That is right now’s version of The Obtain, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a day by day dose of what’s happening on the planet of expertise.
Sam Altman invested $180 million into an organization attempting to delay dying
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 all the time been obscure about the place its cash had come from. Now MIT Know-how Reveal can reveal that the complete 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 getting older, and even reverse it. Learn the complete story.
—Antonio Regalado
When you’d prefer 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 de facto altering lives
Gene modifying is a expertise many individuals are inclined to affiliate with its ethically-fraught means to create designer infants. However that’s additionally a distraction from the actual story of how the expertise is altering individuals’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 all the things from most cancers to HIV and blood ailments, in line with a tally shared with MIT Know-how Overview.
However these first technology of therapies can be massively costly and tough to implement—and so they might be rapidly outmoded by a subsequent technology 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 widespread than both aspect 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 prohibit underage customers’ entry to apps like TikTok. However ByteDance, the mother or father firm of TikTok, isn’t any stranger to these requests. Actually, it has been coping with related authorities pressures in China since no less than 2018. Learn the complete story.
—Zeyi Yang
Zeyi’s story is from China Report, his weekly e-newsletter protecting China. Join to obtain it in your inbox each Tuesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to search out you right now’s most enjoyable/necessary/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.
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 legislation might derail generative AI. (Insider $)
+ ChatGPT is all over the place. Right here’s the place it got here from. (MIT Know-how Overview)
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 gasoline pipelines might be mounted. (MIT Know-how Overview)
3 How the FBI pushed for extra highly effective facial recognition
It might be used to gasoline an unlimited surveillance community. (WP $)
+ Faked CCTV footage is on the rise, too. (Wired $)
+ South Africa’s personal surveillance machine is fueling a digital apartheid. (MIT Know-how Overview)
4 Crypto startups are scrambling for funding
Occasions are more durable than ever since issues went south for the business’s favourite financial institution. (The Data $)
5 Meta’s massive language mannequin been leaked on 4Chan
It’s the primary mannequin from a significant firm to leak. (Motherboard)
+ Why Meta’s newest massive language mannequin survived solely three days on-line. (MIT Know-how Overview)
6 Japan was pressured to explode its personal rocket
The automobile’s second engine didn’t ignite throughout takeoff. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s subsequent in house. (MIT Know-how Overview)
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 nearly 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 should be actual to get views. (MIT Know-how 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 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?
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 business stays largely a straight, white man’s world.
It wasn’t all the time this fashion. Software program programming as soon as was an nearly fully feminine occupation. As lately as 1980, ladies held 70% of the programming jobs in Silicon Valley, however the ratio has since flipped fully. 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 fully. 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 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 pictures of a cheetah cub and a pet are the cutest factor you’ll see right now.
+ When you take pleasure in nosing via tech executives’ emails, this Twitter account is the one for you.
+ The ten issues that actor Jeremy Sturdy can’t stay with out are sometimes unhinged.
+ This story despatched a shiver down my backbone.
