That is at present’s version of The Obtain, our weekday publication that gives a each day dose of what’s occurring on the earth of know-how.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into an organization making an attempt to delay dying
When a startup known 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 imprecise about the place its cash had come from. Now MIT Expertise Reveal can reveal that your entire 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 older, and even reverse it. Learn the total story.
—Antonio Regalado
When you’d wish to learn extra about OpenAI:
+ Learn the inside story of how ChatGPT was constructed from the individuals who made it.
+ Sam Altman: That is what I realized from DALL-E 2.
Overlook designer infants. Right here’s how CRISPR is admittedly altering lives
Gene modifying is a know-how many individuals are inclined to affiliate with its ethically-fraught potential to create designer infants. However that’s additionally a distraction from the true story of how the know-how is altering folks’s lives via therapies used on adults with critical ailments.
There at the moment are greater than 50 experimental research underway that use gene modifying in human volunteers to deal with every part from most cancers to HIV and blood ailments, in line with a tally shared with MIT Expertise Assessment.
However these first technology of therapies might be massively costly and difficult to implement—they usually could possibly be rapidly outdated by a subsequent technology of improved modifying medicine. Learn the total story.
—Antonio Regalado
How China takes excessive measures to maintain teenagers off TikTok
The American folks and the Chinese language folks have rather more in frequent 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 language home model, Douyin).
A number of US senators have pushed for payments that will limit underage customers’ entry to apps like TikTok. However ByteDance, the mum or dad firm of TikTok, isn’t any stranger to these requests. Actually, it has been coping with related authorities pressures in China since a minimum of 2018. Learn the total story.
—Zeyi Yang
Zeyi’s story is from China Report, his weekly publication masking China. Enroll to obtain it in your inbox each Tuesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to seek out you at present’s most enjoyable/essential/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.
1 Google developed a robust chatbot years earlier than ChatGPT
Nonetheless, it received spooked that the system didn’t meet security and equity requirements.(WSJ $)+ How tech’s AI obsession masks abuses of energy. (Bloomberg $)
+ In idea, copyright regulation may derail generative AI. (Insider $)
+ ChatGPT is all over the place. Right here’s the place it got here from. (MIT Expertise Assessment)
2 A professional-Ukrainian group might have orchestrated the Nord Stream pipeline assault
However there’s no proof that Ukrainian officers have been concerned. (NYT $)
+ Ukraine has denied any involvement within the assault final 12 months. (BBC)
+ Right here’s how the Nord Stream fuel pipelines could possibly be fastened. (MIT Expertise Assessment)
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 personal surveillance machine is fueling a digital apartheid. (MIT Expertise Assessment)
4 Crypto startups are scrambling for funding
Occasions are more durable than ever since issues went south for the trade’s favourite financial institution. (The Info $)
5 Meta’s giant language mannequin been leaked on 4Chan
It’s the primary mannequin from a significant firm to leak. (Motherboard)
+ Why Meta’s newest giant language mannequin survived solely three days on-line. (MIT Expertise Assessment)
6 Japan was pressured to explode its personal rocket
The car’s second engine didn’t ignite throughout takeoff. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s subsequent in house. (MIT Expertise Assessment)
7 YouTube simply can’t eliminate Andrew Tate
His misogynistic movies maintain 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
Customers 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 Expertise Assessment)
10 The work telephone is making a comeback 
Partly due to corporations cracking down on TikTok. (Bloomberg $)
Quote of the day
“I independently made my cash, versus 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 tasks.
The massive story
Why can’t tech repair its gender downside?
Regardless of the tech sector’s nice wealth and loudly self-proclaimed company commitments to the rights of girls, LGBTQ+ folks, and racial minorities, the trade stays largely a straight, white man’s world.
It wasn’t at all times this manner. Software program programming as soon as was an virtually totally feminine career. As not too long ago as 1980, girls held 70% of the programming jobs in Silicon Valley, however the ratio has since flipped totally. Whereas 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 totally. What actually lies on the core of tech’s gender downside is cash. Learn the total story.
—Margaret O’Mara
We are able to nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre occasions. (Acquired 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 present.
+ When you get pleasure from nosing via tech executives’ emails, this Twitter account is the one for you.
+ The ten issues that actor Jeremy Sturdy can’t reside with out are sometimes unhinged.
+ This story despatched a shiver down my backbone.
