💾 Techno authoritarianism, Humanoid Robots, and Crypto AI
Today’s pick
The Rise of Techno authoritarianism. If you had to capture Silicon Valley’s dominant ideology in a single anecdote, you might look first to Mark Zuckerberg, sitting in the blue glow of his computer some 20 years ago, chatting with a friend about how his new website, Facebook, had given him access to reams of personal information about his fellow students. By Adrienne LaFrance via The Atlantic
𝕏: Better late than never! @AdrienneLaF @TheAtlantic finally writes the essay every tech journalist should have written since 1/6/21. Tech industry has become a cult, aided by journalists and politicians, with values hostile to the public interest. - Roger McNamee (@Moonalice)
Humanoid Robot Startup Figure AI in Funding Talks With Microsoft, OpenAI. Figure AI is building a humanoid robot to perform hard jobs. Figure AI Inc., a startup developing humanlike robots, is in talks to raise as much as $500 million in a funding round led by Microsoft Corp. and OpenAI, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. By Mark Gurman via Bloomberg
𝕏: Microsoft and OpenAI are discussing investing a combined $100 million into AI robotics startup Figure AI - with the startup seeking a total investment round of $500 million at a valuation around $2 billion. - Mark Gurman (@markgurman)
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The promise and challenges of crypto + AI applications. Many people over the years have asked me a similar question: what are the intersections between crypto and AI that I consider to be the most fruitful? It's a reasonable question: crypto and AI are the two main deep (software) technology trends of the past decade, and it just feels like there must be some kind of connection between the two. vitalik.eth
𝕏: The promise and challenges of crypto + AI applications - Vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin)
GitHub Actions: Introducing the new M1 macOS runner available to open source! GitHub is excited to announce the launch of a new M1 macOS runner! This runner is available for all plans, free in public repositories, and eligible to consume included free plan minutes in private repositories. The new runner executes Actions workflows with a 3 vCPU, 7 GB RAM, and 14 GB of storage VM, which provides the latest Mac hardware Actions has to offer. The GitHub Blog
𝕏: Huge news. Apple silicon is now available, for free, to all open source repositories on @github using Actions - Martin Woodward (@martinwoodward)
Inside the messy ethics of making war with machines. In different war, also possibly just over the horizon, a commander stands before a bank of monitors. An alert appears from a chatbot. It brings news that satellites have picked up a truck entering a certain city block that has been designated as a possible staging area for enemy rocket launches. By Arthur Holland Michel via MIT Technology Review
𝕏: AI recognizing (emotions and) intentions? "DARPA initially wanted URSA to be able to autonomously discern a person’s intent; this feature too was scrapped at the group’s urging." - Mario Guglielmetti (@mario_gug)
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