The Download: how to connect the US’s grids, and OpenAI’s new voice mode [MIT Tech Review]

View Article on MIT Tech Review

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.

Why one developer won’t quit fighting to connect the US’s grids

Michael Skelly hasn’t learned to take no for an answer. For much of the last 15 years, the energy entrepreneur has worked to develop long-haul transmission lines to carry wind power across the Great Plains, Midwest, and Southwest. But so far, he has little to show for the effort.

Skelly has long argued that building such lines and linking together the nation’s grids would accelerate the shift from coal- and natural-gas-fueled power plants to the renewables needed to cut the pollution driving climate change. But his previous business shut down in 2019, after halting two of its projects and selling off interests in three more.

Skelly contends he was early, not wrong, and that the market and policymakers are increasingly coming around to his perspective. After all, the US Department of Energy just blessed his latest company’s proposed line with hundreds of millions in grants. Read the full story.

—James Temple

OpenAI released its advanced voice mode to more people. Here’s how to get it.

OpenAI is broadening access to Advanced Voice Mode, a feature of ChatGPT that allows you to speak more naturally with the AI model. It allows you to interrupt its responses midsentence, and it can sense and interpret your emotions from your tone of voice and adjust its responses accordingly. 

Users who’ve been able to try it have largely described the model as an impressively fast, dynamic, and realistic voice assistant—which has made its limited availability particularly frustrating to some other OpenAI users. This is the first time the company has promised to bring the new voice mode to a wide range of users. Here’s what you need to know.

—James O’Donnell

An AI script editor could help decide what films get made in Hollywood

Every day across Hollywood, scores of film school graduates and production assistants work as script readers. Their job is to find the diamonds in the rough from the 50,000 or so screenplays pitched each year and flag any worth pursuing further. 

Now the film-focused tech company Cinelytic, which works with major studios like Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures to analyze film budgets and box office potential, aims to offer script feedback with generative AI. 

It takes its new tool Callaia less than a minute to compile a synopsis, a list of comparable films, grades for areas like dialogue and originality, and actor recommendations. Cool idea, but is it any good? Read the full story.

—James O’Donnell

The must-reads

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

1 The star witness in the FTX case has been sentenced to two years in prison
 Caroline Ellison got off lightly in exchange for her extensive cooperation. (CNBC)
+ In contrast, Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years earlier this year. (FT $)
+ Her help has been credited with helping to recover customer assets. (The Verge)

2 A Chinese-funded US VC fund is under scrutiny from the FBI
There are fears it may have passed trade secrets to Beijing. (FT $)
+ Hone Capital has invested in heavy-hitters including Stripe. (TechCrunch)

3 CrowdStrike’s CEO apologized to US Congress over the catastrophic outage
The crash highlighted the dangers of relying on single vendors. (WP $)
+ It’s facing legal action from its disgruntled shareholders. (Bloomberg $)+ The system failure affected millions of PCs across the world. (MIT Technology Review)

4 A bold plan to refreeze the Arctic may just work
Trials pumping seawater over existing ice appear have proved successful. (New Scientist $)
+ Europe is running rings around the US in terms of heat pump adoption. (The Atlantic $)

5 Huge data centers are springing up across Latin America
And local communities are paying the price. (The Guardian)
+ Energy-hungry data centers are quietly moving into cities. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Why Mark Zuckerberg washed his hands of politics
He regrets some of the political posturing he dabbled in during his 20s. (NYT $)
+ Meta isn’t giving up on giving its chatbots famous voices. (Insider $)

7 Be wary of Google Images of risky mushroom species
They could be AI-generated and look nothing like the real thing. (404 Media)
+ Director and AI-embracer James Cameron has joined Stability AI’s board. (The Verge)

8 You probably don’t need an iPhone 16
How much better can a camera get, really? (New Yorker $) 

9 Resist the temptation to vent about work online
Anything you share on company devices could come back to bite you. (WSJ $)

10 How to save the Earth from a colossal asteroid
Blast it into oblivion using a massive X-ray beam, obviously. (Vice)
+ Earth is probably safe from a killer asteroid for 1,000 years. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about all of the people I hurt. I participated in a criminal conspiracy that ultimately stole billions of dollars from people who entrusted their money with us.”

—Caroline Ellison, a former executive at FTX, apologizes to New York federal court during her sentencing, Bloomberg reports.

The big story

How tracking animal movement may save the planet

February 2024

Animals have long been able to offer unique insights about the natural world around us, acting as organic sensors picking up phenomena invisible to humans. Canaries warned of looming catastrophe in coal mines until the 1980s, for example.

These days, we have more insight into animal behavior than ever before thanks to technologies like sensor tags. But the data we gather from these animals still adds up to only a relatively narrow slice of the whole picture.

This is beginning to change. Researchers are asking: What will we find if we follow even the smallest animals? What could we learn from a system of animal movement, continuously monitoring how creatures big and small adapt to the world around us? It may be, some researchers believe, a vital tool in the effort to save our increasingly crisis-plagued planet. Read the full story. 

—Matthew Ponsford

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.)

+ This night parrot looks like it’s hard some seriously late nights.
+ The Nazgûl morning routine sounds like a great way to start the day.
+ Time for a hypnotic pencil-sharpening video.
+ Spooky season’s starting early this year: we’ve just discovered a new species of ghost shark!