The Download: AI agent infrastructure, and OpenAI’s ambitions
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
These protocols will help AI agents navigate our messy lives
A growing number of companies are launching AI agents that can do things on your behalf—actions like sending an email, making a document, or editing a database. Initial reviews for these agents have been mixed at best, though, because they struggle to interact with all the different components of our digital lives.
Anthropic and Google are among the companies and groups working to fix that. Over the past year, they have both introduced protocols that try to define how AI agents should interact with each other and the world around them. If they work as planned, they could give us a crucial part of the infrastructure we need for agents to be useful. Read our story to learn more.
—Peter Hall
A glimpse into OpenAI’s largest ambitions
—James O’Donnell
OpenAI has given itself a dual mandate: on the one hand, it’s a tech giant rooted in products, including of course ChatGPT, which people around the world reportedly send 2.5 billion messages to each day. But its original mission is as a research lab that will not only create “artificial general intelligence” but ensure that it benefits all of humanity.
My colleague Will Douglas Heaven recently sat down for an exclusive conversation with the two figures at OpenAI most responsible for the latter ambitions. The whole story is worth reading for all it reveals—about how OpenAI thinks about the safety of its products, what AGI actually means, and more—but here’s one thing that stood out to me.
This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter all about the latest goings-on in AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 OpenAI is adding mental health guardrails to ChatGPT
It’s set to give less direct advice, and encourage users to take breaks from lengthy chats. (NBC)
+ What happens when doctors fail to spot AI’s mistakes? (The Verge)
+ OpenAI has released its first research into how using ChatGPT affects people’s emotional well-being. (MIT Technology Review)
2 The US wants to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
And it hopes to do that before Russia and China, who are planning to do exactly the same. (Politico)
+ NASA’s latest mission to the moon just failed. (Engadget)
+ Nokia is putting the first cellular network on the moon. (MIT Technology Review)
3 How to live forever (or at least get rich trying) 👴🤑
Love them or hate them, the people behind the explosion in longevity research are a fascinating bunch. (New Yorker $)
+ Longevity clinics around the world are selling unproven treatments. (MIT Technology Review)
4 Welcome to Silicon Valley’s ‘hard tech’ era
Goodbye, consumer software. Hello, massive military contracts. (NYT $)
+ Phase two of military AI has arrived. (MIT Technology Review)
5 There’s a big problem with the Gulf’s trillion-dollar AI dream
Building data centers in a region that already has water scarcity issues seems…unwise. (Rest of Water)
+ There’s a data center boom in the US desert too. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Google has promised to scale back its energy usage during certain times to reduce stress on the grid. (Quartz $)
6 Tesla’s board awarded about $30 billion of shares to Elon Musk
“Retaining Elon is more important than ever before,” they wrote in a letter to shareholders yesterday. (FT $)
+ Tech CEOs pay packets are reaching stratospheric new records. (WSJ $)
7 What happens if you respond to those scam job texts?
You get exploited, obviously—but you’d be surprised just how weird it can get along the way. (Slate)
8 Why there’s so much uproar over Vogue’s AI-generated ad
It’s the latest flashpoint in the war over when AI should (and shouldn’t) be used. (TechCrunch)
9 Earth’s core seems to be up and leaking out of Earth’s surface 🌋
It’s a finding that’s forcing geoscientists to rethink some long-held assumptions. (Quanta $)
+ How a volcanic eruption turned a human brain into glass. (MIT Technology Review)
10 Could lasers help us see inside people’s heads?
It seems possible, but big hurdles remain to this new method being adopted in clinical settings. (IEEE Spectrum)
Quote of the day
“Hate it! Don’t want anything to do with it.”
—Weezy Simes, a 27-year-old florist, sums up her feelings about AI to Business Insider.
ANDREA D’AQUINO
What happened to the microfinance organization Kiva?
Since it was founded in 2005, the San Francisco-based nonprofit Kiva has helped everyday people make microloans to borrowers around the world. It connects lenders in richer communities to fund all sorts of entrepreneurs, from bakers in Mexico to farmers in Albania. Its overarching aim is helping poor people help themselves.
But back in August 2021, Kiva lenders started to notice that information that felt essential in deciding who to lend to was suddenly harder to find. Now, lenders are worried that the organization now seems more focused on how to make money than how to create change. Read the full story.
—Mara Kardas-Nelson
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ I want this guy to draw my portrait.
+ Highly recommend making these lemongrass chicken lettuce wraps. So tasty and easy!
+ This encyclopedia teaches you about ancient gods and forgotten deities from around the world.
+ Some of the architecture in Iran looks breathtakingly beautiful.
