This is at present’s version of The Download, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a each day dose of what’s occurring on this planet of know-how.
The viral AI avatar app Lensa undressed me—with out my consent
When Melissa Heikkilä, our senior AI reporter, tried the brand new viral AI avatar app Lensa, she hoped to get outcomes much like different colleagues at MIT Technology Review, who bought life like but flattering avatars—assume astronauts, and fierce warriors. Instead, she bought tons of nudes. Out of the generated 100 avatars, 16 had been topless, whereas one other 14 depicted her in extraordinarily skimpy garments and overtly sexualized poses.
Melissa has Asian heritage. Many of the avatars had been of generic Asian ladies clearly modeled on anime or video-game characters, or, almost certainly, porn. Another colleague with Chinese heritage bought comparable outcomes: reams and reams of pornified avatars.
Lensa’s hypersexualization of Asian ladies is unfortunately unsurprising. Its outcomes are generated utilizing Stable Diffusion, an AI mannequin that pulls from a large open-source knowledge set compiled by scraping pictures from the web. But the issue runs deeper than the coaching knowledge. Read the total story.
How it feels to be sexually objectified by an AI
You can learn extra of Melissa’s ideas on Lensa’s avatars reflecting sexist and racist stereotypes in The Algorithm, her weekly AI e-newsletter. In it, she displays on the way it made her really feel when the mannequin returned extra life like portrayals of her when she advised it she was male, and what the problems with Lensa inform us about AI extra broadly. Read the total story.
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The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to seek out you at present’s most enjoyable/vital/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.
1 Sam Bankman-Fried has been charged with fraud
US authorities say the FTX founder’s plan was to defraud buyers proper from the beginning. (The Verge)
+ Bankman-Fried’s Stanford Law School professor dad and mom are additionally beneath scrutiny. (NYT $)
+ The US Department of Justice is split over whether or not to cost Binance, too. (Reuters)
+Effective altruism devotees are livid on the founder. (Vox)
2 Limitless clear vitality might be on the horizon
The US Department of Energy is poised to substantiate {that a} fusion response has created a web vitality achieve for the primary time at present. (WP $)
+ Scientists have been attempting to make the breakthrough occur for nearly 100 years. (The Atlantic $)
3 Twitter has dissolved its Trust and Safety Council
At a time when it arguably wants it greater than ever. (TechCrunch)
+ Twitter is enjoying round with blue, gold and grey test marks, for some purpose. (Vox)
+ The firm is auctioning off fancy chairs from its gutted HQ. (Motherboard)
+ Twitter’s potential collapse might wipe out huge information of current human historical past. (MIT Technology Review)
4 CRISPR gene modifying has slowed Alizheimer’s development in mice
If utilized to people, the method could show much more efficient. (New Scientist $)
5 AI is trying to find EV metals
In concept, it might make mining extra environment friendly and fewer damaging. (Wired $)
+ Machine studying might vastly pace up the seek for new metals. (MIT Technology Review)
6 China is readying a rescue package deal for its chip sector
To the tune of $143 billion. (Reuters)
+ Beijing has filed a grievance towards US semiconductor restrictions. (WSJ $)
+ Europe’s chip business remains to be enjoying catch up. (FT $)
+ Corruption is sending shock waves by means of China’s chipmaking business. (MIT Technology Review)
7 India’s gig employees are going through a bleak future
Many individuals took the roles as a final resort. Now they’re caught with them. (Rest of World)
8 What it’s wish to fake to be an AI chatbot
In different phrases, an individual pretending to be a pc pretending to be an individual. (The Guardian)
9 The Pizza Rat video remains to be making its creator cash 
Seven years after it initially went viral. (Insider $)
10 The thumb drive has a surprisingly dramatic origin story
Including patent disputes, account falsification, and a jail sentence. (IEEE Spectrum)
Quote of the day
“FTX operated behind a veneer of legitimacy Mr. Bankman-Fried created…that veneer wasn’t just thin, it was fraudulent.”
—Gurbir Grewal, director of the US enforcement division, lays out the fees towards Sam Bankman-Fried, studies ABC News.
The huge story
Why it’s so arduous to make tech extra various
June 2021
Tracy Chou has an extended historical past of working to show Silicon Valley’s variety points. As an engineer at Pinterest, she revealed a broadly circulated weblog put up calling for tech corporations to share knowledge on what number of ladies labored on their engineering crew, and picked up their responses in a public database that exposed how homogeneous many technical groups at prime corporations nonetheless had been.
About a yr later, she began an organization referred to as Block Party that targets on-line harassment by giving Twitter customers extra management over which tweets seem of their feed and mentions.
Here, we test in with Chou, who is predicated in San Francisco, to be taught extra about what it takes to make change within the tech sector and what entrepreneurs like her are up towards. Read the total story.
We can nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre occasions. (Got any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ This is cool—NASA is engaged on a robotic arm to face up to temperatures of minus-280 levels.
+ Why Welsh language music is having a second proper now—cwl!
+ The secret to turning into a greater multitasker? Taking notes.
+ How three intrepid ladies set a climbing file scaling the Rayu route in northern Spain.
+ I would like a bread hotter in all of my radiators, stat.