COMPUTING
IBM Boosts the Amount of Computation You Can Get Done on Quantum Hardware
John Timmer | Ars Technica
“There’s a general consensus that we won’t be able to consistently perform sophisticated quantum calculations without the development of error-corrected quantum computing, which is unlikely to arrive until the end of the decade. It’s still an open question, however, whether we could perform limited but useful calculations at an earlier point. IBM is one of the companies that’s betting the answer is yes, and on Wednesday, it announced a series of developments aimed at making that possible.”
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
OpenAI Shifts Strategy as Rate of ‘GPT’ AI Improvements Slows
Stephanie Palazzolo, Erin Woo, and Emir Efrati | The Information
“”The Orion situation could test a core assumption of the AI field, known as scaling laws: that LLMs would continue to improve at the same pace as long as they had more data to learn from and additional computing power to facilitate that training process. In response to the recent challenge to training-based scaling laws posed by slowing GPT improvements, the industry appears to be shifting its effort to improving models after their initial training, potentially yielding a different type of scaling law.”
BIOTECH
The First CRISPR Treatment Is Making Its Way to Patients
Emily Mullen | Wired
“Vertex, the pharmaceutical company that markets Casgevy, announced in a November 5 earnings call that the first person to receive Casgevy outside of a clinical trial was dosed in the third quarter of this year. …When Wired followed up with Vertex via email, spokesperson Eleanor Celeste declined to provide the exact number of patients that have received Casgevy. However, the company says 40 patients have undergone cell collections in anticipation of receiving the treatment, up from 20 patients last quarter.”
AUTOMATION
AI Is Now Designing Chips for AI
Kristen Houser | Big Think
“It’s 2028, and your tech startup has an idea that could revolutionize the industry—but you need a custom designed microchip to bring the product to market. Five years ago, designing that chip would’ve cost more than your whole company is worth, but your team is now able to do it at a fraction of price and in a fraction of the time—all thanks to AI, fittingly being run on chips like these.”
ROBOTICS
Now Anyone in LA Can Hail a Waymo Robotaxi
Kirsten Korosec | TechCrunch
“Waymo has opened its robotaxi service to everyone in Los Angeles, sunsetting a waitlist that had grown to 300,000 people. The Alphabet-backed company said starting Tuesday anyone can download the Waymo One app to hail a ride in its service area, which is now about 80 square miles in Los Angeles County.”
ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE
The First Entirely AI-Generated Video Game Is Insanely Weird and Fun
Will Knight | Wired
“Minecraft remains remarkably popular a decade or so after it was first released, thanks to a unique mix of quirky gameplay and open world building possibilities. A knock-off called Oasis, released last month, captures much of the original game’s flavor with a remarkable and weird twist. The entire game is generated not by a game engine and hand-coded rules, but by an AI model that dreams up each frame.”
ENERGY
Nuclear Power Was Once Shunned at Climate Talks. Now, It’s a Rising Star.
Brad Plumer | The New York Times
“At last year’s climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, 22 countries pledged, for the first time, to triple the world’s use of nuclear power by midcentury to help curb global warming. At this year’s summit in Azerbaijan, six more countries signed the pledge. ‘It’s a whole different dynamic today,’ said Dr. Bilbao y Leon, who now leads the World Nuclear Association, an industry trade group. ‘A lot more people are open to talking about nuclear power as a solution.'”
HEALTH
The Next Omics? Tracking a Lifetime of Exposures to Better Understand Disease
| Knowable Magazine
“Of the millions of substances people encounter daily, health researchers have focused on only a few hundred. Those in the emerging field of exposomics want to change that. …In homes, on buildings, from satellites and even in apps on the phone in your pocket, tools to monitor the environment are on the rise. At the intersection of public health and toxicology, these tools are fueling a new movement in exposure science. It’s called the exposome and it represents the sum of all environmental exposures over a lifetime.”
SPACE
Buckle Up: SpaceX Aims for Rapid-Fire Starship Launches in 2025
Passant Rabie | Gizmodo
“SpaceX has big plans for its Starship rocket. After a groundbreaking test flight, in which the landing tower caught the booster, the company’s founder and CEO Elon Musk wants to see the megarocket fly up to 25 times next year, working its way up to a launch rate of 100 flights per year, and eventually a Starship launching on a daily basis.”
TECH
Are AI Clones the Future of Dating? I Tried Them for Myself.
Eli Tan | The New York Times
“As chatbots like ChatGPT improve, their use in our personal and even romantic lives is becoming more common. So much so, some executives in the dating app industry have begun pitching a future in which people can create AI clones of themselves that date other clones and relay the results back to their human counterparts.”
GENETICS
Genetic Discrimination Is Coming for Us All
Kristen V. Brown | The Atlantic
“For decades, researchers have feared that people might be targeted over their DNA, but they weren’t sure how often it was happening. Now at least a handful of Americans are experiencing what they argue is a form of discrimination. And as more people get their genomes sequenced—and researchers learn to glean even more information from the results—a growing number of people may find themselves similarly targeted.”
Image Credit: Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash
