This is at this time’s version of The Download, our weekday publication that gives a every day dose of what’s occurring on this planet of expertise.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into an organization making an attempt to delay dying
When a startup referred to as Retro Biosciences eased out of stealth mode in mid-2022, it introduced it had secured $180 million to bankroll an audacious mission: so as to add 10 years to the typical human lifespan.
The enterprise has at all times been obscure about the place its cash had come from. Now MIT Technology Reveal can reveal that the whole sum was put up by Sam Altman, the 37-year-old startup guru and investor who’s CEO of OpenAI.
The quantity is among the many largest ever invested by a person right into a startup pursuing human longevity, and can fund Retro’s “aggressive mission” to stall growing old, and even reverse it. Read the total story.
—Antonio Regalado
If you’d wish to learn extra about OpenAI:
+ Read the inside story of how ChatGPT was constructed from the individuals who made it.
+ Sam Altman: This is what I realized from DALL-E 2.
Forget designer infants. Here’s how CRISPR is basically altering lives
Gene modifying is a expertise many individuals are likely to affiliate with its ethically-fraught means to create designer infants. But that’s additionally a distraction from the true story of how the expertise is altering folks’s lives via remedies used on adults with critical illnesses.
There are actually greater than 50 experimental research underway that use gene modifying in human volunteers to deal with all the things from most cancers to HIV and blood illnesses, in response to a tally shared with MIT Technology Review.
But these first technology of remedies might be massively costly and tough to implement—they usually could possibly be rapidly outdated by a subsequent technology of improved modifying medication. Read the total story.
—Antonio Regalado
How China takes excessive measures to maintain teenagers off TikTok
The American folks and the Chinese folks have rather more in widespread than both facet likes to confess. Take the shared concern about how a lot time kids and youngsters are spending on TikTok (or its Chinese home model, Douyin).
Several US senators have pushed for payments that will prohibit underage customers’ entry to apps like TikTok. But ByteDance, the guardian firm of TikTok, is not any stranger to these requests. In reality, it has been coping with comparable authorities pressures in China since at the very least 2018. Read the total story.
—Zeyi Yang
Zeyi’s story is from China Report, his weekly publication protecting China. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Tuesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to search out you at this time’s most enjoyable/vital/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.
1 Google developed a robust chatbot years earlier than ChatGPT
However, it bought spooked that the system didn’t meet security and equity requirements.(WSJ $)+ How tech’s AI obsession masks abuses of energy. (Bloomberg $)
+ In principle, copyright legislation may derail generative AI. (Insider $)
+ ChatGPT is in every single place. Here’s the place it got here from. (MIT Technology Review)
2 A professional-Ukrainian group could have orchestrated the Nord Stream pipeline assault
But there’s no proof that Ukrainian officers had been concerned. (NYT $)
+ Ukraine has denied any involvement within the assault final 12 months. (BBC)
+ Here’s how the Nord Stream gasoline pipelines could possibly be mounted. (MIT Technology Review)
3 How the FBI pushed for extra highly effective facial recognition
It could possibly be used to gas an enormous surveillance community. (WP $)
+ Faked CCTV footage is on the rise, too. (Wired $)
+ South Africa’s non-public surveillance machine is fueling a digital apartheid. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Crypto startups are scrambling for funding
Times are harder than ever since issues went south for the business’s favourite financial institution. (The Information $)
5 Meta’s massive language mannequin been leaked on 4Chan
It’s the primary mannequin from a serious firm to leak. (Motherboard)
+ Why Meta’s newest massive language mannequin survived solely three days on-line. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Japan was compelled to explode its personal rocket
The automobile’s second engine did not ignite throughout takeoff. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s subsequent in area. (MIT Technology Review)
7 YouTube simply can’t eliminate Andrew Tate
His misogynistic movies preserve being re-uploaded, regardless of an present ban. (The Atlantic $)
8 The hidden dangers of the share economic system
When virtually something may be rented out to strangers, not everyone seems to be well-meaning. (The Guardian)
9 TikTok’s viral drinks depart a nasty style within the mouth
Users are making more and more outlandish concoctions in a bid for views. (FT $)
+ The porcelain problem didn’t have to be actual to get views. (MIT Technology Review)
10 The work cellphone is making a comeback 
Partly due to corporations cracking down on TikTok. (Bloomberg $)
Quote of the day
“I independently made my money, as opposed to say, inherited an emerald mine.”
—Halli, a not too long ago laid-off Twitter employee, fires again at his former boss Elon Musk, who accused Halli of shirking his work obligations.
The huge story
Why can’t tech repair its gender drawback?
Despite the tech sector’s nice wealth and loudly self-proclaimed company commitments to the rights of girls, LGBTQ+ folks, and racial minorities, the business stays largely a straight, white man’s world.
It wasn’t at all times this manner. Software programming as soon as was an virtually fully feminine occupation. As not too long ago as 1980, ladies held 70% of the programming jobs in Silicon Valley, however the ratio has since flipped fully. While many issues contributed to the shift, from the academic pipeline to the tiresomely persistent fiction of tech as a gender-blind “meritocracy,” none clarify it fully. What actually lies on the core of tech’s gender drawback is cash. Read the total story.
—Margaret O’Mara
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.)
+ Aww, Dave Grohl has cemented his standing because the nicest man in rock.
+ These photographs of a cheetah cub and a pet are the cutest factor you’ll see at this time.
+ If you take pleasure in nosing via tech executives’ emails, this Twitter account is the one for you.
+ The 10 issues that actor Jeremy Strong can’t stay with out are usually unhinged.
+ This story despatched a shiver down my backbone.