The Download: the future of CRISPR babies, and investing in climate tech

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.

Controversial CRISPR scientist promises “no more gene-edited babies” until society comes around

He Jiankui, the Chinese biophysicist whose controversial 2018 experiment led to the birth of three gene-edited children, says he’s returned to work on the concept of altering the DNA of people at conception, but with a difference. 

This time around, he says, he will restrict his research to animals and nonviable human embryos. He will not try to create a pregnancy, at least until society comes to accept his vision for “genetic vaccines” against common diseases.

During an exclusive subscribers-only live interview with MIT Technology Review last week, He defended his past research and revealed he only has one regret. Read more about what he had to say.

—Antonio Regalado

From Meta CTO to climate tech investor: Mike Schroepfer on his big pivot

The more Mike Schroepfer learned more about global warming in 2020, the more he came to believe he had a role to play. By leveraging his technical expertise and financial resources, the then chief technology officer of Meta could accelerate essential research and help us prepare for the escalating dangers.

As the threat of climate change consumed more and more of his time, he decided to step down from his CTO role in 2021. He has since launched several new climate tech initiatives, including one exploring the contentious idea of solar geoengineering.

Last week, Schroepfer sat down with MIT Technology Review to discuss his approach to the problem, why he’s willing to spend money on controversial climate interventions, and what AI and the presidential election could mean for progress on clean energy. Read the full story.

—James Temple

The must-reads

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

1 Elon Musk shared an edited video of Kamala Harris on X  
In an apparent violation of the company’s own rules on sharing synthetic media. (WSJ $)
+ Musk failed to disclose that the video had been altered. (NYT $)
+ Harris’ campaign accused Musk of spreading ‘manipulated lies.’ (The Guardian)
+ An AI startup made a hyperrealistic deepfake of me that’s so good it’s scary. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Apple has pushed back the launch of its AI features
Apple Intelligence will no longer roll out in September as originally planned. (Bloomberg $)
+ Hopefully this’ll give Apple more time to catch bugs. (The Information $)
+ Apple is promising personalized AI in a private cloud. Here’s how that will work. (MIT Technology Review)

3 The Democrats are seeking to build bridges with the crypto industry
Relations have been rocky in the past few years, to say the least. (FT $)
+ Donald Trump has already made a major play for the bitcoin faithful. (Wired $)
+ So much so, Trump-themed memecoins are back. (NYT $)

4 France’s internet cables have been severed
It’s the latest attack on the country’s infrastructure during the Olympics. (Bloomberg $)
+ The French train system was targeted last week. (Vox)

5 We may have just made an important alien discovery
Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until 2040 to be sure. (The Atlantic $)

6 Plug-and-play solar panels are all the rage in Germany
The lightweight panels are making it easy for civilians to generate their own electricity. (NYT $)
+ Offshore wind farms are on the rise, too. (Hakai Magazine)
+ The race to get next-generation solar technology on the market. (MIT Technology Review)

7 China is keen to mine the ocean floor
The country is desperate to find new sources of critical minerals. (Economist $)
+ This startup uses AI to seek out metals deep in the ground. (WSJ $)
+ These deep-sea “potatoes” could be the future of mining for renewable energy. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Specialized dating apps are thriving
Tinder and Bumble are out, Grindr and Feeld are in. (FT $)

9 It’s time to embrace ‘underconsumption core’
Gen Z shoppers are turning their backs on unnecessary consumerism. (Insider $)

10 Silicon Valley startups are inviting founders to roast them
Blunt feedback can be the best way to avoid expensive future pitfalls—if you can hack it. (WP $)

Quote of the day

“It’s not just about posting a coconut meme — it’s about making the conversation about abortion.”

—Danielle Butterfield, the executive director of political action committee Priorities USA, explains to the New York Times how Kamala Harris should handle her burgeoning online fandom.

The big story

This fuel plant will use agricultural waste to combat climate change

February 2022

A startup called Mote plans to build a new type of fuel-producing plant in California’s fertile Central Valley that would, if it works as hoped, continually capture and bury carbon dioxide, starting from 2024.

It’s among a growing number of efforts to commercialize a concept first proposed two decades ago as a means of combating climate change, known as bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration, or BECCS.

It’s an ambitious plan. However, there are serious challenges to doing BECCS affordably and in ways that reliably suck down significant levels of carbon dioxide. Read the full story. 

—James Temple

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Hundreds of Kate Bush fans gathered to recreate her iconic Wuthering Heights dance this weekend—check out the dance itself here.
+ Andy Morton’s got the right idea—he’s tried 50,000 kinds of beer (thanks Jess!)
+ The Netherlands’ Bosch Parade looks suitably surreal.
+ These pancakes look delicious.

The Download: AI’s math solutions, and brewing beer with sunlight

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.

Google DeepMind’s new AI systems can now solve complex math problems

AI models can easily generate essays and other types of text. However, they’re nowhere near as good at solving math problems, which tend to involve logical reasoning—something that’s beyond the capabilities of most current AI systems.

But that may finally be changing. Google DeepMind says it has trained two specialized AI systems to solve complex math problems involving advanced reasoning. The systems worked together to successfully solve four out of six problems from this year’s International Mathematical Olympiad, a  prestigious competition for high school students.

They won the equivalent of a silver medal, marking the first time any AI system has ever achieved such a high success rate on these kinds of problems. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

Why the US is still trying to make mirror-magnified solar energy work

The US is continuing its decades-long effort to commercialize a technology that converts sunlight into heat, funding a series of new projects using that energy to brew beer, produce low-carbon fuels, or keep grids running.

The Department of Energy has announced it is putting $33 million into nine pilot projects based on concentrating solar thermal power, MIT Technology Review can report exclusively. The technology uses large arrays of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a receiver, where it’s used to heat up molten salt, ceramic particles, or other materials that can store that energy for extended periods. 

But early commercial efforts to produce clean electricity based on this technology have been bedeviled by high costs, low output, and other challenges. Read the full story.

—James Temple

“Copyright traps” could tell writers if an AI has scraped their work

Since the beginning of the generative AI boom, content creators have argued that their work has been scraped into AI models without their consent. But until now, it has been difficult to know whether specific text has actually been used in a training data set. 

Now they have a new way to prove it: “copyright traps” developed by a team at Imperial College London, pieces of hidden text that allow writers and publishers to subtly mark their work in order to later detect whether it has been used in AI models or not. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

How our genome is like a generative AI model

What does the genome do? You might have heard that it is a blueprint for an organism. Or that it’s a bit like a recipe. But building an organism is much more complex than constructing a house or baking a cake.

This week I came across an idea for a new way to think about the genome—one that borrows from the field of artificial intelligence. Two researchers are arguing that we should think about it as being more like a generative model, a form of AI that can generate new things.

You might be familiar with such AI tools—they’re the ones that can create text, images, or even films from various prompts. But do our genomes really work in the same way? Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly health and biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

The must-reads

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

1 OpenAI’s search engine is here
And it’s already getting stuff wrong. (The Atlantic $)
+ SearchGPT will eventually be folded into ChatGPT. (WP $)
+ Its launch is a clear threat to Google’s long-held search engine dominance. (Wired $)
+ Why you shouldn’t trust AI search engines. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The chip industry’s workers are demanding better treatment
As the sector’s profits soar, its employees aren’t seeing the benefits. (WSJ $)

3 What studying the human brain can teach us about AI
Trying to understand why AI does the things it does is key to controlling it. (Vox)
+ What is AI? (MIT Technology Review)

4 Russia is throttling access to YouTube
It’s looking as though a total ban is imminent. (Bloomberg $)

5 Robots are finally becoming more useful
And it’s all thanks to AI. (FT $)
+ Is robotics about to have its own ChatGPT moment? (MIT Technology Review)

6 Voice actors are striking against video game companies
They claim the firms have learnt nothing from the prior strikes against film and TV. (NYT $)
+ They want studios to seek actors’ consent for using their voices with AI. (Bloomberg $)

7 Identifying all of Mexico’s dead bodies is a forensic crisis
Scientists are doing their best to harness tech to their cause. (New Yorker $)
+ The mothers of Mexico’s missing are using social media to search for mass graves. (MIT Technology Review)

8 New Jersey is angling to become a major AI hub
Bruce Springsteen’s hometown wants a slice of those hefty new tax credits. (Wired $)
+ The $100 billion bet that a postindustrial US city can reinvent itself as a high-tech hub. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Mexico’s delivery workers are sick of food orders
It’s less waiting around, and fewer irate customers. (Rest of World)

10 How to find serenity in a plant-identifying app
Take a minute to step outside and smell the roses. (The Guardian)

Quote of the day

“Just hug your IT folks.”

—Jerry Leever, an IT director at accounting, tax and advisory firm GHJ, explains to the Washington Post what it was like attempting to handle last week’s CrowdStrike meltdown. 

The big story

Bright LEDs could spell the end of dark skies

August 2022

Scientists have known for years that light pollution is growing and can harm both humans and wildlife. In people, increased exposure to light at night disrupts sleep cycles and has been linked to cancer and cardiovascular disease, while wildlife suffers from interruption to their reproductive patterns, and increased danger.

Astronomers, policymakers, and lighting professionals are all working to find ways to reduce light pollution. Many of them advocate installing light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, in outdoor fixtures such as city streetlights, mainly for their ability to direct light to a targeted area.

But the high initial investment and durability of modern LEDs mean cities need to get the transition right the first time or potentially face decades of consequences. Read the full story.

—Shel Evergreen

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Lady Gaga! Celine Dion! Snoop Dogg! It’s safe to say tonight’s Paris Olympics opening ceremony is going to be suitably bonkers.
+ Although nothing is ever going to top London 2012’s opening.
+ Candace Bushnell, you will never not be fabulous.
+ Who doesn’t love a good Kubrick stare?

The Download: Falcon 9’s future, and Big Tech’s climate goals

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.

What’s next for SpaceX’s Falcon 9

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is one of the world’s safest, most productive rockets. But a rare engine malfunction on July 11 prompted the US Federal Aviation Administration to initiate an investigation and ground all Falcon 9 flights until further notice. The incident has exposed the risks of the US aerospace industry’s heavy reliance on the rocket.

The Falcon 9 has an unusually clean safety record. It’s been launched more than 300 times since its maiden voyage in 2010 and has rarely failed. But while its malfunction might seem surprising, anomalies are to be expected when it comes to rocket engines.

What exactly went wrong last week remains a mystery. Still, experts agree the event can’t be brushed off. Read the full story.

—Sarah Ward

Companies need to stop taking the easy way out on climate goals

Corporate climate claims can be confusing—and sometimes entirely unintuitive. 

Tech giants Amazon and Google both recently released news about their efforts to clean up their climate impact. Both were a mixed bag, but one bit of news in particular stood out: Google’s emissions have gone up, and the company stopped claiming to be “net zero.” 

Sounds bad, right? But in fact, one might argue that Google’s apparent backslide might actually represent progress for climate action. Read our story to learn why.

—Casey Crownhart

This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter covering all the latest developments in climate and energy tech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

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

1 Meta won’t release multimodal AI models in Europe
It’s blaming the “unpredictable nature” of the European regulatory environment. (Axios)
+ The AI Act is done. Here’s what will (and won’t) change. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Spain is dependent on an algorithm to combat gender violence
Hundreds of women who were assessed by the software have since been killed by their current or former partners. (NYT $)

3 Russia and China are stirring online dissent in the wake of Trump’s shooting
State media sites seized the opportunity to blame the Democrats for the violence. (WP $)
+ X’s AI bot Grok is failing to report the attempted assassination accurately. (WSJ $)

4 This drug extended the lifespan of lab mice by close to 25%
The animals were stronger, healthier, and developed fewer cancers, too. (BBC)
+ These scientists are working to extend the life span of pet dogs—and their owners. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Synthetic speech firm ElevenLabs wants to detect deepfakes
A new partnership with detection company Reality Defender could help it do just that. (Bloomberg $)
+ Australia’s police union is pushing for a portal to report deepfakes. (The Guardian)

6 NASA is abandoning its mission to search for water on the moon
The much-delayed Viper program is too expensive, it’s concluded. (Bloomberg $)
+ Future space food could be made from astronaut breath. (MIT Technology Review)

7 A mobile forensics firm can’t unlock many modern iPhones
In fact, its success hinges on iPhones running software that’s almost five years old. (404 Media)

8 Space-based solar power is looking increasingly viable
It could be a 24/7 source of clean power in the future. (Wired $)
+ The race to get next-generation solar technology on the market. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Antarctica is the perfect place to look for alien life
Which is even more reason to protect it from melting. (The Atlantic $)
+ Climate change is making our days longer, too. (Vox)

10 Are you auramaxxing?
Predictably, this intense form of manifesting is big on TikTok. (NY Mag $)

Quote of the day

“The Blue Wall of tech is crumbling before our very eyes.”

—Ryan Selkis, CEO of crypto research firm Messari, remarks on how the traditionally left-leaning tech industry is changing its alliances to the Republicans ahead of November’s Presidential election, Vox reports.

The big story

After 25 years of hype, embryonic stem cells are still waiting for their moment​

August 2023

In 1998, researchers isolated powerful stem cells from human embryos. It was a breakthrough, since these cells are the starting point for human bodies and have the capacity to turn into any other type of cell—heart cells, neurons, you name it.

National Geographic would later summarize the incredible promise: “the dream is to launch a medical revolution in which ailing organs and tissues might be repaired” with living replacements. It was the dawn of a new era. A holy grail. Pick your favorite cliché—they all got airtime.

Yet today, more than two decades later, there are no treatments on the market based on these cells. Not one. Our biotech editor Antonio Regalado set out to investigate why, and when that might change. Here’s what he discovered.

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ A video game about potatoes? Perfection.
+ These sunflower slides are pretty amazing.
+ The Therizinosaurus was a mysterious mix of giraffe, sloth, and wolverine, and it roamed the earth for millions of years.
+ A minimal effort, no-bake lemon cheesecake is the ideal end to a summer’s meal.

The Download: defining AI, and China’s driverless ambitions

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.

What is AI?

AI is sexy, AI is cool. AI is entrenching inequality, upending the job market, and wrecking education. The AI boom will boost the economy, the AI bubble is about to burst. AI will increase abundance and empower humanity to maximally flourish in the universe. AI will kill us all.

What the hell is everybody talking about?

Artificial intelligence is the hottest technology of our time. But what is it? It sounds like a stupid question, but it’s one that’s never been more urgent. 

If you’re willing to buckle up and come for a ride, I can tell you why nobody really knows, why everybody seems to disagree, and why you’re right to care about it. Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

The Chinese government is all in on autonomous vehicles

There’s been so much news coming out of China’s autonomous-vehicle industry lately that it’s hard to keep track.

The government is finally allowing Tesla to bring its Full Self-Driving feature to China. New government permits let companies test driverless cars on the road and allow cities to build smart road infrastructure that will tell these cars where to go.

In short, there are a lot of changes taking place. And they all point in the same direction: The Chinese government is throwing its weight behind the autonomous-vehicle industry and is eager to come out on top while other countries take a more cautious approach. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

This story is from China Report, our weekly newsletter covering tech and power in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday.

The must-reads

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

1 Microsoft and Apple will no longer sit on OpenAI’s board 
The move comes as regulators start to pay close attention to Big Tech’s investments in AI startups. (FT $)
+ Microsoft claims its exit is down to OpenAI’s newfound stability. (WSJ $)
+ OpenAI will update its stakeholders with regular meetings, instead. (Bloomberg $)

2 The US has taken down a Russian bot farm on X
The propaganda mill used AI to scale up its operations. (WP $)
+ Google Search results are full of Russian AI spam, too. (Wired $)
+ The Kremlin is rewriting Wikipedia to suit its own agenda. (Economist $)

3 Amazon claims to have met a clean energy goal seven years early
Some experts aren’t convinced its calculation method is up to scratch, though. (NYT $)
+ Carbon capture needs to improve if we’re ever to move away from fossil fuels. (Knowable Magazine)
+ How electricity could clean up transportation, steel, and even fertilizer. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Rechargeable batteries come at an environmental cost
They appear to be a growing source of forever chemicals. (The Verge)
+ The race to destroy PFAS, the forever chemicals. (MIT Technology Review)

5 What happens to your money when your startup bank folds?
Plenty of customers are finding out the hard way. (NYT $)

6 Crypto fans are up in arms over Germany selling confiscated bitcoin
But the state of Saxony doesn’t have a choice. (CoinDesk)
+ Crypto scams are alive and well. (Wired $)

7 How to prepare your home for a hurricane
Stronger materials, tighter seals, and a whole lot of work. (Wired $)
+ The quest to build wildfire-resistant homes. (MIT Technology Review)

8 No one answers the phone anymore
And it’s a bigger problem than you’d think. (Slate $)

9 Philips Hue smart lightbulbs seem to have a mind of their own
Owners claim the bulbs are overriding settings to full brightness. (Insider $) 

10 Gen Z uses the iPhone Notes app to generate outfits
All those little digital stickers are coming in handy. (Vogue Business $)

Quote of the day

“I faced the issues of AI early, but it will happen for others. It may not be a happy ending.”

—Lee Saedol, the legendary Go player who lost to Google DeepMind’s AI program in 2016, warns an audience in Seoul about the risks the technology may pose, the New York Times reports.

The big story

This super-realistic virtual world is a driving school for AI

February 2022

Building driverless cars is a slow and expensive business. After years of effort and billions of dollars of investment, the technology is still stuck in the pilot phase.

Autonomous technology company Waabi thinks it can do better. In 2021 it revealed the controversial new shortcut to autonomous vehicles it’s betting on. The big idea? Ditch the cars.

Wasabi has built a super-realistic virtual environment called Waabi World. Instead of training an AI driver in real vehicles, it plans to do it entirely inside the simulation. But simulation alone is a bold strategy, and how far it can go depends on how realistic Waabi World really is. Read the full story. 

—Will Douglas Heaven

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ If this video doesn’t fill you with joy, I don’t know what will.
+ Apo Whang-Od Oggay is the world’s oldest tattoo artist, and very cool.
+ The world’s most difficult maze holds a very interesting secret.
+ Netflix’s Supacell features some of the very best of Black British talent.

The Download: recycling clothing, and fish-friendly hydropower

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.

A polyester-dissolving process could make modern clothing recyclable  

The news: Less than 1% of clothing is recycled. Most of the rest ends up dumped in a landfill or burned. A team of researchers hopes to change that with a new process that breaks down mixed-fiber clothing into reusable, recyclable parts without any sorting or separation in advance.

How they did it: Many garments are made of a mix of natural and synthetic fibers. Once these fibers are combined, they are difficult to separate. To tackle this problem, the team used a solvent that breaks the chemical bonds in polyester fabric while leaving cotton and nylon intact. To speed up the process, they power it with microwave energy and add a zinc oxide catalyst. 

Why it matters: While similar methods have been used to recycle pre-sorted plastic, this is the first time they’ve been used to recycle mixed-fiber textiles without any sorting required. Read the full story.

—Sarah Ward

What new hydropower tech says about climate action

Back at MIT Technology Review’s ClimateTech event in 2022, Gia Schneider, a cofounder of Natel Energy, spoke about her company’s mission to design hydropower turbines that are safer for fish.

To illustrate her point, she shared grisly images of fish that had been hit by conventional turbine blades. On the other hand, the fish swimming through Natel’s turbines seemed relatively unbothered, curving around the blades and going on their merry way downstream. 

Recently, our climate reporter Casey Crownhart had a chat with Schneider about how Natel is working to change hydropower technology and juggle climate action with freshwater ecosystems to make hydropower a bit more fish-friendly. Read the full story.

This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter covering innovations in climate and energy tech. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

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

1 Google’s plan to ditch tracking cookies is not going well
Adtech firms are worried the replacement program will pose major risks to publishers. (Insider $)
+ The new project could slash publisher ad revenue by 60%. (Press Gazette)

2 NASA is launching a gamma-ray telescope

In the hopes of studying the creation and destruction of chemical elements. (Ars Technica)
+ Inside NASA’s bid to make spacecraft as small as possible. (MIT Technology Review)

3 We need more alternative fuels
Planes, trains, and automobiles are getting leaner and greener. (Knowable Magazine)
+ Clean fuels are a hugely expensive moonshot. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Tom Hanks’ son has become a face of online white supremacy
He claims his phrase “white boy summer” has been hijacked by the far right. (NYT $)

5 Threads is weighing up selling ads
A year after launch, it still hasn’t toppled its bitter rival X. (Bloomberg $)
+ Threads’ aversion to hard news could make or break it. (WP $)
+ The platform has recently hit 175 million users and is still going. (The Verge)

6 The UK’s general election has descended into a cringe meme war
Young voters aren’t falling for it. (Wired $)

7 Inside the great air conditioning debate
There’s no rule saying you have to keep it at 72 degrees. (Vox)
+ AC units aren’t a long term defense against heat waves. (CNN)
+ Why air-conditioning is a climate antihero. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Thinking of changing your life? Try it in The Sims first
From testing out bold interior design choices, to learning new languages. (WP $)
+ How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play.  (MIT Technology Review)

9 A teenager discovered her identical twin on TikTok
The revelation sparked the unraveling of a long-held family secret. (Vice)

10 The world’s most-delayed video game has finally been released
It’s been 22 long years in the making. (The Guardian)

Quote of the day

“We have won the war on floppy disks!”

—Taro Kono, Japan’s digital minister, tells Reuters he has succeeded in his mission to rid his government of its reliance on floppy disks.

The big story

The new US border wall is an app

June 2023

Keisy Plaza, 39, left her home in Colombia seven months ago. She walked a 62-mile stretch with her two daughters and grandson to reach Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, on the border with Texas.

Plaza has been trying every day for weeks to secure an appointment with Customs and Border Protection so she can request permission for her family to enter the US.

So far, she’s had no luck: each time, she’s been met with software errors and frozen screens. When appointment slots do open up, they fill within minutes. A new app, called CBP One, is supposed to help alleviate the sorts of issues Plaza has encountered. But will it? Read the full story.

—Lorena Rios

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ If you’re traveling today, here’s how to avoid the worst of the traffic and crowds—whether that’s by car, plane, or train.
+ Similarly, if your pets aren’t enjoying the fireworks as much as you are, there’s plenty of ways to calm them down.
+ It’s the general election here in the UK, which can only mean one thing—dogs at polling stations!
+ What comes after Gen Z? Why, Gen Alpha, of course.

The Download: listening robots, and Google’s AI emissions

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.

A way to let robots learn by listening will make them more useful

Most AI-powered robots today use cameras to understand their surroundings and learn new tasks, but it’s becoming easier to train robots with sound too, helping them adapt to tasks and environments where visibility is limited. 

Though sight is important, for some of our daily tasks, sound is actually more helpful, like listening to onions sizzling on the stove to see if the pan is at the right temperature. Training robots with audio has only been done in highly controlled lab settings, however, and the techniques have lagged behind other fast robot-teaching methods.

Researchers at the Robotics and Embodied AI Lab at Stanford University set out to change that. They first built a system for collecting audio data, then used this data to train robotic arms how to execute the task on their own. The team’s new training algorithms help robots gather clues from audio signals to perform more effectively. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

The must-reads

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

1 Google’s emissions have skyrocketed in the past five years
And those pesky AI products are to blame. (The Guardian)+ Microsoft has the same problem, too. (Bloomberg $)
+ AI is an energy hog. This is what it means for climate change. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The US wants to develop an mRNA vaccine to fight bird flu
Moderna already started a vaccine trial last year targeting the main strains. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s next for bird flu vaccines. (MIT Technology Review)

3 An underground network is smuggling Nvidia chips into China
Neatly swerving US export restrictions. (WSJ $)
+ What’s next in chips. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Fiverr freelancers will dox anyone for a price
Some charge as little as $30. (404 Media)

5 OnlyFans’ paywalls are impeding abuse investigations
Forensic consultants are increasingly frustrated by its infrastructure. (Reuters)

6 US universities are offering degrees in climate change
Many of them focus on developing practical climate solutions. (Fast Company $)
+ How fish-safe hydropower technology could keep more renewables on the grid. (MIT Technology Review)

7 SpaceX has grand ambitions to launch 120 times a year
Unsurprisingly, its competitors aren’t happy about its plans for Florida. (TechCrunch) 

8 Scientists are using radio-frequency tech to find dinosaur bones
The key card technology helps them to tag and recover fossils. (IEEE Spectrum)

9 The strange allure of a pointless website
One Million Checkboxes is exactly that—one million boxes to check. (WP $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Craigslist will never die 
The classified listings site looks the same as it did almost 30 years ago. (Slate $)

Quote of the day

“When you chew enough glass, you learn to like the taste of your own blood.”

—A speaker at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto startup bootcamp shares some intense insights into enduring hardship, Wired reports.

The big story

Social media is polluting society. Moderation alone won’t fix the problem

August 2022

We all want to be able to speak our minds online—to be heard by our friends and talk (back) to our opponents. At the same time, we don’t want to be exposed to unpleasant speech.

Technology companies address this conundrum by setting standards for free speech, a practice protected under federal law, hiring in-house moderators to examine individual pieces of content and removing them if posts violate predefined rules.

The approach clearly has problems: harassment, misinformation about topics like public health, and false descriptions of legitimate elections run rampant. But even if content moderation were implemented perfectly, it would still miss a whole host of issues. We need a new strategy: treat social media companies as potential polluters of the social fabric, and directly measure and mitigate the effects their choices have on us. Read the full story.

—Nathaniel Lubin & Thomas Krendl Gilbert

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Salads don’t have to be boring—especially when there’s boiled eggs and salmon involved.
+ Whac-a-mole has a surprisingly long and checkered past.
+ Here’s how to rehydrate quickly if you’re feeling the heat.
+ Phones are crazy expensive. But you can make them last longer if you’re smart about it.