That is immediately’s version of The Obtain, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a day by day dose of what’s occurring on the earth of expertise.
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 common 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 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 old, and even reverse it. Learn the total story.
—Antonio Regalado
In case 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 basically altering lives
Gene modifying is a expertise many individuals are inclined to affiliate with its ethically-fraught capability to create designer infants. However that’s additionally a distraction from the true 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 pieces from most cancers to HIV and blood ailments, based on a tally shared with MIT Know-how Evaluate.
However these first technology of therapies might be vastly costly and tough to implement—and so they may very well be rapidly outdated by a subsequent technology of improved modifying medication. Learn the total story.
—Antonio Regalado
How China takes excessive measures to maintain teenagers off TikTok
The American individuals and the Chinese language individuals have rather more in frequent than both aspect likes to confess. Take the shared concern about how a lot time youngsters 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 guardian firm of TikTok, is not any stranger to these requests. The truth is, it has been coping with comparable authorities pressures in China since not less than 2018. Learn the total story.
—Zeyi Yang
Zeyi’s story is from China Report, his weekly e-newsletter masking China. Enroll to obtain it in your inbox each Tuesday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to search out you immediately’s most enjoyable/essential/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.
1 Google developed a strong chatbot years earlier than ChatGPT
Nonetheless, it bought 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 in all places. Right here’s the place it got here from. (MIT Know-how Evaluate)
2 A professional-Ukrainian group could 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 mounted. (MIT Know-how Evaluate)
3 How the FBI pushed for extra highly effective facial recognition
It may very well be used to gas 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 Evaluate)
4 Crypto startups are scrambling for funding
Occasions are harder than ever since issues went south for the business’s favourite financial institution. (The Info $)
5 Meta’s massive language mannequin been leaked on 4Chan
It’s the primary mannequin from a serious firm to leak. (Motherboard)
+ Why Meta’s newest massive language mannequin survived solely three days on-line. (MIT Know-how Evaluate)
6 Japan was compelled to explode its personal rocket
The car’s second engine didn’t ignite throughout takeoff. (Ars Technica)
+ What’s subsequent in house. (MIT Know-how Evaluate)
7 YouTube simply can’t eliminate Andrew Tate
His misogynistic movies preserve being re-uploaded, regardless of an current ban. (The Atlantic $)
8 The hidden dangers of the share economic system
When nearly something will 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 must be actual to get views. (MIT Know-how Evaluate)
10 The work cellphone 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 not too long ago 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 girls, LGBTQ+ individuals, and racial minorities, the business stays principally a straight, white man’s world.
It wasn’t all the time this fashion. Software program programming as soon as was an nearly solely feminine career. As not too long ago as 1980, ladies held 70% of the programming jobs in Silicon Valley, however the ratio has since flipped solely. Whereas many issues contributed to the shift, from the tutorial pipeline to the tiresomely persistent fiction of tech as a gender-blind “meritocracy,” none clarify it solely. What actually lies on the core of tech’s gender drawback is cash. Learn the total story.
—Margaret O’Mara
We will nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre instances. (Obtained 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 images of a cheetah cub and a pet are the cutest factor you’ll see immediately.
+ In case you take pleasure in nosing via tech executives’ emails, this Twitter account is the one for you.
+ The ten issues that actor Jeremy Robust can’t reside with out are sometimes unhinged.
+ This story despatched a shiver down my backbone.
