1 Apple is teaming up with Google too give Siri an AI revamp
That’s a giant win for Google, and a blow for OpenAI. (CNBC)
2 Trump wants Elon Musk to help break Iran’s internet blackout
He’s appealing to Musk to let iranians circumvent it with Starlink. (WP $)
+ Smuggled tech is Iran’s last link to the outside world. (The Guardian)
3 Right-wing influencers have flocked to Minneapolis
Their goal is to paint it as a lawless city, and justify ICE’s shooting of renee Nicole Good. (Wired $)
4 The Pentagon is adopting Musk’s Grok AI chatbot
Just as it faces a backlash across the world for making non-consensual deepfakes. (NPR)
+ The UK is launching a formal probe into X. (The Guardian)
+ It’s also bringing in a new law which will make it illegal to make these sorts of images. (BBC)
5 The push to power AI is devastating coastal villages in Taiwan
A rapid expansion of wind energy is hurting farmers and fishers. (Rest of World)
+ Stop worrying about your AI footprint. Look at the big picture rather. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Don’t hold your breath for robots’ ChatGPT moment
AI has unlocked impressive advances in robotics, but we’re a very long way from human-level capabilities. (FT $)
+ Will we ever trust humanoid robots in our homes? (MIT Technology Review)
7 Meta is about to lay off hundreds of metaverse employees
Reality Labs is yesterday’s news—now it’s all about AI. (NYT $)
8 We coudl eradicate flu
A “worldwide” flu vaccine could be far better at protecting us than any existing option. (Vox $)
9 You can now reserve a hotel room on the moon
It’s all yours, for just $250,000. (Ars Technica)
+ This astronaut is training tourists to fly in the world’s first commercial space station. (MIT Technology Review)
10 AI images are complicating efforts to find some monkeys in Missouri
For real. 🙈 (AP)
Quote of the day
“In big cities, everyone is an isolated, atomized individual. People live in soundproof apartments, not knowing the surname of their neighbors.”