This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 8)

DeepMind Claims Its AI Performs Better Than International Mathematical Olympiad Gold Medalists Kyle Wiggers | TechCrunch

"AlphaGeometry2 perhaps demonstrates that the two approaches—symbol manipulation and neural networks—combined are a promising path forward in the search for generalizable AI. Indeed, according to the DeepMind paper, o1, which also has a neural network architecture, couldn’t solve any of the IMO problems that AlphaGeometry2 was able to answer."

Three Years After Experimental Vaccine, These Patients Are Still Cancer-Free Ed Cara | Gizmodo

"Scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and elsewhere developed the vaccine, which is designed to prevent advanced cases of kidney cancer from returning. Since the trial patients received the vaccine roughly three years ago, they have stayed cancer-free. The early results suggest that these vaccines may someday be able to tackle a wider variety of cancers than expected, the researchers say."

Figure Drops OpenAI in Favor of In-House Models Brian Heater | TechCrunch

"The Bay Area-based [general-purpose humanoid robotics company] has instead opted to focus on in-house AI owing to a 'major breakthrough.' In conversation with TechCrunch afterward, founder and CEO Brett Adcock was tightlipped in terms of specifics, but he promised to deliver 'something no one has ever seen on a humanoid' in the next 30 days."

DeepSeek iOS App Sends Data Unencrypted to ByteDance-Controlled Servers Dan Goodin | Ars Technica

"On Thursday, mobile security company NowSecure reported that the app sends sensitive data over unencrypted channels, making the data readable to anyone who can monitor the traffic. More sophisticated attackers could also tamper with the data while it's in transit."

OpenAI Says Its Models Are More Persuasive Than 82 Percent of Reddit Users Kyle Orland | Ars Technica

"OpenAI has previously found that 2022's ChatGPT-3.5 was significantly less persuasive than random humans, ranking in just the 38th percentile on this measure. But that performance jumped to the 77th percentile with September's release of the o1-mini reasoning model and up to percentiles in the high 80s for the full-fledged o1 model."

DeepSeek Doesn't Slow Tech’s AI Capex Splurge Martin Peers | The Information

"The three big cloud firms and Meta are projecting around $300 billion in capex, mostly related to AI, this year. To put that into context, the OpenAI-SoftBank Stargate AI data center venture plans to spend $100 billion in the near term and $500 billion over four years. We don’t yet know whether Stargate can raise the money. But there are no such questions about whether Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta can afford their spending plans."

Humanlike 'Teeth' Have Been Grown in Mini Pigs Jessica Hamzelou | MIT Technology Review

"Lose an adult tooth, and you’re left with limited options that typically involve titanium implants or plastic dentures. But scientists are working on an alternative: lab-grown human teeth that could one day replace damaged ones."

New Device Can Scan Your Face in 3D From Hundreds of Meters Away Karmela Padavic-Callaghan | New Scientist

"From 325 meters away, your eyes can probably distinguish a person’s head from their body—and not much else. But a new laser-based device can create a three-dimensional model of their face. Aongus McCarthy at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland and his colleagues built a device that can create detailed three-dimensional images, including ridges and indentations as small as 1 millimeter, from hundreds of meters away."

OpenAI’s New Agent Can Compile Detailed Reports on Practically Any Topic Rhiannon Williams | MIT Technology Review