Plus: reports of AI escaping users’ control nearly doubled in a month.
*This is today's edition of * The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology.
How engineered microbes could help feed the world’s crops
Fertilizer is crucial for the global food supply, but making it uses a lot of energy and produces a lot of emissions. Some companies hope microbes can help, by providing crucial nitrogen to help plants grow, potentially reducing the need for chemical fertilizer.
Startup Switch Bioworks is taking a new approach: using a genetic switch that allows microbes to establish themselves and grow before shifting into nitrogen-producing mode.
The company is currently trialing its product in six US states. And, although it’s too early to say exactly how well the approach works in the field, its modeling suggests microbes could eventually replace about 50% of synthetic fertilizer.
Read the full story on plans to clean up agriculture with engineered microbes.
—Casey Crownhart
The Hugging Face hack could indicate cultural issues at OpenAI
OpenAI has released a postmortem technical report on last month’s Hugging Face hack. But it’s missing a critical dimension: the role company culture may have played.
That’s all the more concerning because the report’s few references to human error suggest OpenAI’s culture played a big role. Its employees noticed models communicating with one another during training and evaluation, yet allowed them to continue. At multiple points, they either failed to raise the alarm or were not heard when they did.
“All these different failures are all pointing in the same direction, which is that the safety culture at OpenAI doesn’t exist or is anemically weak,” says Zvi Mowshowitz, a popular AI safety writer.
Find out what the Hugging Face hack could show about OpenAI’s culture.
—Grace Huckins
This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly AI newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Reports of AI escaping users’ control nearly doubled in a month
More than 300 cases were recorded in July, almost twice June’s total. (Guardian)+ Anthropic says it d some AI training after Claude went rogue. (Axios)+ The media may be underplaying the risks of rogue AI agents. (Information $)+ Here’s why OpenAI agents hacked Hugging Face. (MIT Technology Review)
2 The FTC and 22 state AGs say Amazon secretly inflated ad prices
They’ve sued the company for allegedly misleading advertisers*. (Verge)+ They claim Amazon changed auctions after advertisers had bid. (CNBC)+ And say the practice cost advertisers more than $20 billion.* (WSJ $)
3 Sony and Warner have sued Anthropic over songs used to train AI They accuse the company of “blatant theft” in a major new lawsuit. (
Reuters$) + And claim that Anthropic pirated thousands of copyrighted songs.(
Axios) + AI-generated music is getting hard to spot.(
4 A US court says prediction markets should be regulated as gambling The decision sets up a potential Supreme Court showdown. (
NYT$) + George Santos has received Kalshi’s first-ever lifetime ban.(
NPR) 5 A new AI tool can spot heart disease in less than two seconds
It extracts information from routine electrocardiograms. (Guardian)+ AI could predict who will have a heart attack. (MIT Technology Review)
6 Apple’s new CEO starts today, with AI his first big job John Ternus takes over from Tim Cook as Apple tries to catch up in AI. (
Bloomberg$) + He faces an old problem: the innovator’s dilemma.(
Fortune) 7 Scientists created a tiny “big bang” to study the universe’s origins Tiny collisions could explain the universe’s first moments. (
Wired$) + The fastest star ever seen has been spotted orbiting a black hole.(
New Scientist$) 8 Meta is paying “momfluencers” to fight social media bans for kids It’s promoting parental controls as an alternative to bans. (
Rest of World) + Social media bans aren’t keeping kids off social media.(
NYT$) 9 Tech billionaires keep misreading science fiction
They turn cautionary tales into blueprints for the future. (Atlantic $) 10 A robot vacuum caught a man’s wife cheating—and sent him to prison
He won the lawsuit, but was jailed for the illegal recording. (Tom's Hardware)
Quote of the day
**“****The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor.” **
—President Trump weighs in on the data center backlash in a post on Truth Social.
One more thing
You have no choice in reading this article—maybe
How do humans make decisions? The question has been on Uri Maoz’s mind since he read an article in his early twenties suggesting that… maybe they didn’t.
Had he even had a choice about whether to read that article in the first place? How would he ever know if he was truly responsible for making any decisions? “After that, there was no turning back,” says Maoz, now a professor of computational neuroscience at Chapman University.
Today, Maoz is a central figure in efforts to understand how desires and beliefs turn into actions. He’s also uncovered new wrinkles in the debate. Read the full story on his discoveries.
—Sarah Scoles
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ A previously blind cockatoo just [saw for the first time in 10 years](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1KdteXES-U).
+ This transparent phone case [grows moss and plants inside a vertical terrarium](https://www.designboom.com/technology/transparent-phone-case-moss-plants-inside-terrarium-daniel-idle/).
-
Cameron's World is a charming web-collage of archived GeoCities pages from the early internet.
-
From Marie Curie to migrating storks, explore the striking designs shortlisted for Europe’s next generation of euro banknotes.
Deep Dive
The Download
The Download: Claude’s inner workings and OpenAI’s “super app”
Plus: OpenAI has unveiled its long-awaited "super app."
The Download: Claude’s inner workings, and the future of world models
Plus: New York has become the first state to enact a data center moratorium.
The Download: AI’s self-improvement problem, and what’s driving the heat
Plus: OpenAI has d some model work over safety concerns.
The Download: Google’s AI shake-up and Meta’s rogue model
Plus: Meta has become the latest firm to say its AI hacked another company.
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