🦾 OpenAI aims to solve AI alignment in four years
OpenAI forms a team to align superintelligent AI with human values. And the company is dedicating 20 percent of OpenAI's computing power to it.
💉 A leap forward in the battle against malaria: 18 million vaccine doses for 12 African nations
Over the last three years, a significant decrease in child deaths due to malaria was observed, owing to the world's first malaria vaccine. Now 12 African countries are to receive 18 million doses of the malaria vaccine.
🌳 Making paper more sustainable with genetically edited wood
A team of researchers uses CRISPR gene-editing tools to grow engineered poplar trees with reduced lignin content. Reduction of lignin content could significantly lower papermaking pollution and save the industry billions of dollars.
🎨 AI art generation creates a revolution in protein design
AI tools are transforming the creation of custom proteins into a mainstream science.
✍️ The Roots of Progress Fellowship: Writing course for progress bloggers
An 8-week online program for budding progress writers. Application deadline August 11. Open for non-US participants.
👩🔬 US destroys its last chemical weapons
All signatories of the Chemical Weapons Convention have now destroyed their stockpiles.
☄️ Avi Loeb's deep sea expedition retrieves first interstellar material (is it alien?)
The expedition is part of a scientific research program to obtain high-quality data on UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) and interstellar objects.
🌏 Global inequality is actually decreasing
Despite frequent claims of rising inequality, global inequality is actually decreasing. Around the end of the Cold War, global inequality reached its zenith with a Gini index score of 69.4 in 1988. By 2018, this figure had fallen to 60.1, a level last seen at the end of the 19th century.
👩💻 IBM's quantum breakthrough - real-world applications within two years
IBM's quantum computer successfully completes a 'benchmark' experiment. Researchers work around quantum noise to get reliable results. The achievement suggests quantum computers could have practical applications within two years.