Plus: A new Amazon data center could become the US’s most polluting power plant.
Plus: both parties are turning against AI data centers ahead of the midterms.
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.
Teaching a computer to use human language requires an inhuman amount of data. An LLM can easily churn through a hundred thousand times more words than a person will experience in the process of mastering their mother tongue.
This yawning divide between children and machines is called the data efficiency gap. It raises a tantalizing question for cognitive scientists and a challenge for the architects of AI models: how can children still outperform the most linguistically sophisticated machines ever built?
Kids show that it could be possible to learn more with less. Far less. By reverse-engineering the way they learn, scientists hope to create more data-efficient AI models—and perhaps settle enduring questions about language and children’s developing minds.
Here’s how researchers are trying to close the data gap.
As co-owner of a luxury lifestyle firm, Roman Chiporukha has long turned wild vacation dreams into reality. In 2018, he got a phone call that would open up a new frontier: Axiom Space wanted to find citizen explorers willing to pay $50 million each to join the first fully private mission to the International Space Station (ISS), slated for April 2022.
This showed Chiporukha that the sky was no longer the limit; it was the market. He successfully signed up a private astronaut and then launched SpaceVIP in 2021 to offer celestial experiences that mix culture, science, and purpose.
Find out what it takes to become the Expedia of the cosmos.
These stories are from the next issue of our magazine, which is all about kids. Subscribe now to get your copy as soon as it lands.
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—Max Steele, Senior Director of Communications at Everytown, reacts on X to a new poll showing that support for data centers in the US has plummeted.
As worries about climate change and energy independence drown out concerns about meltdowns and radioactive waste, demand for nuclear power has surged. The problem is, building nuclear power plants is expensive and slow.
Now, a new generation of nuclear power technology could reinvent what a reactor looks like—and how it works. Advocates hope it can refresh the industry and help replace fossil fuels without emitting greenhouse gases.
Small modular reactors could bring the assembly line to nuclear development, while new designs are experimenting with different fuels and coolants, from TRISO to molten salt.
Here’s what the next generation of nuclear reactors could look like.
A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.)
+ Welcome to WikiCity, where every building is a Wikipedia article.
+ Animal lovers have built a tiny village for dogs that don’t have homes.
+ Here are 18 ridiculous yet cathartic new words to describe modern tech irritants.
+ Feast your eyes on these Porsche 912s customized for the Japanese police in the 1960s.
Plus: OpenAI has unveiled its long-awaited "super app."
Plus: New York has become the first state to enact a data center moratorium.
Plus: The US has lifted restrictions on Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable models.
Plus: Meta has become the latest firm to say its AI hacked another company.
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Source: MIT Technology Review
