Each Saturday we put up a number of articles from the week. With 2023 nearing its finish, we dug by means of all these posts once more to floor 25 tales price revisiting. Right here you’ll discover a deep dive on OpenAI, a have a look at the approaching golden age in drugs, a stunning clarification of Nvidia’s AI success, a surprising snapshot of SpaceX’s orbital dominance, an ode to bodily encyclopedias, and a few back-of-the-napkin math on Dyson spheres.

Glad studying. See you in 2023.

Does Sam Altman Know What He’s Creating?
Ross Andersen | The Atlantic
“i‘We may have gone off and simply constructed this in our constructing right here for 5 extra years,’ [Altman] mentioned, ‘and we might have had one thing jaw-dropping.’ However the public wouldn’t have been in a position to put together for the shock waves that adopted, an final result that he finds ‘deeply disagreeable to think about.’ Altman believes that folks want time to reckon with the concept we could quickly share Earth with a strong new intelligence, earlier than it remakes all the things from work to human relationships. ChatGPT was a method of serving discover.”

All of the sudden, It Seems Like We’re in a Golden Age for Drugs
David Wallace-Wells | The New York Instances
“Hype springs everlasting in drugs, however these days the horizon of recent chance appears nearly blindingly shiny. …’It’s beautiful,’ says the immunologist Barney Graham, the previous deputy director of the Vaccine Analysis Middle and a central determine within the improvement of mRNA vaccines, who has these days been writing a couple of ‘new period for vaccinology.’ ‘You can not think about what you’re going to see over the following 30 years. The tempo of development is in an exponential part proper now.’i”

Humanoid Robots Are Coming of Age
Will Knight | Wired
“Eight years in the past, the Pentagon’s Protection Superior Analysis Initiatives Company organized a painful-to-watch contest that concerned robots slowly struggling (and sometimes failing) to carry out a sequence of human duties, together with opening doorways, working energy instruments, and driving golf carts. …Right now the descendants of these hapless robots are much more succesful and sleek. A number of startups are growing humanoids that they declare may, in only a few years, discover employment in warehouses and factories.”

The Secret to Nvidia’s AI Success
Samuel Ok. Moore | IEEE Spectrum
“[Nvidia] has managed to extend the efficiency of its chips on AI duties a thousandfold over the previous 10 years, it’s raking in cash, and it’s reportedly very exhausting to get your fingers on its latest AI-accelerating GPU, the H100. How did Nvidia get right here? …Moore’s Legislation was a surprisingly small a part of Nvidia’s magic and new quantity codecs a really massive half. Put all of it collectively and also you get what Dally referred to as Huang’s Legislation (for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang).”

Open Your Thoughts to Unicorn Meat
Annie Lowrey | The Atlantic
“Is it rooster? It’s rooster greater than it’s the rest. To be particular, it’s what occurs while you take a rooster’s cells, place them in a vat stuffed with a slurry of vitamins and amino acids, allow them to multiply, wash them, chill them, form them, and prepare dinner them. This type of meat is the longer term, or a minimum of a part of the longer term. Throughout the previous decade, cultivated meat has gone from science-fictional to hyper-expensive to market-ready, fueled by billions of {dollars} of start-up spending.”

The Finish of the Googleverse
Ryan Broderick | The Verge
“Google formally went on-line…in 1998. It rapidly turned so inseparable from each the best way we use the web and, finally, tradition itself, that we nearly lack the language to explain what Google’s impression over the past 25 years has really been. It’s like asking a fish to clarify what the ocean is. And but, throughout us are indicators that the period of ‘peak Google’ is ending or, probably, already over.”

Subsequent Up for CRISPR: Gene Enhancing for the Lots?
Jessica Hamzelou | MIT Know-how Assessment
“We all know the fundamentals of wholesome dwelling by now. A balanced weight loss plan, common train, and stress discount can assist us keep away from coronary heart illness—the world’s greatest killer. However what if you happen to may take a vaccine, too? And never a typical vaccine—one shot that will alter your DNA to supply lifelong safety? That imaginative and prescient is just not far off, researchers say. Advances in gene enhancing, and CRISPR expertise particularly, could quickly make it attainable.”

I Simply Purchased the Solely Bodily Encyclopedia Nonetheless in Print, and I Remorse Nothing
Benj Edwards | Ars Technica
“Each morning as I look ahead to the youngsters to prepare for college, I pull out a random quantity and browse. I’ve refreshed my information on many topics and benefit from the deliberate stability of the data expertise. I really feel assured utilizing it as an occasional private reference as the net world slides additional into AI-augmented noise. And it’s undoubtedly extra correct than an AI massive language mannequin in the intervening time.”

What Occurs When AI Has Learn Every thing?
Ross Andersen | The Atlantic
“Synthetic intelligence has lately proved itself to be a fast examine, though it’s being educated in a fashion that will disgrace essentially the most brutal headmaster. Locked into hermetic Borgesian libraries for months with no toilet breaks or sleep, AIs are instructed to not emerge till they’ve completed a self-paced velocity course in human tradition. On the syllabus: an honest fraction of all of the surviving textual content that we’ve ever produced.”

Sphere and Loathing in Las Vegas
Charlie Warzel | The Atlantic
“I needed to be cynical concerning the Sphere and all it represents—our telephones as appendages, screens as a mediated type of experiencing the world. There’s loads to dislike concerning the factor—the impersonal flashiness of all of it, its $30 tequila sodas, the possible staggering electrical energy payments. However additionally it is my solemn obligation to report back to you that the Sphere slaps, a lot in the identical method that, say, the Tremendous Bowl slaps. It’s gaudy, overly commercialized, and funky as hell: a brand-new, non-pharmaceutical sensory expertise.”

SpaceX Broke Its Report for Variety of Launches in a Yr
Stephen Clark | Ars Technica
“SpaceX is main the world not simply within the variety of launches, but additionally within the complete payload mass the corporate has launched into orbit this 12 months. Within the first half of 2023, SpaceX delivered about 447 metric tons of cargo into orbit, roughly 80 % of all the fabric launched into orbit worldwide, in accordance with knowledge from the house analytics agency BryceTech. Musk mentioned SpaceX will launch about 90 % of the world’s complete payload mass into orbit subsequent 12 months, primarily based on the corporate’s launch manifest for 2024.”

CRISPR Crops Are Right here
Paolo Pononiere | proto.life
“Had it been coined deliberately for the aim of promoting recent produce, the acronym CRISPR would have been a stroke of promoting genius. In any case, who wouldn’t need their salad to be crisper? However the true genius of this gene-editing expertise might be its means to leap straight to client cabinets, sidestepping all of the controversies which have tripped up its cousin GMO, with which it shares its biotechnological roots.”

A few of the Thorniest Questions About AI Will Be Answered in Courtroom
Ryan Tracy | The Wall Road Journal
“Congress and the White Home are speaking about regulating synthetic intelligence, however courts would possibly nicely resolve a number of the most economically vital questions concerning the booming expertise. Because the late 2022 launch of ChatGPT, the viral AI-powered chatbot, a flurry of fits has focused AI purveyors together with OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta Platforms.”

A Daring Plan to Beam Photo voltaic Power Down From House
Ramin Skibba | Wired
“Whether or not you’re overlaying deserts, ugly parking tons, canals, and even sunny lakes with photo voltaic panels, clouds will sometimes get in the best way—and every single day the solar should set. No drawback, says the European House Company: Simply put the photo voltaic arrays in house. The company lately introduced a brand new exploratory program referred to as Solaris, which goals to determine whether it is technologically and economically possible to launch photo voltaic buildings into orbit, use them to harness the solar’s energy, and transmit power to the bottom.”

AI Is Dreaming Up Medication That No One Has Ever Seen. Now We’ve Bought to See if They Work.
Will Douglas Heaven | MIT Know-how Assessment
“There are actually a whole lot of startups exploring using machine studying within the pharmaceutical business, says Nathan Benaich at Air Road Capital, a VC agency that invests in biotech and life sciences corporations: ‘Early indicators have been thrilling sufficient to draw large cash.’ Right now, on common, it takes greater than 10 years and billions of {dollars} to develop a brand new drug. The imaginative and prescient is to make use of AI to make drug discovery sooner and cheaper.”

Individuals Are Talking With ChatGPT for Hours, Bringing 2013’s Her Nearer to Actuality
Benj Edwards | Ars Technica
“Within the movie, Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with an AI character referred to as Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), and he spends a lot of the movie strolling by means of life, speaking to her by means of wi-fi earbuds paying homage to Apple AirPods, which launched in 2016. In actuality, ChatGPT isn’t as situationally conscious as Samantha was within the movie, doesn’t have a long-term reminiscence, and OpenAI has carried out sufficient conditioning on ChatGPT to maintain conversations from getting too intimate or private. However that hasn’t stopped folks from having lengthy talks with the AI assistant to go the time anyway.”

Welcome to the Oldest A part of the Metaverse
John-Clark Levin | MIT Know-how Assessment
“Right now’s headlines deal with the metaverse as a hazy dream but to be constructed, but when it’s outlined as a community of digital worlds we are able to inhabit, its oldest extant nook has been already operating for 25 years. It’s a medieval fantasy kingdom created for the net role-playing sport Ultima On-line—and it has already endured a quarter-century of market competitors, financial turmoil, and political strife. So what can this sport and its gamers inform us about creating the digital worlds of the longer term?”

Ethereum Moved to Proof of Stake. Why Can’t Bitcoin?
Amy Castor | MIT Know-how Assessment
“A single Bitcoin transaction makes use of the identical quantity of power as a single US family does over the course of almost a month. However does it need to be that method? The Bitcoin group has traditionally been fiercely resistant to vary, however stress from regulators and environmentalists fed up with Bitcoin’s large carbon footprint could pressure them to rethink that stance.”

Has the 3D Printing Revolution Lastly Arrived?
Tim Lewis | The Guardian
“i‘What occurred 10 years in the past, when there was this large hype, was there was a lot nonsense being written: “You’ll print something with these machines! It’ll take over the world!”’ says Hague. ‘Nevertheless it’s now changing into a very mature expertise, it’s not an rising expertise actually any extra. It’s extensively carried out by the likes of Rolls-Royce and Common Electrical, and we work with AstraZeneca, GSK, an entire bunch of various folks. Printing issues at house was by no means going to occur, but it surely’s developed right into a multibillion-dollar business.’i”

Would Constructing a Dyson Sphere Be Price It? We Ran the Numbers.
Paul Sutter | Ars Technica
“What if we determined to construct a Dyson sphere round our solar? May we do it? How a lot power would it not value us to rearrange our photo voltaic system, and the way lengthy would it not take to get our funding again? Earlier than we put an excessive amount of thought into whether or not humanity is able to this superb feat, even theoretically, we must always resolve if it’s well worth the effort. Can we really obtain a internet acquire in power by constructing a Dyson sphere?”

A New Method to Computation Reimagines Synthetic Intelligence
Anil Ananthaswamy | Quanta
“By imbuing monumental vectors with semantic that means, we are able to get machines to purpose extra abstractly—and effectively—than earlier than. …That is the place to begin for a radically completely different strategy to computation generally known as hyperdimensional computing. The secret is that every piece of knowledge, such because the notion of a automobile, or its make, mannequin or coloration, or all of it collectively, is represented as a single entity: a hyperdimensional vector.”

No, Fusion Power Gained’t Be ‘Limitless’
Gregory Barber | Wired
“…because the physics progresses, some are actually starting to discover the possible sensible and financial limits on fusion. The early conclusion is that fusion power ain’t going to be low-cost—actually not the most cost effective supply of electrical energy over the approaching a long time as extra photo voltaic and wind come on-line. However fusion should discover its place, as a result of the grid wants power in numerous types and at completely different instances.”

They Cracked the Code to a Locked USB Drive Price $235 Million in Bitcoin. Then It Bought Bizarre
Andy Greenberg | Wired
“Stefan Thomas misplaced the password to an encrypted USB drive holding 7,002 bitcoins. One workforce of hackers believes they will unlock it—if they will get Thomas to allow them to. …Thomas had already made a ‘handshake deal’ with two different cracking groups a 12 months earlier, he defined. …’We cracked the IronKey,’ says Nick Fedoroff, Unciphered’s director of operations. ‘Now we’ve to crack Stefan. That is turning out to be the toughest half.’i”

Discover the Historic Aztec Capital in This Lifelike 3D Rendering
Anna Lagos | Wired
“Digital artist Thomas Kole, initially from Amersfoort, Netherlands, has re-created the capital of the Aztec, or Mexica, empire with a lot element that it seems like a dwelling metropolis. ‘What did the traditional, monumental metropolis constructed atop a lake seem like?’ questioned Kole, as he explored Mexico Metropolis on Google Maps. …For a 12 months and a half, he turned to historic and archaeological sources as he sought to deliver Tenochtitlán again to life whereas remaining as devoted as attainable to what we all know concerning the metropolis.”

Precisely How A lot Life Is on Earth?
Dennis Overbye | The New York Instances
“What’s in a quantity? In keeping with a latest calculation by a workforce of biologists and geologists, there are extra dwelling cells on Earth—1,000,000 trillion trillion, or 10^30 in math notation, a 1 adopted by 30 zeros—than there are stars within the universe or grains of sand on our planet.”

Picture Credit score: Robin Canfield / Unsplash