That is in the present day’s version of The Obtain, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a day by day dose of what’s occurring on this planet of know-how.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into an organization making an attempt to delay loss of life
When a startup referred to 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 the whole 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 complete story.
—Antonio Regalado
In the event you’d prefer to learn extra about OpenAI:
+ Learn the within story of how ChatGPT was constructed from the individuals who made it.
+ Sam Altman: That is what I realized from DALL-E 2.
Neglect 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 means to create designer infants. However that’s additionally a distraction from the true story of how the know-how is altering individuals’s lives by way of 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 little thing from most cancers to HIV and blood ailments, in keeping with a tally shared with MIT Expertise Overview.
However these first era of therapies shall be vastly costly and difficult to implement—they usually may very well be rapidly outmoded by a subsequent era of improved modifying medicine. Learn the complete story.
—Antonio Regalado
How China takes excessive measures to maintain teenagers off TikTok
The American individuals and the Chinese language individuals have way 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 may limit underage customers’ entry to apps like TikTok. However ByteDance, the dad or mum firm of TikTok, isn’t any stranger to these requests. In reality, it has been coping with comparable authorities pressures in China since at the least 2018. Learn the complete story.
—Zeyi Yang
Zeyi’s story is from China Report, his weekly e-newsletter protecting China. Enroll to obtain it in your inbox each Tuesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to seek out you in the present day’s most enjoyable/necessary/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 principle, copyright legislation may derail generative AI. (Insider $)
+ ChatGPT is in every single place. Right here’s the place it got here from. (MIT Expertise Overview)
2 A professional-Ukrainian group might have orchestrated the Nord Stream pipeline assault
However there’s no proof that Ukrainian officers had been concerned. (NYT $)
+ Ukraine has denied any involvement within the assault final 12 months. (BBC)
+ Right here’s how the Nord Stream gasoline pipelines may very well be fastened. (MIT Expertise Overview)
three How the FBI pushed for extra highly effective facial recognition
It may very well be used to gas an enormous surveillance community. (WP $)
+ Faked CCTV footage is on the rise, too. (Wired $)
+ South Africa’s non-public surveillance machine is fueling a digital apartheid. (MIT Expertise Overview)
four Crypto startups are scrambling for funding
Instances are harder than ever since issues went south for the trade’s favourite financial institution. (The Data $)
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 Overview)
6 Japan was compelled to explode its personal rocket
The automobile’s second engine didn’t ignite throughout takeoff. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s subsequent in area. (MIT Expertise Overview)
7 YouTube simply can’t eliminate Andrew Tate
His misogynistic movies maintain being re-uploaded, regardless of an present ban. (The Atlantic $)
eight The hidden dangers of the share financial system
When virtually something could be rented out to strangers, not everyone seems to be well-meaning. (The Guardian)
9 TikTok’s viral drinks go away 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 Overview)
10 The work telephone is making a comeback 
Partly due to firms cracking down on TikTok. (Bloomberg $)
Quote of the day
“I independently made my cash, versus say, inherited an emerald mine.”
—Halli, a just lately 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 drawback?
August 2022
Regardless of the tech sector’s nice wealth and loudly self-proclaimed company commitments to the rights of ladies, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial minorities, the trade stays largely a straight, white man’s world.
It wasn’t at all times this fashion. Software program programming as soon as was an virtually totally feminine career. As just lately 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 drawback is cash. Learn the complete story.
—Margaret O’Mara
We are able to nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre instances. (Bought 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 in the present day.
+ In the event you get pleasure from nosing by way of tech executives’ emails, this Twitter account is the one for you.
+ The 10 issues that actor Jeremy Robust can’t stay with out are usually unhinged.
+ This story despatched a shiver down my backbone.
