What mysteries might a time-lapse of a single cell unlock, and how might it transform our understanding of disease and the body’s most granular processes—over the long term and in real time, to fuel new medicines? On Thursday, a powerhouse academic trio of the Allen Institute, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), and the University of Washington announced the Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology (SEAHub) to take on that exact groundbreaking work: a collaborative to develop biotech
So, what’s your p(doom) score?
The term that began as a half-serious inside joke on tech message boards to describe the odds that AI destroys humankind, has broken into the mainstream. The buzzword is p(doom), and it provides both AI experts and average know-nothings a common scale to describe where they stand on the question of whether AI is going to kill us. It’s “the morbid new statistic that is sweeping Silicon Valley,” the New York Times writes.
Meta is rolling out end-to-end encryption for calls and messages across its Facebook and Messenger platforms, the company announced Thursday.
Such encryption means that no one other than the sender and the recipient—not even Meta—can decipher people’s messages. Encrypted chats, first introduced as an optional feature in Messenger in 2016, will now be the standard for all users going forward, according to Messenger head Loredana Crisan.
“Thi
Last week, ulltra-fast fashion brand Shein confidentially filed for an IPO. The eleven year-old company is known for creating very low cost garments that it can produce quickly for its predominantly Gen Z customers. Today the company has a private-market valuation of $66 billion but is seeking a valuation as h
Four years ago, The Walt Disney Co. seized control of its streaming destiny. Instead of continuing to provide content to the likes of Netflix, it rounded up its storied brands—Disney itself, Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, National Geographic—and folded them into a family-friendly video platform called Disney Plus. The result of intensive planning and investment, the service launched with great expectations and met them, signing up 10 million subscribers on its launch day. It re
Jenny Morant has had a tough year. In Manhattan Beach, California, where she works as a real estate agent, it’s been impossible to sell a house. What’s driving the market right now? “We’re down to divorces, maybe marriages, maybe babies, and job relocation,” Morant says.
Interest rates are largely to blame: After the Fed raised rates to 5.5% in July and then held them there, the mortgage rate soared. In October, the national average for a 30-year f
Artificial intelligence may seem like a euphemism for institutionalized bias rather than a tool to eradicate it based on the (well-deserved) media attention this issue has garnered. And indeed, AI-powered platforms have committed mammoth grievances.
We’ve witnessed Amazon’s infamous hiring tool, Google’s faulty facial-recognition program, and Apple’s obtuse credit card, among others.
However,
What would it look like for the Defense Department to be able to lean on the commercial space community in times of need? That’s the question examined by a new report from the RAND Corporation released last week.
The paper, titled “A Framework for Building a Civil Reserve Space Program,” looks at how the Pentagon has built programs to activate commercial air and sea assets during conflicts, and lays out questions for how a similar partnership in the sp
Google announced on Wednesday a new large language model called Gemini, which has the power of “sight” and “hearing” as well as new learning and reasoning capabilities. What’s more, the company has built a version of the new model to run inside the Android operating system on its Pixel 8 Pro phone. By bringing generative AI to the smartphone, Google is going after its competitor Apple’s main business, and Apple has shown little sign that it’ll
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Google announces Gemini model, which can see and hear
Google was caught flat-footed when OpenAI suddenly released ChatGPT to the public a year ago, and the search giant has been furiously playing catch-up