Hello and welcome to the first-ever edition of The Spark! Thanks so much for joining me for this weekly climate newsletter, where we’ll explore tech that could help combat the climate crisis. I’m so glad you’re here! This week, we’re kicking things off with a special travel edition of the newsletter. So buckle up, because we’re headed to the mountains just outside Reno, Nevada to...

Despite what you may have heard, the teens are not stealing their family’s fine dinnerware, tossing it in a blender, and snorting the resulting dust for the “porcelain challenge.” That’s just what Sebastian Durfee, a 23-year-old actor and TikTok creator, hoped you might believe when he spread the word on social media of the latest dangerous teen challenge.  Never mind that it was...

DeepMind has used its board-game playing AI AlphaZero to discover a faster way to solve a fundamental math problem in computer science, beating a record that has stood for more than 50 years. The problem, matrix multiplication, is a crucial type of calculation at the heart of many different applications, from displaying images on a screen to simulating complex physics. It is also fundamental...

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. How the covid pop-up window is wreaking havoc on daily life in China In 2020, China rolled out a contact tracing program that assigns a QR code to everyone in the country. It…

Welcome back! Hope you are not stuck in highway traffic if you are enjoying the National Day holiday in China.  Though maybe it’s still better than staying at home—after all, travel feels like such a luxury in China today. While the rest of the world drops its remaining covid-related travel restrictions, even a short trip in China is plagued by flight cancellations, mandatory...

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 White House just unveiled a new AI Bill of Rights The news: US President Biden has today unveiled a new AI Bill of Rights, which outlines five protections Americans should have in…

The White House wants Americans to know: The age of AI accountability is coming.  US President Biden has today unveiled a new AI Bill of Rights, which outlines five protections Americans should have in the AI age.  While Biden has in the past called for stronger protections for privacy and for tech companies to stop collecting data, the US — home to some of the world’s biggest...

To receive The Algorithm in your inbox every Monday, sign up here. Welcome to the Algorithm!  Is anyone else feeling dizzy? Just when the AI community was wrapping its head around the astounding progress of text-to-image systems, we’re already moving on to the next frontier: text-to-video.  Late last week, Meta unveiled Make-A-Video, an AI that generates five-second videos from...

Until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines were a key part of Europe’s energy infrastructure. In the fourth quarter of 2021, the Nord Stream lines supplied 18% of all Europe’s gas imports. Half of Russia’s gas imports to Europe came through Nord Stream 1—a record high. (Nord Stream 2, which has been completed, has not yet come online after Germany withheld...

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 EU wants to put companies on the hook for harmful AI What’s happening: The EU is creating new rules to make it easier to sue AI companies for harm. A bill unveiled…

The EU is creating new rules to make it easier to sue AI companies for harm. A bill unveiled this week, which is likely to become law in a couple of years, is part of Europe’s push to prevent AI developers from releasing dangerous systems. And while tech companies complain it could have a chilling effect on innovation, consumer activists say it doesn’t go far enough.  Powerful AI...

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. Meta’s new AI can turn text prompts into videos What’s happened: Meta has unveiled an AI system that generates short videos based on text prompts. Make-A-Video lets you type in a string of…

Hello, hallo, and bonjour! This week’s Checkup is coming to you from Switzerland. It’s still dark when I arrive at the Grand Bellevue hotel at 7 a.m., and it’s tipping with rain. But I’ve braved the elements to make it to an early “longevity workout.” It’s the first event scheduled at an aging conference I’m attending this week in Gstaad, an upmarket, picture-postcard...

As the Chinese government works to reach ambitious carbon goals—an emissions peak by 2030 and neutrality by 2060—the country has become a global leader in the adoption of electric vehicles. But that’s not the only greener car alternative it’s pursuing.  Earlier this month, on September 16, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said it would “accelerate the...

Meta has today unveiled an AI system that generates short videos based on text prompts.  Make-A-Video lets you type in a string of words, like “A dog wearing a superhero outfit with a red cape flying through the sky,” and then generates a five-second clip that, while pretty accurate, has the aesthetics of a trippy old home video.  Although the effect is rather crude, the system...

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. Amazon has a new plan for its home robot Astro: to guard your life The news: Amazon announced yesterday that its home robot, Astro, will be getting a slew of major updates aimed…

Digital twins capture the physical look and expressions of real humans. Increasingly these replicas are showing up in the entertainment industry and beyond. It gives rise to some interesting opportunities as well as thorny questions.  We speak to: Greg Cross, CEO and co-founder of Soul Machines Sounds from: 2PAC HOLOGRAM | LIVE Coachella Recording | High…

Amazon announced Wednesday that its home robot, Astro, will be getting a slew of major updates aimed at further embedding it within homes—and in our everyday lives. Broadly speaking, the new features offer more home monitoring. The capabilities include some  standard fare: Astro will be able to, for example, watch pets and send a video feed of their activities to users. But Astro will also...

In a recent trial, a bionic pancreas that automatically delivers insulin proved more effective than pumps or injections at lowering blood glucose levels in people with type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a serious condition that causes a person’s level of glucose, or sugar, to become too high because the pancreas can’t produce enough insulin, a hormone that keeps blood glucose under...

Business leaders are heading for composable infrastructures, putting aside large and bulky traditional systems. Demand for increased flexibility and scale is driven by rapidly advancing technology and rising customer expectations. Gartner likens composable infrastructures to a structure made of simple building blocks. This modular structure permits fast changes and responds quickly to...

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. How the false rumor of a Chinese coup went viral If you’re on Twitter and follow news about China, you likely have heard a pretty wild rumor recently: that President Xi Jinping was…

Starr Davis was smitten when she met a handsome stranger with flawless skin and a wide smile during a brief trip to Houston in March 2020. He was charming and persistent; she gave him her phone number and they started talking. Their whirlwind romance took a major turn when she told him that she was…

Hi, and welcome back to China Report! If you are on Twitter and follow news about China, you likely have heard a pretty wild rumor recently: that President Xi Jinping was under house arrest and that there was about to be a major power grab in the country. First of all, let me be very clear: this report is false and should not be taken seriously. No credible sources on China have bought it....

In any enterprise, digital transformation is not only a technology transformation but enables business transformation itself, driving new products, solutions and innovations. Having an efficient data strategy is critical to any successful digital transformation but requires careful investment into both people and systems. “To achieve that goal, availability of good data, of the right...

Around the start of the year, Carnegie Mellon researchers used a robotic system to run dozens of experiments designed to generate electrolytes that could enable lithium-ion batteries to charge faster, addressing one of the major obstacles to the widespread adoption of electric vehicles The system of automated pumps, valves, and instruments, known as Clio, mixed various solvents, salts, and...

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. Watch the moment NASA’s DART spacecraft crashed into an asteroid What’s happened: NASA is celebrating the success of humanity’s first test of a planetary defense system: crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid in…

NASA is celebrating the success of humanity’s first test of a planetary defense system: crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid in order to change its orbit. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft, or DART, was intentionally smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos at 7:14 p.m. US Eastern time last night, spelling the end to a successful 10-month mission. A small camera mounted on...

To receive The Algorithm in your inbox every Monday, sign up here. Welcome to the Algorithm!  Some technologists hope that one day we will develop a superintelligent AI system that people will be able to have conversations with. Ask it a question, and it will offer an answer that sounds like something composed by a human…

This episode, we’re doing something a little bit different. Join us as we take a trip to a Californian vineyard to learn about how it’s deploying sensors and other forms of AI. We meet:  Dirk Heuvel, vice president of vineyard operations, McManis Family Vineyards Credits: This episode was produced by Jennifer Strong with help from Anthony Green and Emma Cillekens. It was...

After silicon chipmaker Broadcom acquired CA Technologies in 2018 and Symantec Enterprise in 2019, it decided to invest in hybrid cloud environments, which integrate and orchestrate public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises services. The CA and Symantec acquisitions onboarded vastly different tech stacks and operation workflows, with a variety of hosting scenarios: on-premises, colocation, and...

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. This startup’s AI is smart enough to drive different types of vehicles The news: Wayve, a driverless-car startup based in London, has made a machine-learning model that can drive two different types of…

In 2007, YouTube made a decision that created a career out of what was previously just a hobby: the company announced it would give over half of the revenue it earned running ads on videos to creators themselves. Fifteen years later, that creator cut—55%—supports the nearly 400,000 people in the US working 40-hour weeks as YouTubers.  Now, YouTube is trying to pull off a similar...

Wayve, a driverless-car startup based in London, has made a machine-learning model that can drive two different types of vehicle: a passenger car and a delivery van. It is the first time the same AI driver has learned to drive multiple vehicles. The news comes less than a year after Wayve showed that it could take AI trained on the streets of London and use it to drive cars in four other cities...

When Vladimir Putin declared the partial call-up of military reservists on September 21, in a desperate effort to try to turn his long and brutal war in Ukraine in Russia’s favor, he kicked off another, parallel battle: one to convince the Russian people of the merits and risks of conscription. And this one is being fought on the encrypted messaging service Telegram, with pro-Putin actors...

To the naked eye, organoids aren’t much to look at. They’re basically tiny blobs. Closer inspection reveals their true complexity: these lab-grown balls of cells can resemble miniature organs. So far, organoids have mostly been used for research. But teams have started transplanting them into animals with the hope of curing disease. Humans are next—albeit some way off. Let’s say in 10...

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 YouTube baker fighting back against deadly “craft hacks” Ann Reardon is probably the last person whose content you’d expect to be banned from YouTube. A former Australian youth worker and a mother…

Ann Reardon is probably the last person whose content you’d expect to be banned from YouTube. A former Australian youth worker and a mother of  three, she has her own cookbook, has baked for the BBC, and once made a coin-size apple pie for two baby chicks. Since 2011 she’s been using her YouTube channel…

The trick to making a good AI-powered chatbot might be to have humans tell it how to behave—and force the model to back up its claims using the internet, according to a new paper by Alphabet-owned AI lab DeepMind.  In a new non-peer-reviewed paper out today, the team unveils Sparrow, an AI chatbot that is trained on DeepMind’s large language model Chinchilla.  Sparrow is...

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 world is moving closer to a new cold war fought with authoritarian tech Despite President Biden’s assurances at Wednesday’s United Nations meeting that the US is not seeking a new cold war,…