🧬 A.I. Turns Its Artistry to Creating New Human Proteins

Plus: Elon Musk drove more than a million people to Mastodon, but many aren't sticking around. What the West Doesn't Know About China's Silicon Valley. And more…

Today’s pick

A.I. Turns Its Artistry to Creating New Human Proteins. Last spring, an artificial intelligence lab called OpenAI unveiled technology that lets you create digital images simply by describing what you want to see. Called DALL-E, it sparked a wave of similar tools with names like Midjourney and Stable… (Cade Metz / The New York Times)

NYT Science @NYTScience

Using many of the same techniques that underpin DALL-E and other art generators, scientists are generating blueprints for new proteins — tiny biological mechanisms that can change the way of our bodies behave

nyti.msA.I. Turns Its Artistry to Creating New Human ProteinsInspired by digital art generators like DALL-E, biologists are building artificial intelligences that can fight cancer, flu and Covid.

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Elon Musk drove more than a million people to Mastodon, but many aren't sticking around. The number of active users on the Mastodon social network has dropped more than 30% since the peak and is continuing a slow decline, according to the latest data posted on its website. There are around 1.8 million active users in the first week of… (Josh Nicholas / The Guardian)

Gabe Rivera @gaberivera

The open source and federated aspects of Mastodon are inspiring and cool, but the cargo cult mentality in its "community" leading it to forgo key features because they supposedly made Twitter bad seems like a big obstacle to success. (Features like search, QTs, algorithmic feed)

Techmeme @Techmeme

The number of active users on Mastodon dropped from a peak of over 2.5M in early December 2022 to about 1.8M in the first week of January 2023 (@joshcnicholas / The Guardian) https://t.co/msDr5IQjId https://t.co/Chnwv2s8ox

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What the West Doesn't Know About China's Silicon Valley. Novelist Ning Ken first saw Beijing's Zhongguancun neighborhood in 1973 as a 14-year-old on a school trip to the Summer Palace, former imperial gardens looted by European troops during the Opium Wars. “At that time, once you passed the zoo… (Jennifer Conrad / WIRED)

WIRED Gadget Lab @gadgetlab

Novelist Ning Ken’s history of Beijing’s Zhongguancun district shows how two generations of professors and tech entrepreneurs helped make the country more open.

trib.alWhat the West Doesn’t Know About China’s Silicon ValleyNovelist Ning Ken’s history of Beijing’s Zhongguancun district shows how two generations of professors and tech entrepreneurs helped make the country more open.

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Apple reportedly set to announce 'Reality Pro' VR headset this spring and will ship it in the fall. Apple will launch a long-awaited mixed-reality headset in the spring, and ship the product by fall 2023, Bloomberg reported recently. The report follows Ming-Chi Kuo's call last week that software and hardware issues had forced Apple to delay… (Rohan Goswami / CNBC)

CNBC @CNBC

Apple reportedly set to announce 'Reality Pro' VR headset this spring and will ship it in the fall

cnb.cxApple reportedly set to announce ‘Reality Pro’ VR headset this spring and will ship it in the fallApple’s mixed reality headset is slated for a spring launch and fall shipment, after an analyst anticipated the headset would be delayed last week.

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Microsoft looking at OpenAI's GPT for Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint. Microsoft has been reportedly experimenting with building OpenAI's language AI technology into its Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook apps. The Information reports that Microsoft has already incorporated an unknown version of OpenAI's text-generating… (Tom Warren / The Verge)

Tom Warren @tomwarren

Microsoft is reportedly looking at OpenAI's GPT models for Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. This could improve Outlook search, PowerPoint images, and even the ability to generate emails based on simple queries. Details here:

theverge.comMicrosoft is looking at OpenAI’s GPT for Word, Outlook, and PowerPointMicrosoft also working on ChatGPT-like features for Bing.

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