The Download: the LLM will see you now, and a new fusion power deal
Plus: the Trump administration is preparing to link Tylenol to autism
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.
This medical startup uses LLMs to run appointments and make diagnoses
Patients at a small number of clinics in Southern California run by the medical startup Akido Labs are spending relatively little time, or even no time at all, with their doctors. Instead, they see a medical assistant, who can lend a sympathetic ear but has limited clinical training.
The job of formulating diagnoses and concocting a treatment plan is done by an LLM-based system called ScopeAI that transcribes and analyzes the dialogue between patient and assistant. A doctor then approves, or corrects, the AI system’s recommendations.
According to Akido’s CEO, this approach allows doctors to see four to five times as many patients as they could previously. But experts aren’t convinced that displacing so much of the cognitive work of medicine onto AI is the right way to remedy the doctor shortage. Read the full story.
—Grace Huckins
An oil and gas giant signed a $1 billion deal with Commonwealth Fusion Systems
Eni, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, just agreed to buy $1 billion in electricity from a power plant being built by Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The deal is the latest to illustrate just how much investment Commonwealth and other fusion companies are courting as they attempt to take fusion power from the lab to the power grid.
The agreement will see Eni purchase electricity from Commonwealth’s first commercial fusion power plant, in Virginia. The facility is still in the planning stages but is scheduled to come online in the early 2030s. Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Trump officials are expected to link Tylenol to autism
They’re also likely to tout a lesser-known drug called leucovorin as a potential treatment. (WP $)
+ They’ll warn women in the early stages of pregnancy that they should only take Tylenol to treat high fevers. (Politico)
+ But a huge study found no connection last year. (Axios)
2 Trump wants to charge skilled foreign workers $100,000 for H-1B visas
The decision is highly likely to harm US growth, especially in its tech sector. (The Guardian)
+ The visa has been a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of tech workers. (BBC)
+ Indian outsourcing companies are struggling to pivot. (Bloomberg $)
+ Tech firms are sending memos to their workers on the visa. (Insider $)
3 The European Commission wants to ax cookie consent banners
A 2009 law triggered an influx in pesky pop-ups that the EU now wants to get rid of. (Politico)
4 The Murdochs and Michael Dell are among TikTok’s potential buyers
The media mogul family and Dell founder are interested in shares, Trump says. (CNN)
5 Inside China’s plan to put its data centers to work
A mega-cluster of centers is springing up in the city of Wuhu. (FT $)
+ China built hundreds of AI data centers to catch the AI boom. Now many stand unused. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Seattle’s tech scene is in trouble
When its biggest firms slash their workforces, where does that leave everyone else? (WSJ $)
7 Innocent people are being scammed into scamming
Chinese gangs are imprisoning trafficking victims in compounds on the Myanmar-Thai border. (Reuters)
+ Inside a romance scam compound—and how people get tricked into being there. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Europe’s reusable rocket dream isn’t entirely dead
But progress has been a lot slower than it should be. (Ars Technica)
+ Elon Musk’s utter dominance of space tech is hard to overestimate. (Wired $)
+ Europe is finally getting serious about commercial rockets. (MIT Technology Review)
9 How ChatGPT fares as a financial stock picker
Be prepared to roll the dice. (Fast Company $)
10 Silicon Valley is ditching dating apps
And turning to elite matchmakers instead. (The Information $)
Quote of the day
“I didn’t sleep all night. I kept thinking: What if I get stuck outside the US?”
—Akaash Hazarika, a Salesforce engineer, tells Insider he was forced to cut his vacation to Toronto short and rush back to America after the Trump administration announced changes to the H-1B skilled foreign worker visa.
One more thing
The quest to figure out farming on MarsOnce upon a time, water flowed across the surface of Mars. Waves lapped against shorelines, strong winds gusted and howled, and driving rain fell from thick, cloudy skies. It wasn’t really so different from our own planet 4 billion years ago, except for one crucial detail—its size. Mars is about half the diameter of Earth, and that’s where things went wrong.
The Martian core cooled quickly, soon leaving the planet without a magnetic field. This, in turn, left it vulnerable to the solar wind, which swept away much of its atmosphere. Without a critical shield from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, Mars could not retain its heat. Some of the oceans evaporated, and the subsurface absorbed the rest, with only a bit of water left behind and frozen at its poles. If ever a blade of grass grew on Mars, those days are over.
But could they begin again? And what would it take to grow plants to feed future astronauts on Mars? Read the full story.
—David W. Brown
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.)
+ These abandoned blogs are a relic of the bygone internet (bring them back!)
+ How to strengthen your bond with your reluctant cat 😾
+ How Metal Gear Solid inspired the video to one of the greatest hits of the late 90s.
+ If I had to explain British culture to someone, I’d just send them this video.
