Blog

Google DeepMind’s AI Pop Star Clone Will Freak You Out
Angela Watercutter | Wired
“Two new instruments utilizing DeepMind’s music technology algorithm Lyria let anybody make YouTube shorts utilizing the AI-generated vocals of Demi Lovato, T-Ache, Troye Sivan and others. …All anybody has to do is sort in a subject and choose an artist off a carousel, and the device writes the lyrics, produces the backing monitor, and sings the tune within the fashion of the musician chosen. It’s wild.”

The First CRISPR Drugs Simply Acquired Authorized
Emily Mullin | Wired
“The primary medical remedy that makes use of CRISPR gene enhancing was approved Thursday by the UK. The one-time remedy, which might be offered beneath the model title Casgevy, is for sufferers with sickle cell illness and a associated blood dysfunction known as beta thalassemia, each of that are inherited. The UK approval marks a historic second for CRISPR, the molecular equal of scissors that gained its inventors a Nobel Prize in 2020.”

Google DeepMind Desires to Outline What Counts as Synthetic Basic Intelligence
Will Douglas Heaven | MIT Know-how Assessment
“AGI, or synthetic basic intelligence, is likely one of the hottest matters in tech immediately. It’s additionally one of the vital controversial. A giant a part of the issue is that few individuals agree on what the time period even means. Now a group of Google DeepMind researchers has put out a paper that cuts by means of the cross discuss with not only one new definition for AGI however a entire taxonomy of them.”

Why Tech Giants Are Hedging Their Bets on OpenAI
Michelle Cheng | Quartz
“Microsoft owns a 49% stake in OpenAI, having invested billions of {dollars} within the maker of ChatGPT. However the tech titan can also be an investor in Inflection AI, which has a chatbot known as Pi and is seen as a rival to OpenAI. …Final week, Reuters reported that Google plans to take a position a whole lot of hundreds of thousands in Character.AI, which builds customized bots. In late October, Google mentioned it had agreed to sink as much as $2 billion into Anthropic, a key rival to OpenAI. What’s occurring right here?”

Begin-Ups With Laser Beams: The Firms Making an attempt to Ignite Fusion Power
Kenneth Chang | The New York Instances
“Take a smidgen of hydrogen, then blast it with lasers to set off a small thermonuclear explosion. Do it proper, and possibly you may remedy the world’s vitality wants. A small group of start-ups has launched into this quest, pursuing their very own variations on this theme—totally different lasers, totally different strategies to set off the fusion reactions, totally different parts to fuse collectively. ‘There was speedy development,’ mentioned Andrew Holland, chief government of the Fusion Trade Affiliation, a commerce group lobbying for insurance policies to hurry the event of fusion.”

Younger Kids Trounce Giant Language Fashions in a Easy Downside-Fixing Activity
Ross Pomeroy | Massive Suppose
“Regardless of their real potential to alter how society works and features, massive language fashions get trounced by younger kids in primary problem-solving duties testing their potential to innovate, in accordance with new analysis. The examine reveals a key weak spot of huge language fashions: They don’t innovate. If massive language fashions can sometime develop into innovation engines, their programmers ought to attempt to emulate how kids study, the authors contend.”

CULTURE

Sphere and Loathing in Las Vegas
Charlie Warzel | The Atlantic
“I needed 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 a lot to dislike in regards to the factor—the impersonal flashiness of all of it, its $30 tequila sodas, the seemingly staggering electrical energy payments. However it’s also my solemn obligation to report back to you that the Sphere slaps, a lot in the identical method that, say, the Tremendous Bowl slaps. It’s gaudy, overly commercialized, and funky as hell: a brand-new, non-pharmaceutical sensory expertise.”

DIGITAL MEDIA

Meta Brings Us a Step Nearer to AI-Generated Motion pictures
Kyle Wiggers | TechCruch
“Like ‘Avengers’ director Joe Russo, I’m turning into more and more satisfied that absolutely AI-generated motion pictures and TV exhibits might be potential inside our lifetimes. …Now, video technology tech isn’t new. Meta’s experimented with it earlier than, as has Google. …However Emu Video’s 512×512, 16-frames-per-second clips are simply among the many greatest I’ve seen by way of their constancy—to the purpose the place my untrained eye has a tricky time distinguishing them from the true factor.”

Joby, Volocopter Fly Electrical Air Taxis Over New York Metropolis
Aria Alamalhodaei | TechCrunch
“Joby Aviation and Volocopter gave the general public a vivid glimpse of what the way forward for aviation would possibly seem like [last] weekend, with each corporations performing transient demonstration flights of their electrical plane in New York Metropolis. The demonstration flights had been carried out throughout a press convention on Sunday, throughout which New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams introduced that the town would electrify two of the three heliports positioned in Manhattan—Downtown Manhattan Heliport and East thirty fourth Avenue.”

Google’s ChatGPT Competitor Will Should Wait
Maxwell Zeff | Gizmodo
“Google is having a tough time catching up with OpenAI. Google’s competitor to ChatGPT is not going to be prepared till early 2024, after beforehand telling some cloud clients it could get to make use of Gemini AI in November of this yr, sources informed The Data Thursday. …Google’s Gemini was reportedly set to debut in 2023 with picture and voice recognition capabilities. The chatbot would have been aggressive with OpenAI’s GPT-4, and Anthropic’s Claude 2.”