This is as we speak’s version of The Download, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a each day dose of what’s occurring on this planet of expertise.
Elon Musk’s Neuralink hopes to check its mind implant in a human subsequent yr
Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface firm Neuralink is planning to check a mind implant in people in six months, the corporate has introduced.
At a ‘show and tell’ occasion yesterday, Musk mentioned that the corporate was within the means of submitting paperwork to the US Food and Drug Administration, which has the ability to approve or deny the corporate’s utility to start out scientific trials in people.
When Musk launched Neuralink in 2017, he outlined plans for “a high-bandwidth, long-lasting, biocompatible, bidirectional” mind implant. This mind modem, he claimed, might by some means permit people to maintain tempo with synthetic intelligence. Now, after years of delays and experiments on monkeys, he’s hoping to show it may be safely implanted in people.
Musk additionally introduced that the corporate is engaged on repurposing the implant for 2 additional components of the physique: the spinal twine, to probably assist to revive motion in somebody who’s paralysed, and an ocular implant to revive imaginative and prescient in folks with sight loss. He demonstrated the latter product with a video explaining how a Neuralink implant had stimulated a flash of sunshine in a monkey’s mind.
Antonio Regalado, our senior biomedicine editor, appropriately predicted {that a} imaginative and prescient implant able to producing photographs in an animal’s mind would make its manner into the corporate’s presentation. Read why that issues—and what, in idea, it might imply for people.
While everybody waits for GPT-4, OpenAI continues to be fixing its predecessor
Buzz round GPT-4, the anticipated however as-yet-unannounced follow-up to OpenAI’s groundbreaking giant language mannequin, GPT-3, is rising by the week. But OpenAI is just not but accomplished tinkering with the earlier model.
The San Francisco-based firm has launched a demo of a brand new mannequin known as ChatGPT, a spin-off of GPT-3 that’s geared towards answering questions through back-and-forth dialogue. But whereas the conversational format permits ChatGPT to confess its errors, and reject inappropriate requests, it’s nonetheless removed from good. Read the total story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
In protection of plastic (kind of)
Plastics have a foul popularity, there’s no denying it. They’re an environmental, local weather, and public well being catastrophe. But, concurrently, they’ve introduced down prices throughout industries and saved lives, due to their use in every part from medical gear to electronics.
The query is, the place can we go from right here? Taking steps to chop down on gratuitous plastic use is a begin, and discovering methods to reinvent plastic recycling might additionally play an enormous function in reducing down on its unfavorable impacts. Among probably the most promising of those is chemical recycling, which, if chemists efficiently pull it off, might permit us to deal with totally different plastics utilizing a single course of. Read the total story.
Casey’s story is from The Spark, her weekly local weather and vitality e-newsletter. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Wednesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to seek out you as we speak’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.
1 The European Central Bank thinks bitcoin is on its final gasp
It says the cryptocurrency is on “the road to irrelevance.” (The Guardian)
+ Sam Bankman-Fried has given one other disastrous interview. (NYT $)
+ Unsurprisingly, he mentioned his attorneys had suggested him in opposition to talking publicly. (Vox)
+ Times aren’t nice for NFT artists proper now. (New Yorker $)
+ It’s okay to decide out of the crypto revolution. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Chinese protests may very well be the start of the top for zero covid
It is damaging the nation’s financial system, and far of the inhabitants has had sufficient. (Vox)
+ Xi Jinping has painted himself right into a nook. (The Atlantic $)
+ Simply lifting the restrictions received’t magically return life to regular, although. (Wired $)
3 An American journalist is suing NSO Group
He and his colleagues allege they had been surveilled utilizing the corporate’s Pegasus spy ware. (New Yorker $)
+ Password supervisor LastPass says some person knowledge was uncovered in a hack. (The Verge)
+ The warfare in Ukraine has shifted cybercriminals’ focus away from stealing cash. (Economist $)
+ Google has blocked a Spanish hacking device. (Wired $)
+ The hacking trade faces the top of an period. (MIT Technology Review)
4 San Francisco police can now deploy killer robots
They can kill somebody with a view to save the lifetime of a civilian or an officer. (TechCrunch)
+ The coverage might simply find yourself harming town’s most susceptible folks. (Wired $)
5 Children are nonetheless dying from TikTok’s blackout problem
Parents really feel the platform’s not doing sufficient to stop different minors from copying the movies. (Bloomberg $)
6 California needs to punish docs who unfold covid misinformation
But two authorized challenges declare the brand new regulation is unconstitutional. (NYT $)
7 Gasoline consumption within the US barely fell final yr
Despite extra electrical automobiles hitting the roads, fuel use fell by simply 0.54%. (Wired $)
+ Electric automobile startups are struggling to outlive. (The Information $)
+ Where are these superbatteries we had been promised? (IEEE Spectrum)
8 A Singapore remedy chatbot has been accused of gaslighting
The government-backed bot is designed to assist academics, however appears to be doing something however. (Rest of World)
9 Gen Z actually doesn’t like Instagram
Its cringey pivot to video isn’t reducing by means of. (The Atlantic $)
+ Social networks basically are shrinking. (Slate $)
10 You can nonetheless poke somebody on Facebook 
Why not brighten up a pal’s day? (BuzzFeed News)
Quote of the day
“If you look at all the major competing platforms that have existed — iOS, Android, Windows — Apple stands out. It is the only one where one company can control what apps get on the device. I don’t think it’s sustainable or good.”
—Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (no stranger to accusations of monopolistic conduct himself) joins Elon Musk in criticizing Apple’s energy as a gatekeeper for apps in feedback made at a New York Times convention.
The huge story
Finding houses for the waste that may (in all probability) outlive humanity
October 2020
Since 2013, when regulators determined to close California’s San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station down, groups of scientists, engineers, and policymakers have been arduous at work to ensure it may very well be safely decommissioned.
The huge query is: what to do with all of the spent nuclear gasoline? Its radioactive waste might outlast the human race, and is being stored in storage holes buried alongside the seismically energetic California shoreline.
They are sitting geese for the subsequent huge earthquake, which is more likely to hit inside the subsequent century. If the nuclear waste by some means bought out, the outcomes can be devastating. And the actual fact the issue exists in any respect highlights how the US authorities has to this point been unable to satisfy its authorized responsibility to discover a long-term residence for America’s radioactive waste. Read the total story.
—Wudan Yan
We can nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre instances. (Got any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ How to keep up a wholesome, nutritious food plan when every part’s so costly.
+ I’d be fairly proud of any one among these robotic presents, to be sincere.
+ While Christine McVie gave us so many wonderful songs, Songbird could be one of the best.
+ Leftovers aren’t simply tasty—they’re literal artistic endeavors.
+ There’s a gaggle of tens of hundreds of manta rays simply vibing off the coast of Ecuador.