It's Time to Believe the AI Hype
Stephen Levy | mad
“There is universal agreement in the tech world that AI is the biggest thing since the Internet, maybe even bigger. …Sceptics might argue that this is an industry-wide delusion fueled by the prospect of huge profits. But demos don't lie. We'll eventually get used to the amazing AI revealed this week. Smartphones once seemed exotic. Now it has become an appendage as important to our daily lives as our arms or legs. At some point, even AI achievements may no longer seem magical.”
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How to put your data center in a shoebox
Anna Herr and Quentin Herr | IEEE spectrum
“At Imec, we have been developing superconducting processing devices over the past two years that can be manufactured using standard CMOS tools. “Processors based on this work will be 100 times more energy efficient than today’s most efficient chips and will unlock the value of computing resources in data centers, leading to computers that fit into systems the size of shoeboxes.”
IndieBio's SF Incubator Lineup is Making the Promise of Wild Biotech
Devin Coldway | Tech Crunch
“We took particular note of a few claims that made outrageous claims that could have big payoffs. Biotechnology has begun to dabble in adjacent industries in recent years as companies realize how much they rely on older processes or even organisms to get things done. So it may not be surprising that the latest batch features a microbiome company. But you might be surprised to hear that it's the microbiome. copper ore.”
The end of Google Search as we know it
Lauren Goode | mad
“It’s as if Google took the index cards of the screenplays they’ve been writing for the last 25 years and threw them in the air to see where they would land. Also: The screenplay was written by AI. These changes to Google Search have been a long time in the making. Last year, the company created a Search Labs section where users can try out experimental new features for a feature called Search Generative Experience. The biggest question since then has been whether and when these features will become a permanent part of Google Search. The answer is now.”
Waymo said its Robotaxis is now making 50,000 paid movements per week.
Mariela Moon | Engadget
“If you've seen more Waymo robotaxi in Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles recently, it's because more and more people are driving. The Alphabet-owned company announced via Twitter/X that it is now offering more than 50,000 paid trips per week across three cities. Waymo One operates 24/7 in select areas of the city. “If a company is receiving 50,000 rides a week, that means it receives an average of 300 reservations every hour, or five reservations per minute.”
culture
Technology will probably change us for the worse. Or so we always think.
Timothy Maher | MIT Technology Review
“We have always greeted new technologies with a mixture of fascination and fear,” said Margaret O’Mara, a historian at the University of Washington who focuses on the intersection of technology and American politics. ‘People think, ‘Wow, this is going to change everything in a positive, positive way,’” she says. 'And at the same time, 'It's scary. This will corrupt us or change us in a negative way.'' And then something interesting happens. 'We get used to it,' she says. ‘Novelty wears off and what’s new becomes habit.’”
This is the next generation of smartphone evolution
Mateo Wong | Atlantic Ocean
“earlier [this week], OpenAI announced its latest product, GPT-4o. This product is a faster, cheaper, and more powerful version of the most advanced large language models, and a product that the company is intentionally positioning as the next step in 'natural human-computer interaction.' … Watching the presentation, I got the feeling that we were witnessing the murder of Siri, along with an entire generation of smartphone voice assistants, at the hands of a company most people had never heard of just two years ago.”
Companies are hoping to cash in on the space metals race.
Sarah Scholes | not dark
“My previous companies took the plunge toward similar goals, but went bankrupt about five years ago. But in the years since the first cohort left the stage, 'interest in this field has exploded,' said Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Space Resources Center at the Colorado School of Mines. …Economic conditions have improved as rocket launch costs have decreased, the regulatory environment has improved, and countries have enacted laws specifically allowing space mining. But only time will tell whether the miners of this decade will make money where others have lost money, or whether they will be buried in their business plans.”
What I got wrong about predicting the future of technology for 10 years
Christopher Mims | wall street journal
“Anniversaries are usually a time when people shed tears and talk about their successes. But one thing I've learned covering the technology industry through nearly 500 articles in the Wall Street Journal is that failure is much more beneficial. Especially if it's the kind of mistake many people make. “Here’s what I’ve learned over the past 10 years of being embarrassed in public and having the privilege of hearing about it from our readers.”
the future of food
Lab-grown meat is now on shelves. but there is a problem
Matt Reynolds | mad
“Now you can buy our farmed meat at a store in Singapore. But there's a problem. Chicken sold at Huber's Butchery contains only 3% animal cells. The rest is made from plant proteins. These are the same kinds of ingredients you'll find in the plant-based meats already on supermarket shelves around the world. This can feel a bit like a bait and switch. Didn’t raised meat companies promise us real chicken? But now we are getting plant-based products seeded with animal cells? But such criticism would not be entirely fair.”
Image credit: Pawel Czerwinski / Unsplash