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The Download: a CRISPR patent battle, and the promise of tiny AI

Technology tamfitronics

This is today’s edition of The Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Two Nobel Prize winners want to cancel their own CRISPR patents in Europe

In the decade-long fight to control CRISPR, the super-tool for modifying DNA, it’s been common for lawyers to try to overturn patents held by competitors. But now, in a surprise twist, the team that earned the Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing CRISPR is asking to cancel two of their own seminal patents, MIT Technology Review has learned.

The request to withdraw the pair of European patents, by lawyers for Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, comes after a damaging August opinion from a European technical appeals board, which ruled that the duo’s earliest patent filing didn’t explain CRISPR well enough for other scientists to use it and doesn’t count as a proper invention.

The decision could have major ramifications regarding who gets to collect the lucrative licensing fees on using the technology.Read the full story.

— Antonio Regalado

A tiny new open-source AI model performs as well as powerful big ones

What’s new: The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Ai2), a research nonprofit, is releasing a family of open-source multimodal language models, called Molmo, that it says perform as well as top proprietary models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

What it does: The organization claims that its biggest Molmo model outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4o in tests that measure things like understanding images, charts, and documents. Meanwhile, Ai2 says a smaller Molmo model comes close to OpenAI’s state-of-the-art model in performance, an achievement it ascribes to vastly more efficient data collection and training methods.

Why it matters: These techniques could prove really useful if we want to meaningfully govern the data that we use for AI development, and suggest that training models on less, but higher-quality, data can lower computing costs. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

Want AI that flags hateful content? Build it.

Humane Intelligence, an organization focused on evaluating AI systems, is launching a competition that challenges developers to create a computer vision model that can track hateful image-based propaganda online.

This is the second of a planned series of 10 “algorithmic bias bounty” programs from the nonprofit, with the twin goal of both teaching people how to do algorithmic assessments and actually solving a pressing problem in the field. Read the full story.

—Scott J Mulligan

Why Microsoft made a deal to help restart Three Mile Island

Nuclear power is coming back to Three Mile Island. Its nuclear power plant is often associated with a very specific event: one of its reactors suffered a partial meltdown in 1979 in what remains the most significant nuclear accident in US history. It has been shuttered ever since.

The site’s owner announced last week that it has plans to reopen the plant and has signed a deal with Microsoft. The company will purchase the plant’s entire electric generating capacity over the next 20 years. Casey Crownhart, our senior climate reporter, has dug into what this says about the future of the nuclear industry and Big Tech’s power demand. Read the full story.

This story is from The Spark, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things happening in climate innovation. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 OpenAI is set to become a for-profit business
And CEO Sam Altman could be on course to receive $150 billion in equity. (Reuters)
+ The startup’s costs far outpace its current revenue. (NOW $)
+ CTO Mira Murati and two other executives have announced their departure. (Insider $)

2 Meta’s new smart glasses actually look pretty good
Called Project Orion, they’re a confident step forward for facial computing. (NYT $)
+ Wearers can receive real-time translation for other languages. (The Information $)
+ Meta also announced deals with household names to voice its AI assistant. (WSJ $)
+ Expect an influx of even more AI-generated images on your social feeds. (The Verge)

3 Google is fighting Microsoft in European courts
It’s filed a formal complaint in the EU accusing its rival of abusing its cloud power. (WSJ $)

4 Uber is getting into the product-delivery business
It’s part of a strategy to challenge Amazon and other retail delivery services. (FT $)
+ Uber’s facial recognition is locking Indian drivers out of their accounts. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Operators are racing to overhaul their power grids
Stringing new sets of wires on existing lines is one solution. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Why one developer won’t quit fighting to connect the US’s grids. (MIT Technology Review)

6 The Titan Submersible had multiple problems with its hull
The US Coast Guard is currently holding a hearing into the fatal implosion last year. (Wired $)

7 How one lab ingredient ruined science experiments across the world
Scientists aren’t entirely sure why the seaweed-derived agar went bad. (The Atlantic $)

8 Reddit is using AI to translate its comments
If it works, it could unlock entire communities written in other languages. (Insider $)

9 Just 5,000 people are using the Rabbit R1 daily
That’s just 5% of the people who bought it five months ago. (The Verge)

10 The world’s first 3D-printed hotel is under construction in Texas
Once completed, 43 new units will be available to stay in. (Reuters)
+ Meet the designers printing houses out of salt and clay. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“What would you like to talk about, love?”

—Meta’s AI chatbot, which has been trained to imitate English actor Judi Dench, attempts a casual conversation with the Washington Post.

The big story

Inside the decades-long fight over Yahoo’s misdeeds in China

December 2023

When you think of Big Tech these days, Yahoo is probably not top of mind. But for Chinese dissident Xu Wanping, the company still looms large—and has for nearly two decades.

In 2005, Xu was arrested for signing online petitions relating to anti-Japanese protests. He didn’t use his real name, but he did use his Yahoo email address, which was among many Yahoo China handed over to Chinese law enforcement. This in turn allowed the government to identify and arrest some users.

Xu served nine years in prison as a result. Now, he and five other Chinese former political prisoners are suing Yahoo and a slate of co-defendants. Read the full story.

—Eileen Guo

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ The bird photographer of the year competition is guaranteed to showcase amazing talent.
+ If you’re lucky enough to grow your own apples, here’s some of the best recipes you should consider.
+ Why what you consider a normal sleeping pattern may not be so normal after all.
+ How Fred Flintstone became a cultural icon.

The Download: AI lessons for the US election, and our climate tech list is coming

Technology tamfitronics

Plus: the US is considering banning China and Russia-made tech from connected cars

This is today’s edition of The Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

What the US can learn from the role of AI in other elections

When the generative AI boom kicked off, one of the biggest concerns was that hyperrealistic deepfakes could be used to influence elections. But new research from the Alan Turing Institute recently found that AI-generated falsehoods seem to have had no effect on election results around the world so far this year.

However, one of the most consequential elections of the year is still ahead of us. In just over a month, Americans will head to the polls to choose Donald Trump or Kamala Harris as their next president. And, so far, external state actors are relying far more heavily on old tried-and-tested tactics than newfangled AI tools to interfere. Here’s what the US can do to counter these more immediate harms.

—Melissa Heikkilä

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

Coming soon: Our 2024 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch

Last year MIT Technology Review set out to recognize 15 companies from around the world that demonstrated they have a real shot at meaningfully driving down greenhouse-gas emissions and saving us from the worst impacts of climate change.

We’re excited to announce that we took up the task again this year and will publish our 2024 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch on October 1. We’ll reveal it first on stage to attendees at our upcoming EmTech MIT event, then share it online later that day.

We hope you’ll take a look, ideally learn something new, and perhaps even leave feeling encouraged. Read the full story.

—James Temple

If you want to be among the first to know who’s made this year’s list, join us either in-person at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge or via our virtual livestream for Emtech MIT between September 30 and October 1. Even better—The Download readers get 30% off tickets with the code DOWNLOADM24!

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The US is considering banning Chinese tech in connected cars
Over concerns the hardware and software could be used to spy. (WP $)
+ Any prospective ban would encompass Russian-made tech, too. (FT $)
+ Neither country’s tech is widely used in US-made cars at the moment. (BBC)

2 Telegram says it’s willing to cooperate with police requests
Instead of ignoring them, as it has done in the past. (Bloomberg $)
+ It’ll hand over IP addresses and phone numbers in response to valid orders. (404 Media)
+ Pavel Durov, Telegram’s CEO, has been accused of dismissing warnings for years. (WSJ $)

3 Why news publishers are cozying up with WhatsApp
Social media and Google just aren’t driving traffic any more. (NYT $)
+ This bot-only social network does not sound like fun. (NY Mag $)

4 Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are becoming… cool?
Just as it prepares to unveil a new pair at its annual developer conference. (WSJ $)
+ Here’s what I made of Snap’s new augmented-reality Spectacles. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Russia’s crypto miners are heading underground
In a bid to evade a crackdown from officials. (Reuters)

6 Our cells can die in lots of surprising ways
Here’s why that matters. (Knowable Magazine)
+ Innovative new cell therapies could finally get at tough-to-target cancers. (MIT Technology Review)

7 What’s Huawei’s signature laptop tells us about the state of Chinese tech
Native components and software suggest its domestic supply chain is getting better. (FT $)

8 A major lockmaker will start making a robots entry system🚪🦾
Allowing Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dogs to stroll around unencumbered. (The Verge)
+ This robot dog just taught itself to walk. (MIT Technology Review)

9 A video game has prompted tourists to flock to a remote Chinese province
Black Myth: Wukong is a colossal hit across the world. (Bloomberg $)
+ This viral game in China reinvents hide-and-seek for the digital age. (MIT Technology Review)

10 How memes revived Creed’s career
The post-grunge band is back in vogue thanks to internet trolling. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“This is a TikTok move.”

—Steve Man, the global head of auto research at Bloomberg Intelligence, tells Wired why America’s touted plans to ban Chinese-made automotive software and hardware echo its bid to banish TikTok.

The big story

Are we alone in the universe?

November 2023

The quest to determine if anyone or anything is out there has gained greater scientific footing over the past 50 years. Back then, astronomers had yet to spot a single planet outside our solar system. Now we know the galaxy is teeming with a diversity of worlds.

We’re now getting closer than ever before to learning how common living worlds like ours actually are. New tools, including artificial intelligence, could help scientists look past their preconceived notions of what constitutes life.

Future instruments will sniff the atmospheres of distant planets and scan samples from our local solar system to see if they contain telltale chemicals in the right proportions for organisms to prosper. But determining whether these planets actually contain organisms is no easy task. Read the full story.

—Adam Mann

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)+ The first photo of Prince, the UK Prime Minister’s new kitten, has been released, and he is very cute.
+ The red hot Chimayo chile has to be tasted to be believed 🌶️
+ Looking to sleep better? Give these relaxing yoga poses a go.
+ Autumn or fall: which is correct? And why?

The Download: training robots for unfamiliar environments, and all-new bird flu

Technology tamfitronics

What’s new: It’s tricky to get robots to do things in environments they’ve never seen before. Typically, researchers need to train them on new data for every new place they encounter, which can become very time-consuming and expensive. Now, researchers have developed a series of AI models that teach robots to complete basic tasks in new surroundings without further training or fine-tuning.

What they achieved:

The five AI models, called robot utility models, (RUMs), allow machines to complete five separate tasks: opening doors and drawers, and picking up tissues, bags and cylindrical objects in unfamiliar environments with a 90% success rate.

The big picture: The team hope their findings will make it quicker and easier to teach robots new skills while helping them function within previously-unseen domains. The approach could make it easier and cheaper to deploy robots in our homes in future. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

Flu season is coming—and so is the risk of an all-new bird flu

September will soon be drawing to a close. The kids are back to school, and those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are experiencing the joys the end of summer brings: the cooling temperatures, the falling leaves, and, inevitably, the start of flu season.

In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the flu vaccine for everyone over six months old. This year, following the spread of the “bird flu” H5N1 in cattle, the CDC is especially urging dairy farm workers to get vaccinated.

The goal is not only to protect those workers from seasonal flu, but to protect us all from a potentially more devastating consequence: the emergence of a new form of flu that could trigger another pandemic. That hasn’t happened yet, but unfortunately, it’s looking increasingly possible. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly health and biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Things aren’t looking good for the Doomsday Glacier
It’s rapidly melting, and its collapse appears imminent. (CNN)
+ If that happened, it’d be a disaster for global sea levels. (Bloomberg $)
+ But we still have time to influence how rapidly the process unfolds. (New Scientist $)
+ Interventional measures have been in place for years. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Major social media firms harvested vast amounts of user data
To the extent that it qualifies as mass surveillance. (NYT $)
+ The US FTC accused firms of failing to protect user privacy. (WP $)

3 Apple’s new Mac update is breaking cybersecurity systems
The Sequoia update has messed up tools from CrowdStrike and others. (TechCrunch)
+ The company’s suite of AI tools is now available to test out in public betas. (The Verge)

4 Tech companies are pushing to weaken the EU AI Act
It’s a last ditch attempt to lobby for lighter regulation before its codes of practice are finalized. (Reuters)
+ The AI Act is done. Here’s what will (and won’t) change. (MIT Technology Review)

5 To build better batteries, we need new anodes
Cathodes get all the attention, but other components are equally important. (Economist $)
+ Three takeaways about the current state of batteries. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Most of us can’t afford to avoid microplastics
Non-plastic alternatives are wildly expensive. So what can we do? (The Atlantic $)
+ Microplastics are everywhere. What does that mean for our immune systems? (MIT Technology Review)

7 Crypto thieves sold $243 million from a single person
The creditor of a defunct trading firm fell for a sophisticated scam. (CoinDesk)

8 Blue light glasses aren’t as useful as they claim to be
You’re better off taking regular screen breaks instead. (WP $)

9 This delivery robot knocked over a passing pedestrian
The robot actually drove away, reversed and hit them for a second time. (404 Media)
+ The company has offered the victim vouchers in compensation. (The Verge)

10 iPhones are nudging their owners to check in with their exes
No thanks! (Insider $)

Quote of the day

“Self-regulation has been a failure.”

—The Federal Trade Commission criticizes social media platforms and video streaming services’ surveillance of their users in a damning new report, the Verge reports.

The big story

Inside effective altruism, where the far future counts a lot more than the present

October 2022

Since its birth in the late 2000s, effective altruism has aimed to answer the question “How can those with means have the most impact on the world in a quantifiable way?”—and supplied methods for calculating the answer.

It’s no surprise that effective altruisms’ ideas have long faced criticism for reflecting white Western saviorism, alongside an avoidance of structural problems in favor of abstract math. And as believers pour even greater amounts of money into the movement’s increasingly sci-fi ideals, such charges are only intensifying. Read the full story.

—Rebecca Ackermann

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)+ Mmmm, doughnuts 🍩
+ Gentlemen, step away from the chore jacket.
+ Once a spelling bee champion, always a spelling bee champion. But what do they do once they get older?
+ Why Hugh Grant is the perfect villain, actually.

The Download: monkey names, and smart masks for health monitoring

Technology tamfitronics

Plus: Silicon Valley is shaken by what’s happening to Telegram’s founder

This is today’s edition of The Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

How machine learning is helping us probe the secret names of animals

The news: Do animals have names? It seems so, after new research appears to have discovered that small monkeys called marmosets “vocally label” their monkey friends with specific sounds.

How they did it: The team used audio recorders and pattern-recognition software to analyze the animals’ high-pitched chirps and twitters. To prove they’d cracked the monkey code—and learned the secret names—the team played recordings at the marmosets through a speaker and found they responded more often when their label, or name, was in the recording.

Why it matters: Until now, only humans, dolphins, elephants, and probably parrots had been known to use specific sounds to call out to other individuals. This sort of research could provide clues to the origins of human language, arguably the most powerful innovation in our species’ evolution. Read the full story.

—Antonio Regalado

A new smart mask analyzes your breath to monitor your health

Your breath can give away a lot about you. Each exhalation contains all sorts of compounds, including possible biomarkers for disease or lung conditions, that could give doctors a valuable insight into your health.

Now a new smart mask could help doctors check your breath for these signals continuously and in a noninvasive way. A patient could wear the mask at home, measure their own levels, and then go to the doctor if a flare-up is likely. Read the full story.

—Scott J Mulligan

A new way to build neural networks could make AI more understandable

A tweak to the way artificial neurons work in neural networks could make AIs easier to decipher.

Artificial neurons—the fundamental building blocks of deep neural networks—have survived almost unchanged for decades. While these networks give modern artificial intelligence its power, they are also inscrutable.

Existing artificial neurons, used in large language models like GPT4, work by taking in a large number of inputs, adding them together, and converting the sum into an output using another mathematical operation inside the neuron. Combinations of such neurons make up neural networks, and their combined workings can be difficult to decode.

But the new way to combine neurons works a little differently—and should be easier to make sense of. Read the full story.

—Anil Ananthaswamy

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 The arrest of Telegram’s founder is unsettling Silicon Valley
It’s opened encryption up to new levels of scrutiny. (NYT $)+ Defenders of encryption fear the case will embolden authorities to attack it. (WP $)

2 Publishers are opting out of Apple’s AI scraping
Apple gave major sites the choice to hand over their data, so they’ve said no. (Wired $)
+ It is also reported to be investing in AI giant OpenAI. (WSJ $)
+ Apple is poised to release new AI features in its next iOS update. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Brazil is going after Elon Musk
A judge has vowed to shut down X and has blocked Starlink’s bank accounts. (Bloomberg $)+ Musk is waging an ongoing battle with Brazil’s Supreme Court justice. (FT $)

4 Schools are still grappling with AI
Teachers are split over whether using the tools constitutes cheating or not. (New Yorker $)
+ ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it. (MIT Technology Review)

5 US regulators are rethinking cancer drug dosing in clinical trials
The FDA wants drugmakers to reexamine their dosing. Startups are worried. (WSJ $)
+ Cancer vaccines are having a renaissance. (MIT Technology Review)

6 We’re learning more about the proteins that regulate our genes
It looks as though they’ve been secretly managing our cells, too. (Knowable Magazine)

7 This company teaches gas-fueled car owners how to convert them into EVs
But retrofitting vehicles comes with some pretty major risks. (Rest of World)
+ Why EV charging needs more than Tesla. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Meta’s AI assistant is steadily growing more popular
It’s got around 400 million monthly users. (The Information $)
+ But arch rival OpenAI has around 200 million weeklyusers. (Axios)

9 LA’s new arena is fully digitized
Facial recognition cameras are everywhere, and good luck buying anything without its official app. (The Atlantic $)

10 Algorithm-driven music recommendations are hit and miss
Here’s some different ways to find new tunes. (WP $)
+ How to break free of Spotify’s algorithm. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“You’re going to be left with crypto scams and rapid weight-loss adverts.”

—An insider tells the Financial Times how Telegram’s recent legal troubles are likely to deter advertisers from wanting to work with the platform.

The big story

What’s next for the world’s fastest supercomputers

September 2023

When the Frontier supercomputer came online last year, it marked the dawn of so-called exascale computing, with machines that can execute an exaflop—or a quintillion (1018) floating point operations a second.

Since then, scientists have geared up to make more of these blazingly fast computers: several exascale machines are due to come online in the US and Europe in 2024.

But speed itself isn’t the endgame. Researchers hope to pursue previously unanswerable questions about nature—and to design new technologies in areas from transportation to medicine. Read the full story.

—Sophia Chen

We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ If you’ve ever struggled to erect a tent, just know the world record for putting one up is one minute and seven seconds.
+ Are we all beer girls now?
+ Traveling art exhibitions are big business these days.
+ Brace yourself: fall is coming.