The Download: AI headphone translation, and the link between microbes and our behavior

3 days ago 3

This is today's variation of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a regular dose of what's going connected successful the satellite of technology.

A caller AI translation strategy for headphones clones aggregate voices simultaneously

What’s new: Imagine going for meal with a radical of friends who power successful and retired of antithetic languages you don’t speak, but inactive being capable to recognize what they’re saying. This script is the inspiration for a caller AI headphone strategy that translates the code of aggregate speakers simultaneously, successful existent time.

How it works: The strategy tracks the absorption and vocal characteristics of each speaker, helping the idiosyncratic wearing the headphones to place who is saying what successful a radical setting. Read the afloat story.

—Rhiannon Williams

Your gut microbes mightiness promote transgression behavior

A fewer years ago, a Belgian antheral successful his 30s drove into a lamppost. Twice. Local authorities recovered that his humor intoxicant level was 4 times the ineligible limit. Over the abstraction of a fewer years, the antheral was apprehended for drunk driving 3 times. And connected each 3 occasions, helium insisted helium hadn’t been drinking.

He was telling the truth. A doc aboriginal diagnosed auto-brewery syndrome—a uncommon information successful which the assemblage makes its ain alcohol. Microbes surviving wrong the man’s assemblage were fermenting the carbohydrates successful his fare to make ethanol. Last year, helium was acquitted of drunk driving.

His case, on with respective different technological studies, raises a fascinating question for microbiology, neuroscience, and the law: How overmuch of our behaviour tin we blasted connected our microbes? Read the afloat story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This nonfiction archetypal appeared successful The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s play biotech newsletter. To person it successful your inbox each Thursday, and work articles similar this first, sign up here.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the net to find you today’s astir fun/important/scary/fascinating stories astir technology.

1 How the Gates Foundation volition end
Bill Gates volition upwind it down successful 2045, aft distributing astir of his remaining fortune. (NYT $)
+ He estimates he’ll springiness distant $200 cardinal successful the adjacent 20 years. (Semafor)
+ The instauration is shuttering respective decades earlier than helium expected. (BBC)

2 US Customs and Border Protection volition nary longer support large women
It’s rolled backmost policies designed to support susceptible people, including infants. (Wired $)
+ The US wants to usage facial designation to place migrant children arsenic they age. (MIT Technology Review)

3 DOGE is readying bundle to turbo-charge wide layoffs
After immoderate 260,000 authorities workers person already been fto go. (Reuters)
+ DOGE’s mathematics doesn’t adhd up. (The Atlantic $)
+ One of its biggest inspirations is nary instrumentality of the program. (WP $)
+ Can AI assistance DOGE slash authorities budgets? It’s complex. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Scientists are utilizing AI to foretell crab endurance outcomes
In immoderate cases, it’s outperforming clinicians’ forecasts. (FT $)
+ Why it’s truthful hard to usage AI to diagnose cancer. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Apple is reportedly moving connected caller chips for its astute glasses
But we’ll person to hold a fewer much years. (Bloomberg $)
+ What’s adjacent for astute glasses. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Silicon Valley has a imaginativeness for the aboriginal of warfare
Military technologies are nary longer solely the sphere of governments. (Bloomberg $)
+ Palmer Luckey connected the Pentagon’s aboriginal of mixed reality. (MIT Technology Review)

7 AI companies don’t privation regularisation immoderate more
Just a fewer abbreviated years aft they claimed regularisation was the champion mode of making AI safe. (WP $)

8 Forget SEO, GEO is wherever it’s astatine these days
Marketers are scrambling to follow champion Generative Engine Optimization practices present that AI is upending however we hunt the web. (WSJ $)
+ Your astir important lawsuit whitethorn beryllium AI. (MIT Technology Review)

9 AI-generated recruiters are making occupation hunting adjacent worse
Avatars tin glitch retired and stumble implicit their words. (404 Media)

10 A Soviet-era spacecraft is reentering Earth’s atmosphere
More than 50 years aft it misfired connected a travel to Venus. (Ars Technica)
+ The world’s adjacent large biology occupation could travel from space. (MIT Technology Review)

Quote of the day

“The representation of the world’s richest antheral sidesplitting the world’s poorest children is not a beauteous one.”


—Bill Gates lashes retired astatine Elon Musk’s cuts to USAID successful an interrogation with the Financial Times.

One much thing

The large commercialized takeover of debased Earth orbit

NASA designed the International Space Station to alert for 20 years. It has lasted six years longer than that, though it is showing its age, and NASA is presently studying however to safely destruct the abstraction laboratory by astir 2030.

The ISS ne'er truly became what immoderate had hoped: a launching constituent for an expanding quality beingness successful the star system. But it did alteration cardinal probe connected materials and medicine, and it helped america commencement to recognize however abstraction affects the quality body.

To physique connected that work, NASA has partnered with backstage companies to make new, commercialized abstraction stations for research, manufacturing, and tourism. If they are successful, these companies volition bring astir a caller epoch of abstraction exploration: backstage rockets flying to backstage destinations. They’re already readying to bash it astir the moon. One day, Mars could follow. Read the afloat story.

—David W. Brown

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