This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through August 15)
Every week, we scour the web for important, insightful, and fascinating stories in science and technology.
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Artificial Intelligence
These Startups Are Chasing the Next Big Thing in LLMsWill Douglas Heaven | MIT Technology Review ($)
"Transformers are starting to show their age. Many of the recent advances in LLMs, such as the development of so-called reasoning models and their ability to handle large amounts of input at once, are not neat extensions of that core technology but workarounds that patch over some of its fundamental flaws. A growing number of scientists and engineers are now asking what’s coming next."
SPACE
Astronomers Discover a New Kind of Cosmic Object—a Black Hole ‘Star’Ian Sample | The Guardian
"Astronomers claim to have discovered a new kind of cosmic object, a black hole 'star,' which is the size of the entire solar system and glows with a brilliant red light. ...Measurements of the exotic body found that while it resembles an immense star, it releases 100bn times more energy than any known star can produce. The energy output is far closer to that observed from black holes than stars."
Biotechnology
Why Aging May Be a Program, Not a BreakdownIngrid Wickelgren | Quanta Magazine
"Far from a random but linear process of wear and tear, [cell biologist Junyue Cao] argues, aging is a stepwise, programmed, orderly affair. ...Using technology that offers a systemwide view of the aging process in mice, Cao has outlined discrete stages of aging, akin to those of embryonic development, that are defined by changes in molecular signals and specific cell populations. In humans, the process likely begins before age 30."
TECH
Why Wall Street and Nvidia Are Building an Exotic Money Pipeline for the AI BoomJack Pitcher, Anissa Gardizy, and Peter Rudegeair | The Wall Street Journal ($)
"CEO Jensen Huang is running into a problem: Many of his customers can’t afford to buy his company’s coveted AI-powering chips. That explains why Huang teamed up with an array of Wall Street firms on a $500 billion plan that will theoretically standardize chip financing, creating asset-backed pools of capital for AI companies—while leaving Nvidia partly on the hook if things go wrong."
Future
Big Tech Wants to Harvest Your ThoughtsJames Crawford | Wired ($)
"'[A brain-computer interface is] incredible for patients that are paralyzed. But imagine you put this on a person for other reasons. There is great responsibility,' [said Rafael Yuste]. 'Look what we have in our hands. We just built you a machine that can decode your language. And in 10 years, we’re going to give you a machine that can interfere with your thoughts the way we do it in mice today.'"
ROBOTICS
Self-Driving Trucks Are Officially Testing on California HighwaysKirsten Korosec | TechCrunch
"Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, two companies developing self-driving trucks, have received permits from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test their autonomous vehicle technology on public roads. And Kodiak has already started. Kodiak said it is starting with a handful of test trucks in California, primarily around its Mountain View office."
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Artificial Intelligence
The AI Takeover of Mathematics Has BegunRobert Hart | The Verge
"For all the fears and hopes, nobody knows where this is going. AI is moving too fast, and the mathematics it is producing is still too fresh to judge what its impact may be. Several researchers worried that the field could be reshaped for the worse by claims about what AI could become before anyone has had time to understand what it actually means."
Biotechnology
The World’s Largest ‘Biological Datacenter’ Could Help Make Animal Testing ObsoleteAdele Peters | Fast Company ($)
"For decades, the industry has relied on animal testing. But in a laboratory south of San Francisco, a startup called Vivodyne is scaling up a different approach. Inside wardrobe-size mini labs, robots grow human tissue and run thousands of AI-designed experiments that could better predict how well a new drug will work—and whether it will be safe."
Biotechnology
Seedless Blackberries and Cherries That Grow on Bushes Vie to Be the Future of FoodMike Grunwald | Wired ($)
"[Pairwise] is also working on peaches without pits, row crops resistant to a variety of diseases, fruit and nut trees that produce their first harvest within a year or two rather than three to eight, and a slew of other novel products, often in partnership with some of the world’s largest agribusinesses."
Robotics
Waymo Is Growing Faster Than Ever. So Are Its Glitches.Emmy Martin | The New York Times ($)
"What Ms. Peterson experienced is what the driverless car industry calls an 'edge case,' which are the unscripted situations that no one trained the robo-taxis to handle. The problem is that edge cases appear to be piling up as Waymo, the leading autonomous car service, rapidly expands. Owned by Google’s parent Alphabet, Waymo has more than quintupled the number of autonomous cars it has on the road to nearly 4,000 today, up from about 700 early last year."
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