The Changing World Order
Drones are the new bombs, code the new currency, chips the new oil, and AI the new everything. Technology has reshaped geopolitics forever and a new world order is being carved in silicon
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If progress has stalled, we need to know why
We need to figure out what drives progress, what might cause it to slow down or stop, and what, if anything, we can do to re-accelerate it.
Cheap AI is causing a power shift in the world’s militaries
The militaries that leverage the low-cost capabilities of AI the most will have a decisive advantage in the future.
Why progress was so slow, for so long
Progress was agonizingly slow for most of human history, but the rapid progress of the last few centuries was not a fluke.
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New smart glasses use sonar to read your lips
New glasses use sonar sensing technology and AI to allow users to control devices via silent, mouthed commands.
AI chatbots don’t actually “know” anything. Can we fix that?
New AI models, called ALMs, could help chatbots stay connected to reality.
Xwing puts autonomous flight on the runway to approval
Autonomous flight startup Xwing has filed for approval to do crewless cargo flights, a first step towards pilotless commercial aviation.
Drone discovers weird underwater volcano off California
An un-crewed sailing drone has discovered an unusually shaped underwater volcano, called a seamount, off California.
ChatGPT: why it will probably remain just a tool that does inefficient work more efficiently
ChatGPT could do inefficient tasks more efficiently — but that doesn’t answer the question of whether the tasks are worth doing at all.
Technology over the long run: See how dramatically the world can change within a lifetime
Bringing to mind how dramatically the world has changed can help us see how different the world could be in a few years or decades.
GPT-4 is surprisingly good at explaining jokes
OpenAI’s latest language model can grasp visual jokes, too.
How Stripe is using GPT-4 to fight fraud
Stripe has incorporated OpenAI’s large language model GPT-4 into their business.
Microsoft unveils AI Copilot for its 365 apps
Microsoft has just unveiled Copilot, a new AI-based tool for its Microsoft 365 apps, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
You can run this text-generating AI on your own devices, no giant servers needed
By fine-tuning a large language model, Stanford researchers have created a text-generating AI you can run for a fraction of the price.
7 creative ways people are already using GPT-4
Users are already demonstrating the wide array of uses the new AI tool may have.
Starlink: SpaceX’s new internet service could be a gamechanger in Africa
SpaceX’s Starlink service is slowly arriving in Africa, starting with Nigeria and Rwanda. It could be a game-changer.
Apple has a secret project to help people with diabetes
Apple is developing tech that could put noninvasive blood glucose monitoring right into its smartwatches, according to a Bloomberg report.
ChatGPT versus AI-enabled Bing. How do they differ?
Microsoft has integrated an AI language tool into its Bing search engine that it claims is more powerful than ChatGPT.
Amazon TVs can now stream directly to cochlear implants
Amazon is making it possible for people with hearing impairments to stream audio from its smart TVs directly into their cochlear implants.
Today, people fear Twitter. In the 1850s, they feared telegrams
Telegrams elicited the exact same concerns, including the spread of misinformation, “addiction” among youth, censorship, and impersonation.
China’s spy balloon: Inflatable eyes in the sky have been used for centuries
Spy balloons remind us that the oldest technologies are still being developed to achieve military effects today.
65% of retail jobs could be automated by 2025
The retail sector has been making ground in the adoption of automation with the use of self checkouts, and robots and AI in supply chains.
Microsoft adds “AI copilot” to Edge web browser
Microsoft is incorporating the tech behind ChatGPT into its Edge web browser, giving users an “AI copilot” to assist them on the internet.
Google announces Bard, a ChatGPT-like AI (Updated)
Google has announced Bard, a conversational AI similar to ChatGPT, and plans to integrate similar AI into its search platform “soon.”
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