Artificial Intelligence
‘Breathtaking,’ ‘Devastating’: Mathematics Reels After New OpenAI ReleaseSiobhan Roberts | The New York Times ($)
“Talking to mathematicians after the release, it is clear that it is a highly conflicting environment, motivating a wild range of reactions. …’The solutions announcement, [Dr. Bridson] added, ‘will be exciting for many, frightening for others, and devastating for some. ‘In all cases,’ he said, ‘the struggle to wrestle human understanding from the machines’ formalities will unleash greater ambition for what we achieved (working with AI agents) in this new era of mathematics.'”
Artificial Intelligence
OpenAI’s Math Solutions Aren’t Meeting the Field’s Standards YetTim Fernholz | TechCrunch
“OpenAI fell short of … standards [called for by an advisory group of elite mathematicians], particularly where the mathematicians emphasized the need for human understanding of a mathematical result. That’s especially concerning after a new paper highlighted gaps between the natural language and formally expressed solution to a million-dollar problem ostensibly solved by OpenAI’s models.”
Biotechnology
Cancer Vaccines Are the NIH’s Next ‘Big Bet’Gina Kolata | The New York Times ($)
“The vaccines are treatments that are unique to each patient by prompting the immune system to attack a patient’s specific cancer. The injections teach the immune system’s T cells to home in on aberrant proteins found on a patient’s tumor and nowhere else.”
Tech
SpaceX Makes Big Play to Become a Wireless CarrierPatience Haggin and Drew FitzGerald | The Wall Street Journal ($)
“SpaceX reached a deal to buy cellular spectrum licenses from investment firm Grain Management, its biggest move yet into a wireless market dominated by traditional telecom companies. …The spectrum could serve SpaceX’s stated ambition of moving its Starlink satellite service beyond broadband into the wireless market to compete with the likes of AT&T and Verizon.”
Artificial Intelligence
Aligning AI With Human Goals Might Be Impossible, Says AI Prof. Stuart RussellRocket Drew | The Information ($)
“As a result, the AI industry’s decision to pursue large language models ‘could easily be a $10 trillion mistake,’ he said. It could be that ‘pursuing a technology path that can never support the guarantees of safety that we will need when systems become sufficiently capable to be of really high value to us—it’s a wrong turn that we took,’ so further investment in these models is ‘throwing good money after bad,’ he said.”
Tech
Oracle, Broadcom and SpaceX Seek Blockbuster Debt Deals to Pay for AI ChipsAnissa Gardizy, Matt Wirz, and Justin Baer | The Wall Street Journal ($)
“Cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and Oracle have traditionally financed computing hardware through their own cash flows. For their AI build-outs, the companies issued hundreds of billions of dollars of bonds, pushing the public debt market to its limits. Now, some buyers are turning to Wall Street investment firms to help fund purchases totaling tens of billions of dollars per deal.”
Science
At 194, Jonathan the Giant Tortoise Knows About AgingMonique Brouillette | The New York Times ($)
“The researchers were committed to the idea … because they were curious if Jonathan’s DNA held secrets about aging or longevity. Just think: When this tortoise was presumably born in 1832, Charles Darwin was only 22 years old and hadn’t yet visited the Galápagos Islands, where he would dream up his theory of natural selection.”
Future
AI Companies Are Preparing to Shape the Rules After Everything Goes WrongBruce Gil | Gizmodo
“They anticipate [within the next six to 12 month] a large-scale event such as a cyberattack that could disrupt access to financial services, the internet, or even electricity and water. Whether it’s AI going rogue or hackers using the technology to carry out an attack, the companies behind the tech expect to shoulder much of the blame if something goes wrong, and they need to know how they’ll spin the fallout if that’s the case.”
Future
UN Warns Against Technology Used to Read Citizens’ MindsJonathan Moens | The New York Times ($)
“The scenarios sound like science fiction: Police officers accessing data contained in suspects’ brains to forcefully extract information, or to predict if offenders might plan to commit future crimes. But the secretary general of the United Nations warned on Thursday for the first time that neurotechnologies are advancing so rapidly that governments’ ability to access and manipulate people’s brains could one day pose a threat to fundamental human rights.”
Future
Muse Creates Detailed Profiles of All Your Friends and FamilyLily Hay Newman | Wired ($)
“‘These [AI assistant] tools are actively soliciting users to plug their whole lives in—their emails, calendars, financial institutions, everything in order to be helpful assistance,’ Bogen says. ‘That’s dramatically more information than people might have otherwise given to some of these companies. The breadth of access to information that these tools have will lead to a ballooning of what they know about users.'”
Space
Who Owns the Moon?Selam Gebrekidan | The New York Times ($)
“The Outer Space Treaty declared that countries could not claim outer space ‘by means of use or occupation.’ Space exploration, the treaty said, should benefit all countries. …But nearly 60 years after the treaty was ratified, some questions still need answers. What jurisdiction can a state claim on a moon base? Can a company profit from the moon’s wealth? Can a nation or a company set up a perimeter and keep others out?”
