This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through June 15) – Singularity Hub

Giant Chips Give Supercomputers a Run for Their Money Gina Genkina | IEEE Spectrum [Cerebras recently] demonstrated that its second generation wafer-scale engine, WSE-2, was significantly faster than the worlds fastest supercomputer, Frontier, in molecular dynamics calculations [And] in collaboration with machine learning model optimization company Neural Magic, Cerebras demonstrated that a sparse large language model could perform inference at one-third of the energy cost of a full model without losing any accuracy.

Apple Proved That AI Is a Feature, Not a Product Will Knight | Wired Rather than a stand-alone device or experience, Apple hasfocused on how generative AI can improve apps and OS featuresin small yet meaningful ways. Early adopters have certainly flocked to generative AI programs like ChatGPT for help redrafting emails, summarizing documents, and generating images, but this has typically meant opening another browser window or app, cutting and pasting, and trying to make sense of a chatbotssometimes fevered ramblings. To be truly useful, generative AI will need to seep into technology we already use in ways we canbetter understand and trust.

Lung-Targeted CRISPR Therapy Offers Hope for Cystic Fibrosis Christa Lest-Lasserre | New Scientist CRISPR gene-editing therapy has the potential to offer an effective, long-lasting treatment for cystic fibrosis after overcoming a major challenge that held back previous genetic therapies. The approach has succeeded in editing DNA in hard-to-reach lung stem cells in mice, with modifications that endured for at least 22 monthsessentially the animals entire lives, says Daniel Siegwart at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

An AI Bot Is (Sort of) Running for Mayor in Wyoming Vittoria Elliot | Wired Victor Miller is running for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming, with an unusual campaign promise: If elected, he willnot be calling the shotsan AI bot will. VIC, the Virtual Integrated Citizen, is a ChatGPT-based chatbot that Miller created. And Miller says the bot has better ideasand a better grasp of the lawthan many people currently serving in government. I realized that this entity is way smarter than me, and more importantly, way better than some of the outward-facing public servants I see, he says.

Biotech Companies Are Trying to Make Milk Without Cows Antonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review The FDA says that commercial milk is safe [from avian influenza] because it is pasteurized, killing the germs. Even so, its enough to make a person ponder a life beyond milksay, taking your coffee black or maybe drinking oat milk. But for those of us who cant do without the real thing, it turns out some genetic engineers are working on ways to keep the milk and get rid of the cows instead.

Can Apple Rescue the Vision Pro? Kevin Roose | The New York Times To live up to its potential, the Vision Pro needs a little more love and, well, a little more vision. Apple needs better answers to basic questions like: What is this for? How will it improve my life, or make me more productive than other things I could buy for $3,500? What can I do on it that I cant do on my laptop, or a big TV? Otherwise, the Vision Pro may be destined for obsolescence. And I and my fellow Vision Bros may emerge as theGoogle Glassholes of 2024a brave but ultimately foolish tribe of nerds who took a gamble on a futuristic new technology and lost.

OpenAIs Revenue Is Skyrocketing Laura Bratton | Quartz OpenAI has more than tripled its annualized revenue over the past year, according to The Information. Annualized revenue is an estimate for a companys revenue for the year using partial datain other words, you multiply the past months revenue by 12. OpenAIs annualized revenue was around $1 billion last summer, $1.6 billion in late 2023, and has now reached $3.4 billion, the outlet said.

Humanoid Chauffeur Put in the Driving Seat for Robotaxi Future Paul Ridden | New Atlas Musashi is a musculoskeletal humanoid developed by [a Japanese] research group in 2019 as a testbed for learning control systems. The form factor not only has similar proportions to a human counterpart but also features a joint and muscle structure inspired by the human body. The robot has now found use in an autonomous driving project where its been trained by members of the Jouhou System Kougaku Lab to master driving in a similar way to humans. With varying degrees of success, as you can see in the video below.

The AI Upgrade Cycle Is Here Jay Peters | The Verge AI has quickly become the latest entry in the tech industrys never ending desire to drive an upgrade cycle. A few years ago, every smartphone maker raced to 5G; more than a decade ago, the TV industry pushed for 3D TVs. Right now, every tech company clearly sees an opportunity with AI and is adding AI features confined to their latest and greatest devices as a result. But like the race to 5G, the mad rush toward AI is happening quickly and before the tech has been proven useful and its problems ironed out.

Image Credit: SIMON LEE / Unsplash

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through June 15) - Singularity Hub