Technology and News
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+ Scientists have found a way to mature eggs from transgender men in the lab. It could offer them new ways to start a family—without the need for distressing IVF procedures. Read the full story. + How reproductive technology is changing what it means to be a parent. Advances could lead to babies with four … Read more
The result is a breakthrough for a technique known as imitation learning, in which neural networks are trained how to perform tasks by watching humans do them. Imitation learning can be used to train AI to control robot arms, drive cars or navigate webpages. There is a vast amount of video online showing people doing … Read more
His parents told a court that they wanted to keep the possibility of using the sperm to eventually have children that would be genetically related to Peter. The court approved their wishes, and Peter’s sperm was retrieved from his body and stored in a local sperm bank. We have the technology to use sperm, and … Read more
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The US and China are pointing fingers at each other over climate change The UN climate conference wrapped up over the weekend after marathon negotiations that ran way over. The most notable outcome was the … Read more
Why it matters As I wrote about a couple of weeks ago in the newsletter, one of the major discussions at COP27 was about whether richer countries should help poorer, more vulnerable nations pay for the impacts of climate change. Climate disasters were top of mind this year, especially after devastating flooding in Pakistan killed … Read more
The trouble is, the types of data typically used for training language models may be used up in the near future—as early as 2026, according to a paper by researchers from Epoch, an AI research and forecasting organization. The issue stems from the fact that, as researchers build more powerful models with greater capabilities, they … Read more
China recently published a draft law on its forthcoming social credit system, which will eventually guide how the country builds it. The system is intended to promote trustworthiness in business, education, and almost every other aspect of life. How it will actually achieve this is far from straightforward. One example of the social credit system’s … Read more
Learning to play Diplomacy is a big deal for several reasons. Not only does it involve multiple players, who make moves at the same time, but each turn is preceded by a brief negotiation in which players chat in pairs in an attempt to form alliances or gang up on rivals. After this round of … Read more
This is just one incident, but as the idea of building social creditworthiness increasingly seeps into other regulations, it reveals the risks of standardizing a practice wherein the government makes moral judgments for its people. Just last week, China’s Cyberspace Administration finalized a regulation entirely dedicated to “online comments,” which I covered when it was … Read more
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Here’s why China’s new social credit law matters It’s easier to talk about what China’s social credit system isn’t than what it is. Ever since 2014, when China announced plans to build it, … Read more