COMPUTING
Giant Chips Give Supercomputers a Run for Their Money
Gina Genkina | IEEE Spectrum
“[Cerebras recently] demonstrated that its second generation wafer-scale engine, WSE-2, was significantly faster than the world’s fastest supercomputer, Frontier, in molecular dynamics calculations… [And] in collaboration with machine learning model optimization company Neural Magic, Cerebras demonstrated that a sparse large language model could perform inference at one-third of the energy cost of a full model without losing any accuracy.”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Apple Proved That AI Is a Feature, Not a Product
Will Knight | Wired
“Rather than a stand-alone device or experience, Apple has focused on how generative AI can improve apps and OS features in small yet meaningful ways. Early adopters have certainly flocked to generative AI programs like ChatGPT for help redrafting emails, summarizing documents, and generating images, but this has typically meant opening another browser window or app, cutting and pasting, and trying to make sense of a chatbot’s sometimes fevered ramblings. To be truly useful, generative AI will need to seep into technology we already use in ways we can better understand and trust.”
BIOTECH
Lung-Targeted CRISPR Therapy Offers Hope for Cystic Fibrosis
Christa Lesté-Lasserre | New Scientist
“CRISPR gene-editing therapy has the potential to offer an effective, long-lasting treatment for cystic fibrosis after overcoming a major challenge that held back previous genetic therapies. The approach has succeeded in editing DNA in hard-to-reach lung stem cells in mice, with modifications that endured for at least 22 months—essentially the animals’ entire lives, says Daniel Siegwart at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.”
POLITICS
An AI Bot Is (Sort of) Running for Mayor in Wyoming
Vittoria Elliot | Wired
“Victor Miller is running for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming, with an unusual campaign promise: If elected, he will not be calling the shots—an AI bot will. VIC, the Virtual Integrated Citizen, is a ChatGPT-based chatbot that Miller created. And Miller says the bot has better ideas—and a better grasp of the law—than many people currently serving in government. ‘I realized that this entity is way smarter than me, and more importantly, way better than some of the outward-facing public servants I see,’ he says.”
FUTURE OF FOOD
Biotech Companies Are Trying to Make Milk Without Cows
Antonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review
“The FDA says that commercial milk is safe [from avian influenza] because it is pasteurized, killing the germs. Even so, it’s enough to make a person ponder a life beyond milk—say, taking your coffee black or maybe drinking oat milk. But for those of us who can’t do without the real thing, it turns out some genetic engineers are working on ways to keep the milk and get rid of the cows instead.”
VIRTUAL REALITY
Can Apple Rescue the Vision Pro?
Kevin Roose | The New York Times
“To live up to its potential, the Vision Pro needs a little more love and, well, a little more vision. Apple needs better answers to basic questions like: What is this for? How will it improve my life, or make me more productive than other things I could buy for $3,500? What can I do on it that I can’t do on my laptop, or a big TV? Otherwise, the Vision Pro may be destined for obsolescence. And I and my fellow Vision Bros may emerge as the Google Glassholes of 2024—a brave but ultimately foolish tribe of nerds who took a gamble on a futuristic new technology and lost.”
TECH
OpenAI’s Revenue Is Skyrocketing
Laura Bratton | Quartz
“OpenAI has more than tripled its annualized revenue over the past year, according to The Information. Annualized revenue is an estimate for a company’s revenue for the year using partial data—in other words, you multiply the past month’s revenue by 12. OpenAI’s annualized revenue was around $1 billion last summer, $1.6 billion in late 2023, and has now reached $3.4 billion, the outlet said.”
ROBOTICS
Humanoid Chauffeur Put in the Driving Seat for Robotaxi Future
Paul Ridden | New Atlas
“Musashi is a ‘musculoskeletal humanoid’ developed by [a Japanese] research group in 2019 as a testbed for learning control systems. The form factor not only has similar proportions to a human counterpart but also features a ‘joint and muscle structure’ inspired by the human body. The robot has now found use in an autonomous driving project where it’s been trained by members of the Jouhou System Kougaku Lab to master driving in a similar way to humans. With varying degrees of success, as you can see in the video below.”
GADGETS
The AI Upgrade Cycle Is Here
Jay Peters | The Verge
“AI has quickly become the latest entry in the tech industry’s never ending desire to drive an upgrade cycle. A few years ago, every smartphone maker raced to 5G; more than a decade ago, the TV industry pushed for 3D TVs. Right now, every tech company clearly sees an opportunity with AI and is adding AI features confined to their latest and greatest devices as a result. But like the race to 5G, the mad rush toward AI is happening quickly and before the tech has been proven useful and its problems ironed out.”
