This is in the present day’s version of The Download, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a every day dose of what’s occurring on this planet of expertise.
AI literacy may be ChatGPT’s largest lesson for colleges
This yr hundreds of thousands of individuals have tried—and been wowed by— synthetic intelligence methods. That’s in no small half because of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT.
When it launched final November, the chatbot grew to become an on the spot hit amongst college students, a lot of whom began utilizing it to write down essays and homework. Alarmed by an inflow of AI-generated essays, colleges around the globe moved swiftly to ban the usage of the expertise.
But there’s an surprising upside: ChatGPT has compelled colleges to rapidly adapt and begin instructing youngsters an advert hoc curriculum of AI 101. The massive hope is that educators and policymakers will understand simply how necessary it’s to show the following technology crucial considering expertise round AI. Read the complete story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
Melissa’s story is from The Algorithm, her weekly AI e-newsletter. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Monday.
Read extra about AI:
+ ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economic system. We have to determine what that appears like. New massive language fashions will rework many roles. Whether they’ll result in widespread prosperity or not is as much as us. Read the complete story.
+ We are hurtling towards a glitchy, spammy, scammy, AI-powered web. Large language fashions are filled with safety vulnerabilities, but they’re being embedded into tech merchandise on an unlimited scale. Read the complete story.
+ What if we might simply ask AI to be much less biased? Instead of constructing the coaching information much less biased, researchers are experimenting with merely asking the mannequin to provide you much less biased solutions. Read the complete story.
Podcast: Concerning AI ethics
The greatest definitions of AI are obscure, largely lack consensus and symbolize an enormous problem for lawmakers and authorized students seeking to regulate it. But again to again breakthroughs and speedy adoption of generative AI instruments are making it really feel much more actual to all people else.
The newest episode of our podcast, In Machines We Trust, digs into the ethics of such instruments, and what it might imply for the way forward for authorized choices. Listen to it on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to seek out you in the present day’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.
1 Elon Musk is engaged on a Twitter AI mission
Despite lately becoming a member of a name for an industry-wide halt to AI coaching. (Insider $)
+ Twitter technically not exists—it’s merged with Musk’s X Corp. (Bloomberg $)
+ Musk joked that his canine is answerable for Twitter. (WP $)
+ We’re witnessing the mind demise of Twitter. (MIT Technology Review)
2 China is trying to control its covid legacy
Its officers are withholding information and censoring dissident voices. (WSJ $)
3 Bitcoin is on the rise once more
And market manipulation might be the basis trigger. (The Guardian)
+ El Salvador’s bitcoin holdings are nonetheless manner, manner down, although. (Bloomberg $)+ Crypto regulation is on the agenda for the following G7 summit. (Reuters)
4 Secret Pentagon intelligence was leaked by a meme group
Authorities are racing to work out how the labeled paperwork had been procured. (NYT $)
+ They comprise intel collected by the NSA and CIA, amongst different companies. (NY Mag $)
5 We’re studying extra about darkish matter
Researchers have managed to map it in unprecedented element. (BBC)
6 Abortion drugs are completely secure
Despite what some pro-life teams would have you ever consider. (Vox)
7 What the rise of generative AI means for porn
It’s changing into more and more straightforward to create erotic photos that persons are keen to pay for. (WP $)
+ Even AI has bother recognizing whether or not photos are AI-generated. (WSJ $)
+ AI music is infiltrating streaming companies. (FT $)
+ ChatGPT is fueling a brand new wave of spam on Reddit. (Motherboard)
+ The viral AI avatar app Lensa undressed me—with out my consent. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Underground wells are the brand new batteries
They’re surprisingly good at storing thermal vitality. (Wired $)
+ This geothermal startup confirmed its wells can be utilized like a large underground battery. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Why Big Tech’s platforms are so onerous to switch
Despite Twitter’s wild final six months, customers are nonetheless logging on. (NPR)
10 TikTok’s newest craze? Water 
Watertokers are turning to elaborate syrup concoctions to up their every day H2O consumption. (Fast Company $)
Quote of the day
“I wish I could just shoot down these programs.”
—An nameless online game artist dwelling in China vents her frustration at image-generating AI fashions which can be forcing human employees to work further lengthy hours to compete to Rest of World.
This artist is dominating AI-generated artwork. And he’s not joyful about it.
Greg Rutkowski is a Polish digital artist who makes use of classical kinds to create dreamy landscapes. His distinctive type has been utilized in a number of the world’s hottest fantasy video games, together with Dungeons and Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.
Now he’s change into successful within the new world of text-to-image AI technology. His identify is without doubt one of the mostly used prompts within the open-source AI artwork generator Stable Diffusion.
But this and different open-source applications are constructed by scraping photos from the web, typically with out permission and correct attribution to artists. As a outcome, they’re elevating tough questions on ethics and copyright. And artists like Rutkowski have had sufficient. Read the complete story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
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.)
+ It’s the little issues in life that make a distinction: right here’s how the specialists do it.
+ All hail Cloudflare’s wall of lava lamps!
+ I’m undecided about this pixelated hoodie—yours for simply $2,500.
+ Forget every thing you understand, a rainbow shouldn’t be truly an arch in any respect: it’s a circle.
+ The world’s deepest dwelling fish has a candy lil face.