The data that powers AI is disappearing fast
Kevin Rouse | The New York Times
“Many of the most important web sources used to train AI models last year restricted their use of data, according to a study released this week by the Data Provenance Initiative, a research group led by MIT. The study, which looked at 14,000 web domains included in three commonly used AI training datasets, found that a “new crisis of consent” is emerging as publishers and online platforms take steps to prevent data collection.”
How One Bad CrowdStrike Update Crashed Computers Worldwide
Lily Hay Newman, Matt Burgess, Andy Greenberg | Wired
“Only a handful of times in history have a single piece of code taken the entire world’s computer systems offline so quickly. The Slammer worm in 2003. Russia’s NotPetya cyberattack targeting Ukraine. North Korea’s self-spreading ransomware, WannaCry. But the ongoing digital catastrophe that has rocked the global internet and IT infrastructure over the past 12 hours appears to have been caused not by malicious code released by hackers, but by software designed to stop hackers.”
Tiny solar drone could stay in the air forever
Matthew Sparks | New Scientist
“Weighing just 4 grams, the drone is the smallest solar-powered aircraft ever flown, thanks to an unusual electrostatic motor and tiny solar panels that generate extremely high voltage. The hummingbird-sized prototype only lasted an hour, but its creators say their approach could result in insect-sized drones that can stay airborne indefinitely.”
How Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Became an AI Gambler with a Steely Eye for Technology
Karen Weiss and Cade Metz | The New York Times
“It may be years before we know if all this actually pays off, but Mr. Nadella sees the AI boom as a moment for his company and the rest of the tech industry. He wants Microsoft, which lagged in the dot-com boom and failed in smartphones, to dominate this new technology.”
Chinese nuclear reactor prevents complete meltdown
Alex Wilkins | New Scientist
“A large-scale nuclear power plant in China is the first in the world to be completely immune to a dangerous meltdown even when its external power supply is completely cut off. … To test this capability, which would be commercially operational in December 2023, Dong and his team shut down both modules of the HTR-PM while they were running at full power, and then measured and tracked how temperatures in other parts of the plant decreased. They found that the HTR-PM naturally cooled down, reaching a stable temperature within 35 hours after the power was removed.”
The future of AI-based coding is here
Will Knight | Wired
“I’m not a skilled coder by any means, but thanks to a free program called SWE-agent, I was able to debug and fix a nagging issue involving misnamed files in several code repositories on the software hosting site GitHub. I pointed SWE-agent to the issue on GitHub, watched as it poked through the code and deduced what was wrong. Once I correctly determined that the root cause of the bug was a line pointing to the wrong file, I traversed the project, found the file, and fixed the code so everything worked as it should.”
Balloons track wildfires by following the wind currents.
Sarah Scoles | MIT Technology Review
“Urban Sky aims to combine the advantages of satellites and aircraft using relatively inexpensive high-altitude balloons. These balloons can fly above the battlefield, away from airspace restrictions, other aircraft, and the fire itself. The system does not put human pilots at risk and uses infrared “It’s a sensor system called HotSpot that provides sharp, real-time pictures with pixels as wide as 3.5 meters.”
Here’s the real reason AI companies simplify their models:
Mark Sullivan | Fast Company
“OpenAI is one of several AI companies that have developed a version of the best ‘base’ model that trades some intelligence for speed and economy. This trade-off could allow more developers to power their apps with AI, and open the door to more complex apps, such as autonomous agents, in the future.”
Could space-based solar power actually become feasible?
Kat Friedrich | Ars Technica
“Is space-based solar power an expensive and risky dream, or a viable way to tackle climate change? Launching solar power from space to Earth could ultimately involve beaming gigawatts of power, but the process could be surprisingly safe and cost-effective, according to experts from Space Solar, the European Space Agency, and the University of Glasgow. But developing that potential will require far more than demonstrator hardware and solving a number of engineering challenges.”
Image credit: Edward Chou / Unsplash
