Borgesian libraries for months with no rest room breaks or sleep, AIs are informed to not emerge till they’ve completed a self-paced pace course in human tradition. On the syllabus: a good fraction of all of the surviving textual content that we have now ever produced.”
Sphere and Loathing in Las Vegas
Charlie Warzel | The Atlantic
“I wished to be cynical in regards to the Sphere and all it represents—our telephones as appendages, screens as a mediated type of experiencing the world. There’s loads to dislike in regards to the factor—the impersonal flashiness of all of it, its $30 tequila sodas, the probably staggering electrical energy payments. However additionally it is my solemn responsibility to report back to you that the Sphere slaps, a lot in the identical approach that, say, the Tremendous Bowl slaps. It’s gaudy, overly commercialized, and funky as hell: a brand-new, non-pharmaceutical sensory expertise.”
SpaceX Broke Its Record for Number of Launches in a Year
Stephen Clark | Ars Technica
“SpaceX is main the world not simply within the variety of launches, but in addition within the whole payload mass the corporate has launched into orbit this yr. Within the first half of 2023, SpaceX delivered about 447 metric tons of cargo into orbit, roughly 80 % of all the fabric launched into orbit worldwide, in keeping with knowledge from the house analytics agency BryceTech. Musk mentioned SpaceX will launch about 90 % of the world’s whole payload mass into orbit subsequent yr, based mostly on the corporate’s launch manifest for 2024.”
CRISPR Crops Are Here
Paolo Pononiere | proto.life
“Had it been coined deliberately for the aim of promoting contemporary produce, the acronym CRISPR would have been a stroke of promoting genius. In any case, who wouldn’t need their salad to be crisper? However the true genius of this gene-editing know-how might be its potential to leap straight to client cabinets, sidestepping all of the controversies which have tripped up its cousin GMO, with which it shares its biotechnological roots.”
Some of the Thorniest Questions About AI Will Be Answered in Court
Ryan Tracy | The Wall Avenue Journal
“Congress and the White Home are speaking about regulating synthetic intelligence, however courts would possibly nicely resolve a number of the most economically important questions in regards to the booming know-how. For the reason that late 2022 launch of ChatGPT, the viral AI-powered chatbot, a flurry of fits has focused AI purveyors together with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta Platforms.”
A Bold Plan to Beam Solar Energy Down From Space
Ramin Skibba | Wired
“Whether or not you’re overlaying deserts, ugly parking heaps, canals, and even sunny lakes with photo voltaic panels, clouds will sometimes get in the best way—and each day the solar should set. No downside, says the European House Company: Simply put the photo voltaic arrays in house. The company lately introduced a brand new exploratory program known as Solaris, which goals to determine whether it is technologically and economically possible to launch photo voltaic buildings into orbit, use them to harness the solar’s energy, and transmit vitality to the bottom.”
AI Is Dreaming Up Drugs That No One Has Ever Seen. Now We’ve Got to See if They Work.
Will Douglas Heaven | MIT Expertise Evaluation
“There at the moment are a whole lot of startups exploring the usage of machine studying within the pharmaceutical business, says Nathan Benaich at Air Avenue Capital, a VC agency that invests in biotech and life sciences corporations: ‘Early indicators had been thrilling sufficient to draw massive cash.’ At present, on common, it takes greater than 10 years and billions of {dollars} to develop a brand new drug. The imaginative and prescient is to make use of AI to make drug discovery sooner and cheaper.”
People Are Speaking With ChatGPT for Hours, Bringing 2013’s Her Closer to Reality
Benj Edwards | Ars Technica
“Within the movie, Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with an AI persona known as Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), and he spends a lot of the movie strolling by way of life, speaking to her by way of wi-fi earbuds paying homage to Apple AirPods, which launched in 2016. In actuality, ChatGPT isn’t as situationally conscious as Samantha was within the movie, doesn’t have a long-term reminiscence, and OpenAI has achieved sufficient conditioning on ChatGPT to maintain conversations from getting too intimate or private. However that hasn’t stopped individuals from having lengthy talks with the AI assistant to move the time anyway.”
Welcome to the Oldest Part of the Metaverse
John-Clark Levin | MIT Expertise Evaluation
“At present’s headlines deal with the metaverse as a hazy dream but to be constructed, but when it’s outlined as a community of digital worlds we will inhabit, its oldest extant nook has been already working for 25 years. It’s a medieval fantasy kingdom created for the net role-playing recreation Ultima On-line—and it has already endured a quarter-century of market competitors, financial turmoil, and political strife. So what can this recreation and its gamers inform us about creating the digital worlds of the long run?”
Ethereum Moved to Proof of Stake. Why Can’t Bitcoin?
Amy Castor | MIT Expertise Evaluation
“A single Bitcoin transaction makes use of the identical quantity of vitality as a single US family does over the course of practically a month. However does it need to be that approach? The Bitcoin neighborhood has traditionally been fiercely resistant to vary, however stress from regulators and environmentalists fed up with Bitcoin’s huge carbon footprint could power them to rethink that stance.”
Has the 3D Printing Revolution Finally Arrived?
Tim Lewis | The Guardian
“i‘What occurred 10 years in the past, when there was this huge hype, was there was a lot nonsense being written: “You’ll print something with these machines! It’ll take over the world!”’ says Hague. ‘Nevertheless it’s now turning into a extremely mature know-how, it’s not an rising know-how actually any extra. It’s broadly applied by the likes of Rolls-Royce and Normal Electrical, and we work with AstraZeneca, GSK, an entire bunch of various individuals. Printing issues at dwelling was by no means going to occur, nevertheless it’s developed right into a multibillion-dollar business.’i”
Would Building a Dyson Sphere Be Worth It? We Ran the Numbers.
Paul Sutter | Ars Technica
“What if we determined to construct a Dyson sphere round our solar? May we do it? How a lot vitality wouldn’t it price us to rearrange our photo voltaic system, and the way lengthy wouldn’t it take to get our funding again? Earlier than we put an excessive amount of thought into whether or not humanity is able to this wonderful feat, even theoretically, we must always resolve if it’s well worth the effort. Can we really obtain a web achieve in vitality by constructing a Dyson sphere?”
A New Approach to Computation Reimagines Artificial Intelligence
Anil Ananthaswamy | Quanta
“By imbuing monumental vectors with semantic that means, we will get machines to cause extra abstractly—and effectively—than earlier than. …That is the start line for a radically completely different strategy to computation referred to as hyperdimensional computing. The bottom line is that every piece of knowledge, such because the notion of a automotive, or its make, mannequin or colour, or all of it collectively, is represented as a single entity: a hyperdimensional vector.”
No, Fusion Energy Won’t Be ‘Limitless’
Gregory Barber | Wired
“…because the physics progresses, some at the moment are starting to discover the probably sensible and financial limits on fusion. The early conclusion is that fusion vitality ain’t going to be low-cost—actually not the most affordable supply of electrical energy over the approaching a long time as extra photo voltaic and wind come on-line. However fusion should still discover its place, as a result of the grid wants vitality in several varieties and at completely different instances.”
They Cracked the Code to a Locked USB Drive Worth $235 Million in Bitcoin. Then It Got Weird
Andy Greenberg | Wired
“Stefan Thomas misplaced the password to an encrypted USB drive holding 7,002 bitcoins. One crew of hackers believes they’ll unlock it—if they’ll get Thomas to allow them to. …Thomas had already made a ‘handshake deal’ with two different cracking groups a yr earlier, he defined. …’We cracked the IronKey,’ says Nick Fedoroff, Unciphered’s director of operations. ‘Now we have now to crack Stefan. That is turning out to be the toughest half.’i”
Explore the Ancient Aztec Capital in This Lifelike 3D Rendering
Anna Lagos | Wired
“Digital artist Thomas Kole, initially from Amersfoort, Netherlands, has re-created the capital of the Aztec, or Mexica, empire with a lot element that it appears to be like like a dwelling metropolis. ‘What did the traditional, monumental metropolis constructed atop a lake appear to be?’ puzzled Kole, as he explored Mexico Metropolis on Google Maps. …For a yr and a half, he turned to historic and archaeological sources as he sought to deliver Tenochtitlán again to life whereas remaining as trustworthy as potential to what we all know in regards to the metropolis.”
Exactly How Much Life Is on Earth?
Dennis Overbye | The New York Instances
“What’s in a quantity? In keeping with a latest calculation by a crew of biologists and geologists, there are extra dwelling cells on Earth—1,000,000 trillion trillion, or 10^30 in math notation, a 1 adopted by 30 zeros—than there are stars within the universe or grains of sand on our planet.”
Picture Credit score: Robin Canfield / Unsplash