TikTok’s father or mother firm’s new app reportedly pushed pro-China messaging to Individuals

When Liu Yang began his present job, he discovered it exhausting to return to driving his personal automobile: “I instinctively went for the passenger seat. Or once I was driving, I’d anticipate the automobile to brake by itself,” says the 33-year-old Beijing native, who joined the Chinese language tech large Baidu in January 2021 as a robotaxi driver.

Robotaxi driver is an occupation that solely exists in our time, the results of an evolving expertise that’s superior sufficient to eliminate a driver—more often than not, in managed environments— however not adequate to persuade authorities that they will put off human intervention altogether. 

Liu is among the tons of of security operators employed by Baidu, “driving” 5 days every week in Shougang Park. However regardless of having solely labored for the corporate for 19 months, he already has to consider his subsequent profession transfer, as his job will possible be eradicated inside a couple of years. Read the full story.

—Zeyi Yang

Podcast: Can AI preserve weapons out of faculties?

Amid a rising epidemic of gun violence throughout the US, can AI be a part of the answer? Within the newest episode of our award-winning podcast, In Machines We Belief, we take a look at among the weapons detection applied sciences colleges are utilizing to attempt to preserve college students protected, and delve into whether or not they’re delivering on their promise. Listen to it for yourself.

The must-reads

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

1 ByteDance’s US information app reportedly pushed pro-China messaging
Former staff say they had been additionally instructed to censor criticism of Beijing. (Buzzfeed)
+ Smartphone gross sales in China are at their lowest degree for a decade. (The Register)

2Mark Zuckerberg goes into overdrive
To be able to make the metaverse work, he wants his staff to work even more durable. (NYT $)
+ He’s proper to be nervous—Meta is prone to report its first-ever income drop at present. (Reuters)
+ Fb staff hoping for further days off can assume once more. (The Verge)
+ Meta is elevating the costs of its Quest 2 VR headset, too. (ZDNet)
+ A metaverse safety replace is annoying its early customers. (Motherboard)

3 An AI convincingly masqueraded as a thinker
Which may very well be extremely harmful within the mistaken arms. (Motherboard)
+ The brand new model of GPT-3 is a lot better behaved (and needs to be much less poisonous). (MIT Technology Review)

4 How Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing algorithm experiment backfired
Charging Bruce Springsteen followers as much as $5,000 per ticket was not a great transfer. (Variety $)
+ How pricing algorithms study to collude. (MIT Technology Review)

5 The brand new psychedelic drug renaissance is right here
However critics are cautious it’s fueling psychedelic capitalism. (Wired $)
+ What do psychedelic medication do to our brains? AI may assist us discover out. (MIT Technology Review)

6 Russia says it’ll withdraw from the ISS partnership in 2024
NASA says it hasn’t been formally informed, although. (The Verge)
+ Spacetime warped across the Solar may maintain the important thing to discovering alien life. (Motherboard)

7 New York’s e-bikes preserve catching fireplace
Lithium-ion batteries from China seem like the wrongdoer. (Motherboard)
+ How bike parking pods may make US cities higher for cyclists. (MIT Technology Review)

8 Floating plastic within the ocean is harboring nasty micro organism 🦠
Urinary tract, pores and skin and abdomen infections are simply among the less-than-pleasant diseases they might trigger. (Hakai Magazine)
+ A kidney-stone consuming pseudo-parasite seems to have given up parasitism. (The Atlantic $)

9 Undersea web cables may quickly detect tsunamis 🌊
And monitor them in actual time to assist swerve future disasters. (New Yorker $)

10 Seems that lifeless spiders make glorious robots
Particularly hydraulic grippers. (Spectrum IEEE)
+ This robotic taught itself to stroll solely by itself. (MIT Technology Review)