The Download: AI’s math solutions, and brewing beer with sunlight

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.

Google DeepMind’s new AI systems can now solve complex math problems

AI models can easily generate essays and other types of text. However, they’re nowhere near as good at solving math problems, which tend to involve logical reasoning—something that’s beyond the capabilities of most current AI systems.

But that may finally be changing. Google DeepMind says it has trained two specialized AI systems to solve complex math problems involving advanced reasoning. The systems worked together to successfully solve four out of six problems from this year’s International Mathematical Olympiad, a  prestigious competition for high school students.

They won the equivalent of a silver medal, marking the first time any AI system has ever achieved such a high success rate on these kinds of problems. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams

Why the US is still trying to make mirror-magnified solar energy work

The US is continuing its decades-long effort to commercialize a technology that converts sunlight into heat, funding a series of new projects using that energy to brew beer, produce low-carbon fuels, or keep grids running.

The Department of Energy has announced it is putting $33 million into nine pilot projects based on concentrating solar thermal power, MIT Technology Review can report exclusively. The technology uses large arrays of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a receiver, where it’s used to heat up molten salt, ceramic particles, or other materials that can store that energy for extended periods. 

But early commercial efforts to produce clean electricity based on this technology have been bedeviled by high costs, low output, and other challenges. Read the full story.

—James Temple

“Copyright traps” could tell writers if an AI has scraped their work

Since the beginning of the generative AI boom, content creators have argued that their work has been scraped into AI models without their consent. But until now, it has been difficult to know whether specific text has actually been used in a training data set. 

Now they have a new way to prove it: “copyright traps” developed by a team at Imperial College London, pieces of hidden text that allow writers and publishers to subtly mark their work in order to later detect whether it has been used in AI models or not. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

How our genome is like a generative AI model

What does the genome do? You might have heard that it is a blueprint for an organism. Or that it’s a bit like a recipe. But building an organism is much more complex than constructing a house or baking a cake.

This week I came across an idea for a new way to think about the genome—one that borrows from the field of artificial intelligence. Two researchers are arguing that we should think about it as being more like a generative model, a form of AI that can generate new things.

You might be familiar with such AI tools—they’re the ones that can create text, images, or even films from various prompts. But do our genomes really work in the same way? Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

This story is from The Checkup, our weekly health and biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 OpenAI’s search engine is here
And it’s already getting stuff wrong. (The Atlantic $)
+ SearchGPT will eventually be folded into ChatGPT. (WP $)
+ Its launch is a clear threat to Google’s long-held search engine dominance. (Wired $)
+ Why you shouldn’t trust AI search engines. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The chip industry’s workers are demanding better treatment
As the sector’s profits soar, its employees aren’t seeing the benefits. (WSJ $)

3 What studying the human brain can teach us about AI
Trying to understand why AI does the things it does is key to controlling it. (Vox)
+ What is AI? (MIT Technology Review)

4 Russia is throttling access to YouTube
It’s looking as though a total ban is imminent. (Bloomberg $)

5 Robots are finally becoming more useful
And it’s all thanks to AI. (FT $)
+ Is robotics about to have its own ChatGPT moment? (MIT Technology Review)

6 Voice actors are striking against video game companies
They claim the firms have learnt nothing from the prior strikes against film and TV. (NYT $)
+ They want studios to seek actors’ consent for using their voices with AI. (Bloomberg $)

7 Identifying all of Mexico’s dead bodies is a forensic crisis
Scientists are doing their best to harness tech to their cause. (New Yorker $)
+ The mothers of Mexico’s missing are using social media to search for mass graves. (MIT Technology Review)

8 New Jersey is angling to become a major AI hub
Bruce Springsteen’s hometown wants a slice of those hefty new tax credits. (Wired $)
+ The $100 billion bet that a postindustrial US city can reinvent itself as a high-tech hub. (MIT Technology Review)

9 Mexico’s delivery workers are sick of food orders
It’s less waiting around, and fewer irate customers. (Rest of World)

10 How to find serenity in a plant-identifying app
Take a minute to step outside and smell the roses. (The Guardian)

Quote of the day

“Just hug your IT folks.”

—Jerry Leever, an IT director at accounting, tax and advisory firm GHJ, explains to the Washington Post what it was like attempting to handle last week’s CrowdStrike meltdown. 

The big story

Bright LEDs could spell the end of dark skies

August 2022

Scientists have known for years that light pollution is growing and can harm both humans and wildlife. In people, increased exposure to light at night disrupts sleep cycles and has been linked to cancer and cardiovascular disease, while wildlife suffers from interruption to their reproductive patterns, and increased danger.

Astronomers, policymakers, and lighting professionals are all working to find ways to reduce light pollution. Many of them advocate installing light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, in outdoor fixtures such as city streetlights, mainly for their ability to direct light to a targeted area.

But the high initial investment and durability of modern LEDs mean cities need to get the transition right the first time or potentially face decades of consequences. Read the full story.

—Shel Evergreen

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 or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Lady Gaga! Celine Dion! Snoop Dogg! It’s safe to say tonight’s Paris Olympics opening ceremony is going to be suitably bonkers.
+ Although nothing is ever going to top London 2012’s opening.
+ Candace Bushnell, you will never not be fabulous.
+ Who doesn’t love a good Kubrick stare?