Amazing Tech Stories from Around the Internet This Week (Through September 7)

This could be the start of the next Amazon robot revolution
Will Knight | Wired
“In 2012, Amazon quietly acquired a robotics startup called Kiva Systems, which dramatically improved the efficiency of e-commerce operations and sparked a broader revolution in warehouse automation. Last week, the e-commerce giant announced another deal that could prove similarly profound, agreeing to hire the founders of Covariant, a startup that has been testing ways for AI to automate much of the picking and handling of a wide range of physical objects.”

Sutskever Strikes AI Gold with Billion-Dollar Backing for Super-Smart AI
Benj Edwards | Ars Technica
“Safe Superintelligence (SSI), recently founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised $1 billion in cash to help develop safe AI systems that far outperform human capabilities, company executives told Reuters. SSI, which currently has 10 employees, plans to use the funds to acquire computing power and hire top talent. It will focus on building a small, highly trusted team of researchers and engineers split between Palo Alto, California, and Tel Aviv, Israel.”

What You Need to Know About the Quantum Network Hidden Under New York
Isaac Schultz | Gizmodo
“For 15 days last December, a complex quantum operation took place deep beneath New York City. Photons of light circulated in an area stretching from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Corona, Queens, creating a 21-mile (34-kilometer) quantum network beneath the city. …(The project) sent half a million photon pairs per second through the cable infrastructure, meaning that over the course of the 15-day experiment, 648 billion photon pairs were passed through the system.”

Roblox Introduces Generative AI That Creates 3D Environments in the Blink of an Eye
Scott J. Mulligan | MIT Technology Review
“Roblox plans to introduce a generative AI tool that will let creators create entire 3D scenes using only text prompts, it announced today. Once it’s up and running, developers on the wildly popular online gaming platform will be able to simply type “Generate desert racetrack,” for example, and the AI ​​will generate it for them. Users will also be able to modify scenes or expand their scope — changing a day scene to night, for example, or swapping a desert for a forest.”

The colossal 20 MW wind turbine is the world’s largest (for now)
Abhimanyu Ghoshal | New Atlas
“With its massive wind rotor diameter of 260-292 m (853-958 ft), it has a maximum wind sweep area of ​​66,966 sq m — that’s larger than 12 NFL football fields. The company has a history of building the largest turbines our oceans have ever seen, and notes that at an average annual wind speed of 8.5 m/s, its new turbine could generate 80 million kWh of electricity; enough, it says, to power the homes of 96,000 people per year.”

Waymo thinks it can overcome robotaxi skepticism with a wealth of safety data
Andrew J. Hawkins | The Verge
“The company’s fully autonomous vehicles have driven 22.2 million miles in four cities. The company says they are safer than human drivers in almost every category. …With the launch of this new safety center, Waymo is also making its methodologies available for download so more outside researchers can look at the raw numbers.”

ETHICS

The impact of artificial intelligence on elections is overestimated
Felix M. Simon, Keegan McBride and Sacha Altay | MIT Technology Review
“The internet is full of pessimistic stories that AI-generated deepfakes will mislead and influence voters, and enable new forms of personalized and targeted political advertising. While such claims are troubling, it’s crucial to look at the evidence. With a significant number of elections this year now behind us, it’s a good time to ask how accurate these assessments have been so far. The initial answer seems to be not very much; early alarmist claims about AI and elections seem to have been blown out of proportion.”

Elon Musk has an off switch
Marina Koren | Atlantic
“This particular feud crystallized a disturbing truth that becomes more apparent by the day: Musk is becoming an internet god. The internet and space-based social media are a powerful combination, and their control by one person is unprecedented — and alarming in the same way that the federal government is restricting online speech through a sweeping executive order.”

GADGETS

The extraordinary Paper Pro is as extraordinary as it is luxurious
Alex Cranz | The Verge
“You probably don’t need the Remarkable Paper Pro. It’s too luxurious. You know those sports cars that look like spaceships but run into streetlights if you sneeze? That’s the luxury I’m talking about. This is the hypercar of E Ink note-taking devices. It’s got a headlight! It’s got color! It’s got an 11.8-inch display! It’s got the best keyboard form factor available today! And it’s got a totally bold display choice.”

Image Source: Shubham Dhage / Unsplash