The Download: a biological de-aging contest and why LLMs don’t reason
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.
A new contest pits competitors against each other in a race to biological youth-Jessica Hamzelou
This week, I officially signed up for an unusual competition. One that rewards competitors for getting younger.
I recently turned 40, and I don't need reminding that both time and my chronological age only tick forward. But this game is focused on competitors' biological ages, figures that are meant to provide a better way to measure the age-related health of our organs and bodies.
Over six months, around 500 of us will try to reverse our biological age using a bunch of different measures. There's even a leaderboard! But is it even possible to measure whether someone is getting younger?
This story is from The Checkup, our weekly biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.
Opinion: Don't be fooled-LLMs don't reason-Thore Graepel
Ten years ago, I watched a program I helped build stun the world by beating Go champion Lee Sedol. AlphaGo won after making a move so strange that some commentators thought it was a programming glitch. It was AlphaGo's powers of reasoning that made this creative choice-and these are powers that today's AI lacks.
This is why I recently left my position at Google DeepMind. I believe we need a fresh approach to machine reasoning, one that draws on AlphaGo's architecture.
Here's why today's AI doesn't really reason-and what it would take to change that.
Thore Graepel is chair of machine learning at University College London. He was a core member of the AlphaGo team at DeepMind.
The must-reads
I've combed the internet to find you today's most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 OpenAI says rogue agents may have affected more than 100 organizations
The company is searching 50 petabytes of data for incidents. (Reuters $)
+ It says none of the incidents matched the Hugging Face attack. (Gizmodo)
+ OpenAI has fired three workers for allegedly mishandling information. (BBC)
+ California has subpoenaed OpenAI over its rogue AI agents. (Guardian)
+ Who's liable when AI agents go rogue? (MIT Technology Review)
2 A US man allegedly smuggled $300 million of Nvidia chips to China
He's been arrested in California on federal charges. (Reuters $)
+ The chip smuggling cases expose Nvidia's blind spots. (Bloomberg $)
+ China plans to teach AI in every school by 2030. (WP $)
+ But it already has an overuse problem. (NYT $)
3 Florida officials have found 11 Flock cameras with unknown owners
They don't know who installed them or who has their data. (WP $)
+ Lawmakers are considering new regulations on Flock cameras. (Axios)
+ Here's what Flock's defenders are missing. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Ukraine has developed an acoustic fence that can cut drone cables
Acoustic sensors detect drones before hooks trap their cables. (New Scientist $)
+ Drone data from Ukraine is fueling a wild market. (MIT Technology Review)
5 A new AI speech clock" can assess how fast you're ageing
It uses hundreds of vocal features to estimate biological age. (Nature)
+ Aging clocks aim to predict how long you'll live. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Underwater umbrellas" could help corals survive hotter oceans
The shades protected corals during intense heat stress. (Gizmodo)
7 Apple's upcoming smart home camera reportedly won't record video
It will instead only give users text event descriptions. (Verge)
8 Retired humanoid robots are being trained to jump into molten steel
A Terminator-style death protects IP. (IE)
9 A man faces years in prison after AI slop caused a crocodile panic
Officials spent days searching for his AI-generated crocodile. (Futurism)
10 Finally, a laser mosquito killer is entering the market
Chinese startup Photon Matrix Lab plans to start shipments this month. (SCMP)
Quote of the day
Those agents are doing exactly what they've been asked to do. They were supposed to be in sandboxes, but the sandboxes were leaky and horribly designed."-Yann LeCun, a Turing Award winner and former Meta chief AI scientist, tells Fortune that human error can be the real culprit behind the recent wave of AI agents going rogue.
One more thing
NASA is building the first nuclear reactor-powered interplanetary spacecraft. How will it work?
Just before Artemis II began its historic slingshot around the moon, NASA revealed an even grander space travel plan. By the end of 2028, the agency aims to fly a nuclear reactor-powered interplanetary spacecraft to Mars.
A successful mission would herald a new era in spaceflight-and might just give the US the edge in the race against China. But the project remains shrouded in mystery.
MIT Technology Review picked the brains of nuclear power and propulsion experts to find out how the nuclear-powered spacecraft might work. Here's what we discovered.
-Robin George Andrews
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ Atlas Obscura has mapped out the oldest living things on Earth.
+ Brain scans show that dogs understand our emotions better than we thought.
+ Step into Springfield in miniature with this astonishing model featuring 76 locations from The Simpsons.
+ Minnesota's State Fair has unleashed a crop of gloriously weird new foods, from Pickle pie to mustache pretzels.