The Download: AI’s self-regulation promises, and predicting the weather [MIT Tech Review]

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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.

AI companies promised to self-regulate one year ago. What’s changed?

One year ago, seven leading AI companies—Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI—committed with the White House to a set voluntary commitments on how to develop AI in a safe and trustworthy way.

The eight commitments included promises to do things like improve the testing and transparency around AI systems, and share information on potential harms and risks.

On the first anniversary of the voluntary commitments, MIT Technology Review asked the AI companies that signed the commitments for details on their work so far. Their replies show that the tech sector has made some welcome progress—with some pretty big caveats. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

To read more about how the US is approaching AI regulation, check out the latest edition of The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter untangling the complicated world of AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

Google’s new weather prediction system combines AI with traditional physics

What’s new: Researchers from Google have built a new weather prediction model that combines machine learning with more conventional techniques, potentially yielding accurate forecasts at a fraction of the current cost. 

Why it matters: The model, called NeuralGCM, bridges a divide that’s grown among weather prediction experts in the last several years. While new machine-learning techniques that predict weather are extremely fast and efficient, they can struggle with long-term predictions. General circulation models, on the other hand, which have dominated weather prediction for the last 50 years, use complex equations to model changes in the atmosphere and give accurate projections, but they are exceedingly slow and expensive to run. The new model attempts to combine the two. Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

CRISPR Babies: Six years later

This Thursday at 12.30pm ET, subscribers can join our editor in chief Mat Honan and senior editor for biomedicine Antonio Regalado for “CRISPR Babies: Six years later”: a live virtual interview with He Jiankui, the Chinese biophysicist whose team created the first gene-edited humans.

Although he served a prison term, he has not given up on his idea that changing genes in an embryo could create people resistant to common diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. Register to attend here. And, if you’re not a subscriber already but want to join us, sign up for a subscription today.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Google isn’t getting rid of third-party cookies after all 
It’s a major pivot that the ad industry will welcome wholeheartedly. (Digiday)
+ Chrome won’t automatically block the trackers, unlike Safari and Firefox. (The Verge)
+ The company’s deal to buy Wiz for an eye-watering sum has fallen apart. (NYT $)

2 Silicon Valley’s Democrats are raring to go
Now Joe Biden has stepped down, they’re ready to throw their support behind Kamala Harris. (NYT $)
+ Harris’ polling data is still not great, though. (Vox)

3 What we learned from Sam Altman’s universal basic income study
No-strings cash provided recipients with far more flexibility. (Vox)
+ The extra money also granted them more autonomy. (Bloomberg $)

4 Condé Nast has ordered Perplexity to stop using its journalism
It’s the second legal demand the AI search engine has received. (The Information $)
+ AI companies have a Donald Trump journalistic problem. (NY Mag $)

5 China is keeping schtum about its supercomputers
Which is making it harder for outsiders to track its progress. (WSJ $)
+ What’s next for the world’s fastest supercomputers. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Waymo is suing people who vandalized its driverless cars
It wants hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation. (Wired $)

7 Beware off-brand weight-loss drugs
Business is booming for Ozempic imitators—but the risks are real. (WP $)
+ Weight-loss injections have taken over the internet. But what does this mean for people IRL? (MIT Technology Review)

8 Greenland’s glacial lakes are bursting
Rising temperatures are not good news for their supportive walls of ice. (New Scientist $)

9 The tech industry’s utopian Californian city is on hold
For at least two years. (NYT $)

10 Teeny-tiny microphones are a content creator’s dream
The smaller the better. (FT $)

Quote of the day

“This does open the floodgates.” 

—A Silicon Valley executive tells Wired how Joe Biden stepping down ahead of the US Presidential election has reinvigorated the tech community’s faith in the Democrats.

The big story

A brief, weird history of brainwashing

April 2024

On a spring day in 1959, war correspondent Edward Hunter testified before a US Senate subcommittee investigating “the effect of Red China Communes on the United States.”

Hunter introduced them to a supposedly scientific system for changing people’s minds, even making them love things they once hated.

Much of it was baseless, but Hunter’s sensational tales still became an important part of the disinformation that fueled a “mind-control race”, with the US government pumping millions of dollars into research on brain manipulation during the Cold War. 

But while the science never exactly panned out, residual beliefs fostered by this bizarre conflict continue to play a role in ideological and scientific debates to this day. Read the full story.

—Annalee Newitz

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 or tweet ’em at me.)

• Would you recognize a collared earthstar if you saw one?
  + Those Go-playing AI models aren’t infallible after all.
  + The pursuit of happiness isn’t always straightforward—why not give these tips a go instead?
  + Can you stop a tornado? The answer is: kind of.