The Obtain: producing AI recollections, and China’s softening tech regulation

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That is as we speak’s version of The Obtain, our weekday e-newsletter that gives a every day dose of what’s happening on this planet of expertise.

Generative AI can flip your most treasured recollections into pictures that by no means existed

As a six-year-old rising up in Barcelona, Spain, through the Forties, Maria would go to a neighbor’s condominium in her constructing when she needed to see her father. From there, she might attempt to attempt to catch a glimpse of him within the jail beneath, the place he was locked up for opposing the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

There isn’t any picture of Maria on that balcony. However she will now maintain one thing prefer it: a faux picture—or memory-based reconstruction, because the Barcelona-based design studio Home Information Streamers places it—of the scene that an actual picture may need captured.The studio makes use of generative picture fashions, similar to OpenAI’s DALL-E, to carry folks’s recollections to life.

The faux snapshots are blurred and distorted, however they’ll nonetheless rewind a lifetime instantly. Learn the complete story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

Why China’s regulators are softening on its tech sector

Understanding the Chinese language authorities’s selections to bolster or suppress a sure expertise is at all times a problem. Why does it favor this sector as a substitute of that one? What triggers officers to all of the sudden provoke a crackdown? The solutions are by no means simple to come back by.

Angela Huyue Zhang, a regulation professor in Hong Kong, has some strategies. She spoke with Zeyi Yang, our China reporter, on how Chinese language regulators nearly at all times swing forwards and backwards between regulating tech an excessive amount of and never sufficient, how native governments have gone to nice lengths to guard native tech firms, and why AI firms in China are receiving extra authorities goodwill than different sectors as we speak. Learn the complete story.

This story is from China Report, our weekly e-newsletter masking tech in China. Enroll to obtain it in your inbox each Tuesday.

+ Learn extra about Zeyi’s dialog with Zhang and how you can apply her insights to AI right here.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the web to search out you as we speak’s most enjoyable/vital/scary/fascinating tales about expertise.

1 We’d like new methods to guage how protected an AI mannequin is
Present evaluation strategies haven’t stored tempo with the sector’s fast improvement. (FT $)
+ Do AI methods want to come back with security warnings? (MIT Expertise Evaluate)

2 Japan has grand hopes of rebuilding its fallen chip business 
And a small farming city has a important position to play. (NYT $)
+ Google is working by itself proprietary chips to energy its AI. (WSJ $)
+ Intel additionally unveiled a brand new chip to rival Nvidia’s stranglehold on the business. (Reuters)

3 Russia canceled the launch of its latest rocket
The failure means the nation is lagging additional behind its area rivals in China and the US. (Bloomberg $)
+ The US is retiring one in all its strongest rockets, the Delta IV Heavy. (Ars Technica)

4 Gaming big Blizzard is returning to China
After hashing out a brand new take care of long-time companion NetEase. (WSJ $)

5 Volkswagen transformed a former Golf manufacturing facility to supply all-electric autos
Its success means that different factories might comply with go well with with out main job losses. (NYT $)
+ Three continuously requested questions on EVs, answered. (MIT Expertise Evaluate)

6 OpenAI is limbering as much as combat quite a few lawsuits
By hiring a few of the world’s high authorized minds to combat claims it breached copyright regulation. (WP $)
+ AI fashions which might be able to “reasoning” are on the horizon—in the event you consider the hype. (FT $)
+ OpenAI’s starvation for information is coming again to chew it. (MIT Expertise Evaluate)

7 San Francisco’s marshlands urgently want extra mud
A brand new mission is optimistic that dumping sediment onto the bay flooring can assist. (Hakai Journal)
+ Why salt marshes might assist save Venice. (MIT Expertise Evaluate)

8 Scientists are utilizing eDNA to trace down troopers’ stays
Not like common DNA, it’s the genetic materials we’re all continuously shedding. (Undark Journal)
+ How environmental DNA is giving scientists a brand new technique to perceive our world. (MIT Expertise Evaluate)

9 We might have lastly solved a cosmic thriller
Nonetheless, not all cosmologists are in settlement. (New Scientist $)

10 Social media loves offended music 🎧
Excessive feelings require a equally intense soundtrack. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“I’d urge everybody to consider AI as a sword, not only a defend, in terms of unhealthy content material.”

—Nick Clegg, Meta’s world affairs chief, performs up AI’s potential to forestall the unfold of misinformation quite than propagate it, the Guardian stories.

The massive story

Inside China’s sudden quest to guard information privateness

August 2020

Within the West, it’s broadly believed that neither the Chinese language authorities nor Chinese language folks care about privateness. In actuality, this isn’t true.

Over the previous couple of years the Chinese language authorities has begun to implement privateness protections that in lots of respects resemble these in America and Europe as we speak.

On the identical time, nevertheless, it has ramped up state surveillance. This paradox has develop into a defining characteristic of China’s rising information privateness regime, and raises a severe query: Can a system endure with robust protections for shopper privateness, however nearly none in opposition to authorities snooping? Learn the complete story.

—Karen Hao

We will nonetheless have good issues

A spot for consolation, enjoyable and distraction to brighten up your day. (Received any concepts? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ The uncommon, blind, bushy mole is a sight to behold.
+ When science fiction authors converse, the world listens.
+ Nice, now the cat piano goes to be caught in my head all day.
+ How you can converse to nearly anybody—do you have to need to, that’s.



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