This is as we speak’s version of The Download, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a every day dose of what’s occurring on the planet of expertise.
Vertex developed a CRISPR treatment. It’s already on the hunt for one thing higher.
The firm that simply received approval to promote the primary gene-editing remedy in historical past, for sickle-cell illness, is already on the lookout for an unusual drug that would take its place. Vertex Pharmaceuticals has a 50-person crew working to make a tablet that doesn’t do gene enhancing in any respect—however achieves the identical remedy objectives.
Now that medication’s CRISPR period has begun, a few of the method’s limitations are already seen. The remedy, known as Casgevy, is each powerful on sufferers and vastly costly, with many boundaries to entry. Such drawbacks are why a tablet to alleviate sickle-cell, if developed, might sweep CRISPR from the enjoying subject. Read the complete story.
—Antonio Regalado
Now we all know what OpenAI’s superalignment crew has been as much as
OpenAI has introduced the primary outcomes from its superalignment crew, the agency’s in-house initiative devoted to stopping a superintelligence—a hypothetical future laptop that may outsmart people—from going rogue.
While many researchers nonetheless query whether or not machines will ever match human intelligence, not to mention outmatch it, OpenAI’s crew takes machines’ eventual superiority as given.
In a low-key analysis paper, the crew describes a method that lets a much less highly effective massive language mannequin supervise a extra highly effective one—and means that this is likely to be a small step towards determining how people may supervise superhuman machines. Read the complete story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
Google DeepMind used a big language mannequin to resolve an unsolvable math drawback
The information: Google DeepMind has used a big language mannequin to crack a well-known unsolved drawback in pure arithmetic. The researchers say it’s the first time a big language mannequin has been used to find an answer to a long-standing scientific puzzle—producing verifiable and worthwhile new info that didn’t beforehand exist.
Why it issues: Large language fashions have a fame for making issues up, not for offering new information. Google DeepMind’s new instrument, known as EnjoyableSearch, might change that. It reveals that they’ll certainly make discoveries—if they’re coaxed simply so, and should you throw out nearly all of what they provide you with. Read the complete story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
Needle-free covid vaccines are (nonetheless) within the works
Covid pictures do an admirable job of boosting our immune response sufficient to guard in opposition to severe sickness, however they don’t enhance immunity within the one spot we’d like them to: our airways.
That’s why researchers have been engaged on vaccines you breathe into your lungs or spray into your nostril. The concept is that these vaccines will elicit an immune response within the mucous membranes of your respiratory tract that may assist stave off an infection or, should you do turn out to be contaminated, make you much less prone to transmit the virus.
These “mucosal” covid vaccines aren’t accessible within the US or Europe, however they’re in different elements of the world. So when will the US get its first mucosal covid vaccine? What will it appear to be? And will it work as supposed? Read the complete story.
—Cassandra Willyard
This story is from The Checkup, our weekly e-newsletter supplying you with the within monitor on all issues well being and biotech. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Thursday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to search out you as we speak’s most enjoyable/vital/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.
1 A advertising crew says it may well take heed to shoppers by means of their telephones
It’s what the conspiracists have claimed for years—now they may even have some extent. (404 Media)
2 The race to dominate wearable AI is heating up
Big Tech is throwing cash at AR glasses and goggles. But who will come out on high? (The Information $)
+ Apple’s Vision Pro spatial movies are evoking robust reactions. (CNET)
3 Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Hawaii compound
It’s not only a house—it’s a fortress. (Wired $)
4 Robotaxi agency Cruise is shedding 1 / 4 of its workers
In the wake of a severe accident that hospitalized a pedestrian. (Wired $)
+ Several high execs have left the corporate too. (The Verge)
+ Robotaxis are right here. It’s time to resolve what to do about them. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Racist and antisemitic memes are thriving on X
AI-generated memes begin life on 4chan, earlier than spreading due to X’s free insurance policies. (WP $)
+ Conspiracy theorists are going into overdrive over two new motion pictures.(Motherboard)
+ The UK is contemplating cracking down on youngsters’s social media use. (FT $)
5 Shopping for different individuals’s returned gadgets is massive enterprise
Returned one thing to Amazon recently? I could possibly be resold for as little as $1. (WP $)
+ Our habit to low-cost merchandise reveals no signal of waning. (Vox)
6 Europe isn’t serious about America’s protection tech
Smaller budgets and completely different priorities imply US companies aren’t reducing by means of. (Bloomberg $)
+ At one level it appeared enterprise might increase for US navy AI startups. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Computer code might maintain clues to hackers’ identities
And the US authorities is eager to establish perpetrators. (WSJ $)
9 TikTok’s large waves are nightmare fodder 
The North Sea’s uneven terrain makes for terrifyingly compelling movies. (NYT $)
+ Another huge TikTok development? This Windows display saver. (The Guardian)
10 Why is it so powerful to domesticate lab-grown rooster? 
Scaling up faux meat is a serious problem—and so is its carbon footprint. (Bloomberg $)
+ I attempted lab-grown rooster at a Michelin-starred restaurant. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“Alexa, insult me.”
—The shocking high request Amazon Echo customers made to its AI assistant Alexa this 12 months, The Guardian reviews.
The massive story
These unimaginable devices might change the way forward for music
When Gadi Sassoon met Michele Ducceschi backstage at a rock live performance in Milan in 2016, the concept of creating music with mile-long trumpets blown by dragon hearth, or guitars strummed by needle-thin alien fingers, wasn’t but on his thoughts.
At the time, Sassoon was merely blown away by the on a regular basis sounds of the classical devices that Ducceschi and his colleagues have been re-creating with computer systems.
The sounds have been the early outcomes of a curious venture on the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the place Ducceschi was a researcher on the time. The venture aimed to supply probably the most lifelike digital music ever created—creating a mixture of sounds that might be just about unimaginable to nail in any other case. Read the complete story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
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.)
+ What could possibly be cuter than a pet and a kitten assembly for the primary time? Nothing, that’s what.
+ These teeny tiny Rembrandts could possibly be the artist’s smallest-ever portraits.
+ It’s nearly 2024—let’s get planning enjoyable stuff for the 12 months forward.
+ On this present day in 1970, the Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 landed on the floor of Venus: the very first profitable touchdown of a spacecraft on one other planet.
+ Merry Chrismukkah, every body 