Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology
By Rhiannon Williams • 4.4.23
Hello! Today: what the failure of Harvard's geoengineering experiment tells us about the future of risky climate interventions. Plus: why the US is restarting aging nuclear fleets. Pst—don't forget to join us tomorrow for a free LinkedIn Live session answering all your burning questions about the upcoming total solar eclipse on Monday!
The hard lessons of Harvard's failed geoengineering experiment
In March 2017, at a small summit in Washington, DC, two Harvard professors, David Keith and Frank Keutsch, laid out plans to conduct what would have been the first solar geoengineering experiment in the stratosphere.
The basic concept behind solar geoengineering is that by spraying certain particles high above the planet, humans could reflect some amount of sunlight back into space as a means of counteracting climate change. But critics have argued that an intervention that could tweak the entire planet's climate system is too dangerous to study in the real world.
The single, small balloon experiment came to represent all of these fears—and, in the end, it was more than the researchers were prepared to take on. Last month, a decade after the project was first proposed, Harvard officially announced the project's termination. So what went wrong? And what does that failure say about the latitude that researchers have to explore such a controversial subject? Read the full story.
—James Temple
Why the lifetime of nuclear plants is getting longer
The average age of reactors in nuclear power plants around the world is creeping up. In the US, which has more operating reactors than any other country, the average reactor is 42 years old. Nearly 90% of reactors in Europe have been around for 30 years or more.
Older reactors, especially smaller ones, have been shut down in droves due to economic pressures, particularly in areas with other inexpensive sources of electricity, like cheap natural gas. But there could still be a lot of life left in older nuclear reactors.
Extending the lifetime of existing nuclear plants could help cut emissions and is generally cheaper than building new ones. So just how long can we expect nuclear power plants to last? Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
This story is from The Spark, our weekly climate and energy newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday.
The National Reconnaissance Office Director's Innovation Initiative (DII) funds cutting-edge scientific research in a high-risk, high-payoff environment to discover innovative concepts and creative ideas that transform overhead intelligence capabilities and systems for future national security intelligence needs. The program seeks the brightest minds and breakthrough technologies from industry, academia, national laboratories, and U.S. government agencies. The DII offers unclassified and classified opportunities.
I've combed the internet to find you today's most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Google is considering charging for its AI-powered search It would be the biggest-ever shake-up of its search engine business. (FT $) + Google has never paywalled any element of search before. (Bloomberg $) + Why you shouldn't trust AI search engines. (MIT Technology Review)
2 Israel used AI to identify 37,000 potential Palestinian targets The system rapidly processed masses of data to list men it said were linked to Hamas. (The Guardian) + Inside the messy ethics of making war with machines. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Banks and financial services are being targeted by deep fakes Bad actors are increasingly turning to AI to impersonate customers and steal money. (WSJ $)
4 Microsoft claims to have made the most reliable quantum computer yet It's able to correct its own errors, which is a significant step forward. (New Scientist $) + Quantum computing is taking on its biggest challenge: noise. (MIT Technology Review)
5 X is restoring blue checks to influential users Much to the surprise of the account holders. (WP $)
6 NASA is taking moon buggy design suggestions Three firms are locked in competition to build the futuristic vehicles. (NYT $) + The rovers will operate even when astronauts are not on the moon. (WP $) + Future space food could be made from astronaut breath. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Cryptographers explain how they cracked the Zodiac Killer cipher After it stumped experts for 51 years. (404 Media)
8 Chinese netizens are mourning deceased loved ones with AI Through digital avatars and audio voice recreations. (The Guardian) + Mourners would do well to temper their expectations of these grief tools. (Undark Magazine) + Technology that lets us "speak" to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready? (MIT Technology Review)
9 Cultured quail meat has been approved for sale in Singapore It's the brainchild of the same company that created a wooly mammoth meatball. (Bloomberg $) + Here's what a lab-grown burger tastes like. (MIT Technology Review)
10 Brands are worried that ChatGPT hates them A negative write-up from the chatbot definitely falls into the 'bad publicity' category. (Fast Company $)
Quote of the day
"It has eaten our world. It will eat everyone else's world."
—Bill Boulding, dean of Duke's Fuqua School, explains to the Wall Street Journal why business schools have been forced into integrating AI into every aspect of their teaching.
The big story
Millions of coders are now using AI assistants. How will that change software?
December 2023
Two weeks into the coding class he was teaching at Duke University in North Carolina this spring, Noah Gift told his students they'd no longer be working with Python, one of the most popular entry-level programming languages. Instead, they'd be using an AI tool called Copilot, a turbocharged autocomplete for computer code, to use Rust, a language that was newer, more powerful, and much harder to learn.
Gift isn't alone. Ask a room of programmers if they use Copilot, and many now raise a hand. Like ChatGPT with education, Copilot is up-ending an entire profession by giving people new ways to perform old tasks.
With Microsoft and Google about to embed similar AI models into office software used by billions around the world, it's worth asking exactly what these tools do for programmers. And just how big a difference will they make? Read the full story.
—Will Douglas Heaven
We can still have nice things
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Top image credit: STEPHANIE ARNETT/MITTR | SCOPEX (DEVICE)
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