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This is today’s edition of The Download our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

The UN just handed out an urgent climate to-do list. Here’s what it says.

Time is running short to limit global warming to 1.5°C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial levels, but there are feasible and effective solutions on the table, according to a new UN climate report.

Despite decades of warnings from scientists, global greenhouse-gas emissions are still climbing, hitting a record high in 2022. If humanity wants to limit the worst effects of climate change, annual greenhouse-gas emissions will need to be cut by nearly half between now and 2030, according to the report.

That will be complicated and expensive. But it is nonetheless doable, and the UN listed a number of specific ways we can achieve it. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

How people are using GPT-4

Last week was intense for AI news, with a flood of major product releases from a number of leading companies. But one announcement outshined them all: OpenAI’s new multimodal large language model, GPT-4. William Douglas Heaven, our senior AI editor, got an exclusive preview. Read about his initial impressions.

Unlike OpenAI’s viral hit ChatGPT, which is freely accessible to the general public, GPT-4 is currently accessible only to developers. It’s still early days for the tech, and it’ll take a while for it to feed through into new products and services. Still, people are already testing its capabilities out in the open. Read about some of the most fun and interesting ways they’re doing that, from hustling up money to writing code to reducing doctors’ workloads.

—Melissa Heikkilä

Melissa’s story is from The Algorithm, her weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

Language models might be able to self-correct biases—if you ask them

The news: Large language models are infamous for spewing toxic biases. But if the models are large enough, and humans have helped train them, then they may be able to self-correct for some of these biases, a new paper from AI lab Anthropic has found. Remarkably, all we have to do is ask.

How they did it: The team of researchers wanted to know if simply asking these models to produce output that was unbiased—without even having to define what they meant by bias—would be enough to alter what they produced. They found that just prompting a model to make sure its answers didn’t rely on stereotyping had a dramatically positive effect on its output.

The significance: The work raises the obvious question whether this “self-correction” could and should be baked into language models from the start. Read the full story.

—Niall Firth

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 We don’t know how to deal with the problems AI creates
Maybe we should be pumping the brakes, not accelerating. (Vox)
How to stop worrying and learn to love your AI colleague. (WP $)
Generative AI is changing everything. But what’s left when the hype is gone? (MIT Technology Review)

2 China’s top chipmakers have been granted new powers
They’ll have tighter control over state-backed research and greater access to subsidies. (FT $)
Chinese chips will keep powering your everyday life. (MIT Technology Review)

3 A Meta manager was wiretapped by Greek authorities
Artemis Seaford, who is a US and Greek national, was spied on for a year. (NYT $)

4 Amazon is planning to cut another 9,000 jobs
Just months after it laid off more than 18,000 workers. (CNBC)
Amazon’s worker union is facing a series of setbacks. (NYT $)

5 The locations of US border surveillance towers are being made public 
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has mapped close to 300 towers along the US-Mexico border. (The Intercept)
How US police use counterterrorism money to buy spy tech. (MIT Technology Review)

6 College coding classes aren’t always what they seem
Some universities outsource software boot camps to unregulated third parties. (Wired $)

7 TikTok’s depressing algorithm loops can be tough to break
There’s no easy way to say ‘please stop showing me this.’(The Atlantic $)
The app has 150 million monthly active users in the US, now. (Reuters)
When my dad was sick, I started Googling grief. Then I couldn’t escape it. (MIT Technology Review)

8 It costs a lot more to charge EVs on the street than at home
It’s also cheaper to charge overnight. (Reuters)
Ecuador’s taxi drivers want EVs, but worry about the lack of chargers. (Rest of World)
How does an EV battery actually work? (MIT Technology Review)

9 Do we want to talk to chatbots, really?
Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.

Read More

————

By: Rhiannon Williams
Title: The Download: how we can limit global warming, and GPT-4’s early adopters
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/21/1070106/download-how-we-can-limit-global-warming-gpt-4s-early-adopters/
Published Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2023 12:43:03 +0000

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The Download: metaverse fashion, and looser covid rules in China

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1 day ago

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September 25, 2023

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This is today’s edition of The Download our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

The metaverse fashion stylists are here

Fashion creator Jenni Svoboda is designing a beanie with a melted cupcake top, sprinkles, and doughnuts for ears. But this outlandish accessory isn’t destined for the physical world—Svoboda is designing for the metaverse. She’s working in a burgeoning, if bizarre, new niche: fashion stylists who create or curate outfits for people in virtual spaces.

Metaverse stylists are increasingly sought-after as frequent users seek help dressing their avatars—often in experimental, wildly creative looks that defy personal expectations, societal standards, and sometimes even physics.

Stylists like Svoboda are among those shaping the metaverse fashion industry, which is already generating hundreds of millions of dollars. But while, to the casual observer, it can seem outlandish and even obscene to spend so much money on virtual clothes, there are deeper, more personal, reasons why people are hiring professionals to curate their virtual outfits. Read the full story.

—Tanya Basu

Making sense of the changes to China’s zero-covid policy

On December 1, 2019, the first known covid-19 patient started showing symptoms in Wuhan. Three years later, China is the last country in the world holding on to strict pandemic control restrictions. However, after days of intense protests that shocked the world, it looks as if things could finally change.

Beijing has just announced wide-ranging relaxations of its zero covid policy, including allowing people to quarantine at home instead of in special facilities for the first time.

But while people are celebrating the fact that China has finally started pursuing a covid response emphasizing vaccines and treatments instead of quarantines and lockdowns, it’s just the start of what’s likely to be a long, and very difficult, road to reopening. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter covering all the goings on in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

How US police use counterterrorism money to buy spy tech

The news: Grant money meant to help cities prepare for terror attacks is being spent on surveillance technology for US police departments, a new report shows. While it’s been known that federal funding props up police budgets, these federal grants are bigger than previously understood.

Why it matters: These grants often make it possible for purchases to skirt approval mechanisms and stay out of public view. The report’s findings are yet another example of a growing pattern in which citizens are increasingly kept in the dark about police tech procurement. Read the full story.

—Tate Ryan-Mosley

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 China is relaxing some of its covid restrictions
Days after the mass protests, the government is allowing people with covid to isolate at home instead of in quarantine facilities. (AP News)
The policy change is likely to spark a huge wave of infections. (The Atlantic $)
Disinformation campaigns are making it hard to gauge citizens’ reactions. (New Yorker $)
Apple’s AirDrop restrictions are curbing the spread of protest memes in China. (Rest of World)

2 Ukraine launched another drone attack on Russia 
They managed to strike military bases that were believed to be impenetrable. (FT $)
Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is still in real danger, though. (Foreign Policy $) 

3 Renewable energy growth is “turbocharged” right now 
The global energy crisis has given the industry a much-needed shot in the arm. (The Verge)
This calculation is driving global climate policy. (Knowable Magazine)
How new versions of solar, wind, and batteries could help the grid. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Flu infections in the US are at an all-time high
The CDC has recorded more positive tests than any other week on record. (Vox)

5 San Francisco police have been barred from using killer robots
Just a week after they were given the go-ahead. (WP $)

6AI could destroy the student essay
New AI models can write ever-more convincing text. (The Atlantic $)
AI is being put to work, at long last. (Economist $)
GPT-3 can help people with dyslexia to quickly write coherent emails. (BuzzFeed News) 
AI image model Lensa is generating NSFW images without prompting. (Insider $)
ChatGPT is OpenAI’s latest fix for GPT-3. It’s slick but still spews nonsense. (MIT Technology Review)

7 How a teenager’s murder sparked a viral TikTok dance craze
The grisly commemoration raises questions over how we remember the dead. (New Yorker $)

8 The internet has changed what we understand about porn

Read More

————

By: Rhiannon Williams
Title: The Download: metaverse fashion, and looser covid rules in China
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/07/1064389/download-metaverse-fashion-looser-covid-rules-china/
Published Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2022 13:15:00 +0000

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New year’s resolutions for CIOs

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1 day ago

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September 25, 2023

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city gaze

From security to quantum, AI and edge to cloud, our digital world is evolving and expanding more quickly than ever. With so much “noise,” it can be hard to concentrate, let alone figure out where to start beyond the bits and bytes, speeds and feeds. I hear this from everyone I meet with, and it’s clear that CIOs, in particular, are feeling the pressure. So this year, I’m going to outline four emerging technologies and describe how CIOs can take action on them today. Consider these your new year’s resolutions.

city gaze 1

1. I will not use cloud without understanding the long-term costs. I’ve been hearing from CIOs that their initial eagerness to take advantage of cloud computing has put them over budget, as they weren’t thinking strategically about how to distribute IT capabilities across different cloud providers—let alone how to make them work together. My recommendation is to both characterize the technical viability of running a workload or placing data into a specific cloud, and also fully identify the short- and long-term costs of using that cloud. If you know going in what the costs are, you can better target workloads to the right long-term home. This will also set you up to evaluate new cloud options and find potential cost reductions over time.

2. I will define my zero-trust control plane. We will continue to see an increase in industries requiring zero-trust frameworks, such as those set forth by the U.S. government. These requirements will have a global ripple effect across critical infrastructure industries. So where do you begin? You need to have an authoritative identity management, policy management, and threat management framework to do zero trust properly. And if you don’t have a well-defined and authoritative control plane over your multi-cloud environment, how can you possibly achieve consistent identity, policy, or threat management for your total enterprise? Security in the multi-cloud, more than any other aspect, needs to be consistent and common. Silos are the enemy of real zero-trust security.

3A.I will establish early skill sets to take advantage of quantum. Quantum computing is getting real, and if you don’t have someone in your business who understands how this technology works and how it influences your business, you will miss this technology wave. Identify the team, tools, and tasks you’ll devote to quantum and start experimenting. Just last month we announced the on-premises Dell Quantum Computing Solution, which enables organizations across industries to begin taking advantage of accelerated compute through quantum technology otherwise not available to them today. Investing in quantum simulation and enabling your data science and AI teams to learn the new languages and capability of quantum is critical in 2023.

3B. I will determine where my quantum-safe cryptography risks lie. Quantum computing is so disruptive because it changes many elements of modern IT. With the rise of quantum computing comes the need to better understand post-quantum cryptography, the development of cryptographic systems for classical computers that are able to prevent attacks launched by quantum computers. Bad actors globally are actively trying to capture and archive encrypted traffic on the assumption that sufficiently powerful quantum computers will eventually be able to decrypt that data.

Want to mitigate your risk? I suggest starting with understanding where your biggest risk exists—as well as the time horizon you are worried about. You can do this by first cataloging your crypto assets and then identifying which encrypted data is most exposed to public networks and possible capture. That is the first place you need post-quantum cryptography. In 2022, NIST selected the first few viable post-quantum algorithms, and in 2023 these tools will start to emerge. Over time they will be needed everywhere, but in 2023, knowing where to use them first is a critical step.

4. I will decide whether my multi-cloud edge architecture needs to be cloud extension or cloud-first. In 2023 more of your data and processing will be needed in the real world. From processing real-time data in factories to powering robot control systems, edge is expanding rapidly in the multi-cloud world. This year you will need to make a choice about which edge architecture you want long term.

Option one is to treat edges as extension of your clouds. In that common model, for each cloud you have

Read More

————

By: John Roese
Title: New year’s resolutions for CIOs
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/07/1064486/new-years-resolutions-for-cios/
Published Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2022 21:02:27 +0000

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The Download: ChatGPT gets even chattier, and recreating space on Earth

Published

1 day ago

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September 25, 2023

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This is today’s edition of The Download our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

You can now have a voice conversation with ChatGPT

The news: OpenAI has launched two new ways to interact with its flagship large language model in a major update. You can have a spoken conversation with the chatbot as if you were making a call, and it’s also able to answer questions about images.

How it works: The ability to talk to ChatGPT draws on two separate models. Whisper, OpenAI’s existing speech-to-text model, converts what you say into text, which is then fed to the chatbot. And a new text-to-speech model converts ChatGPT’s responses into spoken words.

Why it matters: This grab bag of updates shows just how fast OpenAI is spinning its experimental models into desirable products. OpenAI has spent much of the time since its surprise hit with ChatGPT last November polishing its technology and selling it to both private consumers and commercial partners—including Spotify. Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

These scientists live like astronauts without leaving Earth

For around 25 years, people have played out what existence might be like on, or en route to, another world by studying the physiology and psychology of people living in Antarctica and other remote outposts.

Across the world, around 20 “analog” space facilities host people who volunteer to be study subjects, isolating themselves for weeks or months in polar stations, desert outposts, or even sealed habitats inside NASA centers.

These places are intended to mimic how people might fare on Mars or the moon, or on long-term orbital stations. Such research can help test out medical and software tools, enhance indoor agriculture, and address the difficulties analog astronauts face, including those that come when their “missions” are over. Read the full story.

—Sarah Scoles

An inside look at Congress’s first AI regulation forum

Recently, we wrote a quick guide about what we might expect at Congress’s first AI Insight Forum. Well, now that meeting has happened, and we have some important information about what was discussed behind closed doors in the tech-celeb-studded confab.

Inioluwa Deborah Raji, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and a fellow at Mozilla, was among the exclusive list of attendees. An expert in AI accountability, bias, and risk assessments, she’s given us an inside look at how the first meeting went, the pernicious myths she needed to debunk, and where disagreements could be felt in the room. Read the full story.

—Tate Ryan-Mosley

This story is from The Technocrat, our weekly newsletter covering technology and the politics that governs it. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Friday.

If you’re interested in how the US Congress might approach AI legislation, check out some of our recent reporting:

+ An important guide to the three things to know about how the US Congress might regulate AI.

+ What to know about Congress’s inaugural AI meeting, held earlier this month. The forum brought together some of the top people in AI to discuss the risks and opportunities posed by advances in this technology. Read the full story.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Meta is working on chatbots with character 
AI agents with superior intellect, sharp wit, and biting sarcasm are on their way. (WSJ $)
AI personal assistants are on the horizon—providing you actually want them. (Vox)
AI’s inexhaustible march towards the workplace seems impossible to avoid. (Slate $)
Chinese AI chatbots want to be your emotional support. (MIT Technology Review)

2 NASA has collected an asteroid sample for the first time
It’s an incredible insight into the origins of the solar system. (The Verge)
The agency has a second asteroid in its sights already. (WP $)
NASA’s advanced batteries could hold promise for the Grid on Earth. (IEEE Spectrum)

3 Amazon is sinking up to $4 billion in Anthropic
That’s one way to give itself a much-needed generative AI boost. (Bloomberg $)
Anthropic also has an agreement with Google. (Reuters)

4 Building factories in space is challenging, but not impossible
Technically, space’s specific conditions could make it easier to manufacture certain goods, like crystals. (The Guardian)
What’s next for the moon. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Iran’s religious leaders are intrigued by AI 
Including the possibility of using robots to issue fatwas. (FT $)

6 California’s governor has blocked an autonomous truck safety bill
Human safety operators won’t be required after all.(TechCrunch)
This driverless car company is using chatbots

Read More

————

By: Rhiannon Williams
Title: The Download: ChatGPT gets even chattier, and recreating space on Earth
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/09/25/1080195/the-download-chatgpt-gets-even-chattier-and-recreating-space-on-earth/
Published Date: Mon, 25 Sep 2023 12:21:35 +0000

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