That is in the present day’s version of The Obtain, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a day by day dose of what’s happening on this planet of know-how.
How ubiquitous keyboard software program places a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of Chinese language customers in danger
For hundreds of thousands of Chinese language individuals, the primary software program they obtain onto gadgets is all the time the identical: a keyboard app. But few of them are conscious that it could make the whole lot they sort weak to spying eyes.
QWERTY keyboards are inefficient as many Chinese language characters share the identical latinized spelling. Because of this, many change to sensible, localized keyboard apps to save lots of time and frustration. In the present day, over 800 million Chinese language individuals use third-party keyboard apps on their PCs, laptops, and cellphones.
However a latest report by the Citizen Lab, a College of Toronto–affiliated analysis group, revealed that Sogou, one of the crucial well-liked Chinese language keyboard apps, had a large safety loophole. Learn the complete story.
—Zeyi Yang
Why we should always all be rooting for boring AI
Earlier this month, the US Division of Protection introduced it’s establishing a Generative AI Job Power, aimed toward “analyzing and integrating” AI instruments comparable to massive language fashions throughout the division. It hopes they might enhance intelligence and operational planning.
However these won’t be the correct use instances, writes our senior AI reporter Melissa Heikkila. Generative AI instruments, comparable to language fashions, are glitchy and unpredictable, and so they make issues up. In addition they have large safety vulnerabilities, privateness issues, and deeply ingrained biases.
Making use of these applied sciences in high-stakes settings may result in lethal accidents the place it’s unclear who or what must be held accountable, and even why the issue occurred. The DoD’s finest guess is to use generative AI to extra mundane issues like Excel, e-mail, or phrase processing. Learn the complete story.
This story is from The Algorithm, Melissa’s weekly e-newsletter supplying you with the within monitor on all issues AI. Join to obtain it in your inbox each Monday.
The ice cores that can allow us to look 1.5 million years into the previous
To higher perceive the function atmospheric carbon dioxide performs in Earth’s local weather cycles, scientists have lengthy turned to ice cores drilled in Antarctica, the place snow layers accumulate and compact over a whole bunch of 1000’s of years, trapping samples of historic air in a lattice of bubbles that function tiny time capsules.
By analyzing these cores, scientists can join greenhouse-gas concentrations with temperatures going again 800,000 years. Now, a brand new European-led initiative hopes to finally retrieve the oldest core but, courting again 1.5 million years. However that spectacular feat continues to be solely step one. As soon as they’ve performed that, they’ll have to determine how they’re going to extract the air from the ice. Learn the complete story.
—Christian Elliott
This story is from the newest version of our print journal, set to go stay tomorrow. Subscribe in the present day for as little as $8/month to make sure you obtain full entry to the brand new Ethics difficulty and in-depth tales on experimental medicine, AI assisted warfare, microfinance, and extra.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the web to search out you in the present day’s most enjoyable/vital/scary/fascinating tales about know-how.
1 How AI received dragged into the tradition wars
Fears about ‘woke’ AI essentially misunderstand the way it works. But they’re gaining traction. (The Guardian)
+ Why it’s not possible to construct an unbiased AI language mannequin. (MIT Expertise Overview)
2 Researchers are racing to know a brand new coronavirus variant
It’s unlikely to be trigger for concern, nevertheless it exhibits this virus nonetheless has loads of tips up its sleeve. (Nature)
+ Covid hasn’t fully gone away—right here’s the place we stand. (MIT Expertise Overview)
+ Why we will’t afford to cease monitoring it. (Ars Technica)
3 How Hilary turned such a monster storm
A lot of it’s right down to unusually scorching sea floor temperatures. (Wired $)
+ The period of simultaneous local weather disasters is right here to remain. (Axios)
+ Individuals are donning cooling vests to allow them to work via the warmth. (Wired $)
4 Mind privateness is ready to turn into vital 
Scientists are getting higher at decoding our mind information. It’s absolutely solely a matter of time earlier than others desire a peek. (The Atlantic $)
+ How your mind information could possibly be used in opposition to you. (MIT Expertise Overview)
5 How Nvidia constructed such an enormous aggressive benefit in AI chips
In the present day it accounts for 70% of all AI chip gross sales—and an excellent higher share for coaching generative fashions. (NYT $)
+ The chips it’s promoting to China are much less efficient because of US export controls. (Ars Technica)
+ These easy design guidelines may flip the chip business on its head. (MIT Expertise Overview)
6 Contained in the complicated world of dissociative identification dysfunction on TikTok
Lowering stigma is nice, however docs worry individuals are self-diagnosing and even imitating the dysfunction. (The Verge)
7 What TikTok may need to surrender to maintain working within the US
This exhibits simply how hole the authorities’ purported data-collection issues actually are. (Forbes)
8 Troopers in Ukraine are taking part in World of Tanks on their telephones
It’s eerily much like the warfare they’re themselves combating, however they are saying it helps them to dissociate from the horror. (NYT $)
9 Conspiracy theorists are sharing mad concepts on what causes wildfires
But it surely’s all only a convoluted strategy to attempt to keep away from having to deal with local weather change. (Slate $)
10 Christie’s by accident leaked the situation of tons of precious artwork 
Seemingly because of the metadata that always mechanically attaches to smartphone pictures. (WP $)
Quote of the day
“Is it going to take individuals dying for one thing to maneuver ahead?”
—An nameless air site visitors controller warns that staffing shortages of their business, plus different elements, are beginning to threaten passenger security, the New York Occasions studies.
The large story
Inside efficient altruism, the place the far future counts much more than the current
October 2022
Since its beginning within the late 2000s, efficient altruism has aimed to reply the query “How can these with means have essentially the most impression on the world in a quantifiable method?”—and provided strategies for calculating the reply.
It’s no shock that efficient altruisms’ concepts have lengthy confronted criticism for reflecting white Western saviorism, alongside an avoidance of structural issues in favor of summary math. And as believers pour even higher quantities of cash into the motion’s more and more sci-fi beliefs, such expenses are solely intensifying. Learn the complete story.
—Rebecca Ackermann
We will nonetheless have good issues
A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction in these bizarre occasions. (Obtained any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)
+ Watch Andrew Scott’s electrifying studying of the 1965 graduation tackle ‘Select Considered one of 5’ by Edith Sampson.
+ Right here’s how Metallica makes positive its stay performances ROCK. ($)
+ Can not cope with this completely ludicrous picket car.
+ Study a extraordinary new instrument known as a harpejji.
