This is in the present day’s version of The Download, our weekday publication that gives a each day dose of what’s occurring on the planet of expertise.
Responsible AI has a burnout downside
Margaret Mitchell had been working at Google for 2 years earlier than she realized she wanted a break. Only after she spoke with a therapist did she perceive the issue: she was burnt out. She ended up taking medical depart due to stress.
Mitchell, who now works as an AI researcher and chief ethics scientist on the AI startup Hugging Face, is much from alone in her expertise. Burnout is turning into more and more frequent in responsible-AI groups, who’re unlikely to obtain the identical ranges of help as colleagues who concentrate on content material moderation, though the work may be simply as psychologically draining.
All the practitioners MIT Technology Review interviewed spoke enthusiastically about their work: it’s fueled by ardour, a way of urgency, and the satisfaction of constructing options for actual issues. But that sense of mission may be overwhelming with out the proper help. Read the complete story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
Will lab-grown meat attain our plates?
Would you eat lab-grown meat? Plenty of firms have got down to generate meat merchandise from muscle and fats cells cultured in vats—round 80 on the final rely. The promise is large: it may permit us to chop again on intensive animal farming, which may be brutal and inhumane, and to sidestep animal agriculture’s harmful results on the atmosphere.
But whether or not these firms can ship on that promise is one other matter completely. And even when firms reach bringing an affordable cultured-meat product to market, would anybody eat it? Read the complete story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
This story is from The Checkup, Jessica’s new weekly publication protecting the ins and outs of the biotech and well being sectors. Sign up to obtain it in your inbox each Thursday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to search out you in the present day’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.
1 Elon Musk has purchased Twitter
What occurs subsequent is anybody’s guess. (FT $)
+ Musk wasted no time: plenty of executives are set to depart. (NYT $)
+ His first intuition was to reassure advertisers. (Variety $)
+ The European Union has reminded Musk to play by its guidelines. (Bloomberg $)
+ Here’s delete your Twitter account. (WP $)
2 Everyone is in poor health proper now
Flu and different bugs are again with a vengeance now we’re mixing once more. (Vox)
+ If you’re one of many fortunate ones, right here’s keep wholesome. (The Atlantic $)
3 Ethereum is tough to beat
The botched launch of a challenger blockchain demonstrates why. (Wired $)
+ The Merge has birthed a brand new class of blockchain contributors. (Bloomberg $)
+ Why Ethereum’s swap to proof of stake issues. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Big Tech is feeling susceptible
Their quarterly earnings are down, and executives are nervous. (WP $)
+ Even the most important firms are not resistant to the financial downturn. (NYT $)
5 How the detention of a Huawei government worsened US-China relations
The prisoner alternate additionally implicated Canada. (WSJ $)
+ Further curbs on exports to China could possibly be on their approach. (WP $)
6 The way forward for on-line speech may rely on this European legislation
And power them to overtake their moderation methods within the course of. (Slate $)
7 Hydroelectricity has a picture downside
It’s environment friendly and inexperienced, so why accomplish that few nations need to put money into it? (IEEE Spectrum)
+ World leaders are set to assemble subsequent week for COP27. (Economist $)
+ Droughts are slicing into California’s hydropower. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Here’s what a future past animal testing may appear to be
A proposed US invoice may push us in the direction of computer-based testing as an alternative. (Neo.Life)
9 Here’s how Iranian authorities are controlling protestors’ telephones
The SIAM system breaks encryption and slows connections. (The Intercept)
10 Anime and manga followers are rising up in opposition to DALL-E
Illustrators aren’t thrilled about text-to-image fashions, both. (Rest of World)
+ It’s getting tougher to distinguish between AI artwork and actual images. (FT $)
+ This artist is dominating AI-generated artwork. And he’s not comfortable about it. (MIT Technology Review)
Quote of the day
“The metaverse is ‘living inside of a computer.’ The last thing I want to do when I get home from work during a long day is live inside of a computer.”
—Evan Spiegel, who based Snapchat, has zero time for the metaverse, reviews Bloomberg.
The huge story
Aging clocks purpose to foretell how lengthy you’ll stay
April 2022
Age is far more than the variety of birthdays you’ve clocked. Stress, sleep, and food regimen all affect how our organs deal with the wear and tear and tear of on a regular basis life. Factors like these would possibly make you age quicker or slower than individuals born on the identical day. That means your organic age could possibly be fairly totally different out of your chronological age—the variety of years you’ve been alive.
Your organic age is probably going a greater reflection of your bodily well being and even your personal mortality than your chronological age. But calculating it isn’t almost as simple. Scientists have spent the final decade creating instruments referred to as getting older clocks that assess markers in your physique to disclose your organic age.
The huge thought behind getting older clocks is that they’ll basically point out how a lot your organs have degraded, and thus predict what number of wholesome years you’ve got left. Among the a whole bunch of getting older clocks developed within the final decade, although, accuracy varies extensively. And researchers are nonetheless grappling with a significant query: What does it imply to be biologically younger? Read the complete story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
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.)
+ Brandi Carlile belting out A Case of You is simply superb. What a voice!
+ Are you in contact together with your shadow self?
+ Sorry wedding ceremony planners—donut partitions are canceled.
+ There’s so much occurring within the new Final Fantasy XVI trailer.
+ Just assume everything’s cake any further, okay?