ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
OpenAI’s Dall-E 3 Is an Art Generator Powered by ChatGPT
Will Knight | Wired
“Dall-E 3 will…let users refine a creation through ChatGPT, as if they were asking a real artist to make changes. ‘You won’t really have to worry about fussing around with really long prompts,’ says Aditya Ramesh, lead researcher and head of the Dall-E team. ‘Instead, you can just interact with ChatGPT as if you were talking to a coworker.'”
AUTOMATION
Enough Talk, ChatGPT—My New Chatbot Friend Can Get Things Done
Will Knight | Wired
“After my own test drive of Auto-GPT, I could understand Crivello’s conviction about the future. If the errors can be ironed out—a fairly big if—I can imagine a future where AI agents help with a lot of chores that currently involve typing into a web browser or moving and clicking a mouse. As with ChatGPT, when Auto-GPT works, it can feel like magic.”
HEALTH
How Inverse Vaccines Might Tackle Diseases Like Multiple Sclerosis
Cassandra Willyard | MIT Technology Review
“If researchers can get these vaccines to work, the payoff could be enormous. Many people with autoimmune issues take immunosuppressive drugs that dampen the entire immune system, making them more vulnerable to infections and cancer. But a vaccine that tamps down the immune response to a specific antigen wouldn’t have that effect. ‘It’s a field where a lot of people want to make the breakthrough and become the next chapter in the glorious history of vaccination,’ Steinman says.”
ENERGY
Looking to Space in the Race to Decarbonize
Nell Gallogly | The New York Times
“A 1980 review by NASA concluded that the first gigawatt of space-based solar power (enough energy to power 100 million LED bulbs) would cost more than $20 billion ($100 billion today). By 1997, NASA estimated that that number had dropped to about $7 billion ($15 billion today); now, it is estimated to be closer to $5 billion, according to a study conducted for the European Space Agency in 2022.”
COMPUTING
The Signal Protocol Used by 1+ Billion People Is Getting a Post-Quantum Makeover
Dan Goodin | Ars Technica
“[Though estimates of when it will happen vary], there is little disagreement…there will come a day when many of the most widely used forms of encryption will die at the hands of quantum computing. To head off that doomsday eventuality, engineers and mathematicians have been developing a new class of PQC, short for post-quantum cryptography. The PQC added to the Signal Protocol on Monday is called PQXDH.”
TRANSPORTATION
It’s Still Tesla’s World
Andrew Moseman | The Atlantic
“Tesla, which only sells EVs, is already profitable, even as it has slashed vehicle prices multiple times this year. In the decade-plus since it launched the Model S, Tesla has cemented that advantage with a business model that Detroit still struggles to match.”
DIGITAL MEDIA
Explore the Ancient Aztec Capital in This Lifelike 3D Rendering
Anna Lagos | Wired
“Digital artist Thomas Kole, originally from Amersfoort, Netherlands, has re-created the capital of the Aztec, or Mexica, empire with so much detail that it looks like a living metropolis. ‘What did the ancient, enormous city built atop a lake look like?’ wondered Kole, as he explored Mexico City on Google Maps. …For a year and a half, he turned to historical and archaeological sources as he sought to bring Tenochtitlán back to life while remaining as faithful as possible to what we know about the city.”
TECH
Google’s Bard Just Got More Powerful. It’s Still Erratic.
Kevin Roose | The New York Times
“This week, Bard—Google’s competitor to ChatGPT—got an upgrade. One interesting new feature, called Bard Extensions, allows the artificial intelligence chatbot to connect to a user’s Gmail, Google Docs and Google Drive accounts. …I put the upgraded Bard through its paces on Tuesday, hoping to discover a powerful AI assistant with new and improved abilities. What I found was a bit of a mess.”
SCIENCE
The Animals Are Talking. What Does It Mean?
Sonia Shah | The New York Times Magazine
“For centuries, the linguistic utterances of Homo sapiens have been positioned as unique in nature, justifying our dominion over other species and shrouding the evolution of language in mystery. Now, experts in linguistics, biology and cognitive science suspect that components of language might be shared across species, illuminating the inner lives of animals in ways that could help stitch language into their evolutionary history—and our own.”
TECH
How to Avoid ‘Death by LLM’
Tim Cooper | BigThink
“All organizations pivoting to generative AI need to ask whether their model hits key benchmarks. If the cost of adopting AI is prohibitive, companies can make incremental changes. Experimentation with enterprise AI is crucial; not all features result in long-term use and retention.“
Image Credit: Fraser Tull / Unsplash
