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The Download: generative AI, and psychedelic hype

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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.

Generative AI is changing everything. But what’s left when the hype is gone?

It was clear that OpenAI was on to something. In late 2021, a small team of researchers was playing around with a new version of OpenAI’s text-to-image model, DALL-E, an AI that converts short written descriptions into pictures: a fox painted by Van Gogh, perhaps, or a corgi made of pizza. Now they just had to figure out what to do with it.

Nobody could have predicted just how big a splash this product was going to make. The rapid release of other generative models has inspired hundreds of newspaper headlines and magazine covers, filled social media with memes, kicked a hype machine into overdrive—and set off an intense backlash from creators.

The exciting truth is, we don’t really know what’s coming next. While creative industries will feel the impact first, this tech will give creative superpowers to everybody. In the longer term, it could be used to generate designs for almost anything. The problem is, these models still have no idea what they’re doing. Read the full story.

—Will Douglas Heaven

This story is part of our upcoming 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2023 series. Download readers will be the first to see the full list in January.

+ Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, tells Will Douglas Heaven, our senior AI editor, what he’s learned from DALL-E 2, and what the model means for society. Read the full story.

Coming soon: A new report from MIT Technology Review about how industrial design and engineering firms are using generative AI. Sign up to get notified when it’s out.

Artists can now opt out of the next version of Stable Diffusion

What’s happened: Artists are now able to opt out of the next version of one of the world’s most popular text-to-image AI generators, Stable Diffusion, the company behind it announced. Creators can search a website called HaveIBeenTrained for their works in the data set that was used to train Stable Diffusion, and select which works they want to exclude from the training data.

Why it’s important: The decision comes amid a heated public debate between artists and tech companies over how text-to-image AI models should be trained. The artist couple who created the website hope that the opt-out service will temporarily compensate for the absence of legislation governing the sector. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

Mind-altering substances are being overhyped as wonder drugs

For the past five years or so, barely a week has gone by without a study, comment, or press release about the potential benefits of psychedelic drugs. A growing number of academics, therapists, and companies are interested in the potential of psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD to treat mental-health disorders such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, and substance use disorders, to name a few.

The reputation of psychedelics has been through something of a rollercoaster ride over the last 70 years or so. They went from generating excitement, to instilling fear and mistrust, to experiencing a recent renaissance. But despite the current excitement, the truth is we don’t yet have evidence that psychedelics really are going to change health care, leading to concerns that psychedelics research is “trapped in a hype bubble.” Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

Jessica’s story is from The Checkup, her weekly 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 Twitter is suspending journalists’ accounts
The common thread is that they’ve all reported on Elon Musk’s decision to suspend an account that tracks his private jet. (The Guardian
+ The account of rival platform Mastodon has also been suspended. (TechCrunch)
+ So much for Musk’s commitment to free speech. (Vox)
+ Musk said he’d never ban the @elonjet account as recently as last month. (Motherboard)
+ It’s still easy to track the jet’s whereabouts, as the data is public. (Insider $) 

2 A stealth effort to bury wood for carbon removal has just raised millions
If the trial is successful, it could be a relatively easy and easy way of reducing greenhouse gasses. (MIT Technology Review) 

3 Bitcoin enthusiasts are crowing about FTX’s downfall
Even though bitcoin itself took a major hit. (Slate $)
+ NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal has denied any involvement with FTX. (Insider $)

4 Bio-based plastics are still plastics
Switching to plastics made from plant-extracted carbon could allow the industry to greenwash the process. (Wired $)

5 Streaming isn’t exciting anymore
There’s not as much money sloshing around, and Netflix et al don’t want to take risks in the same way they once did. (The Verge)
+ Mass-appeal shows are de rigueur now. (Insider $)

6 Changes in a child’s microbiome can induce fear
It could affect how they experience anxiety and depression in later life. (Neo.Life)

7 How online shopping tries to trick you
Pressuring shoppers into making quick decisions is at the heart of it. (Vox)
+ Ads for ads is the latest thing on TikTok. (FT $)
+ TV ads are getting more meta, too. (The Atlantic $)

8 Gen Z is going back to the tech dark ages
They’re reshaping what it is to be a Luddite in the digital age. (NYT $)

9 TikTok wants to rehabilitate pigeons’ bad reputation
But taking in wild birds off the street is still a bad idea. (The Atlantic $)
+ How to befriend a crow. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Strength training in older age pays off
It’s never too late to start—and it can help to maintain independence for longer. (Knowable Magazine)

Quote of the day

“It seems like he’s just trying to scare me and it’s not going to work.”

—Jack Sweeney, the college student who tracks Elon Musk’s private jet on Twitter using publicly available data, tells Insider why he’s refusing to be shaken by Musk’s announcement he was suing Sweeney.

The big story

How to mend your broken pandemic brain

July 2021

Americans are slowly coming out of the pandemic, but as they reemerge, there’s still a lot of trauma to process. It’s not just our families, our communities, and our jobs that have changed; our brains have changed too. We’re not the same people we were.

During the winter of 2020, more than 40% of Americans reported symptoms of anxiety or depression, double the rate of the previous year. While this fell the following summer, as vaccination rates rose and covid cases fell, many Americans are still struggling with their mental health. Now the question is, can our brains change back? And how can we help them do that? Read the full story.

—Dana Smith

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Here’s how to avoid succumbing to hanger
+ If adrenaline-inducing footage is your thing, GoPro Heroes will be right up your street. 
+ A no-bake raspberry cheesecake sounds like minimal fuss, maximum enjoyment.
+ These fairytale homes look so inviting. 🧚
+ We’ve finally solved the mystery of why prehistoric patterns were carved into the Middle Eastern desert.



Tech

The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush

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The hunter-gatherer groups at the heart of a microbiome gold rush


The first step to finding out is to catalogue what microbes we might have lost. To get as close to ancient microbiomes as possible, microbiologists have begun studying multiple Indigenous groups. Two have received the most attention: the Yanomami of the Amazon rainforest and the Hadza, in northern Tanzania. 

Researchers have made some startling discoveries already. A study by Sonnenburg and his colleagues, published in July, found that the gut microbiomes of the Hadza appear to include bugs that aren’t seen elsewhere—around 20% of the microbe genomes identified had not been recorded in a global catalogue of over 200,000 such genomes. The researchers found 8.4 million protein families in the guts of the 167 Hadza people they studied. Over half of them had not previously been identified in the human gut.

Plenty of other studies published in the last decade or so have helped build a picture of how the diets and lifestyles of hunter-gatherer societies influence the microbiome, and scientists have speculated on what this means for those living in more industrialized societies. But these revelations have come at a price.

A changing way of life

The Hadza people hunt wild animals and forage for fruit and honey. “We still live the ancient way of life, with arrows and old knives,” says Mangola, who works with the Olanakwe Community Fund to support education and economic projects for the Hadza. Hunters seek out food in the bush, which might include baboons, vervet monkeys, guinea fowl, kudu, porcupines, or dik-dik. Gatherers collect fruits, vegetables, and honey.

Mangola, who has met with multiple scientists over the years and participated in many research projects, has witnessed firsthand the impact of such research on his community. Much of it has been positive. But not all researchers act thoughtfully and ethically, he says, and some have exploited or harmed the community.

One enduring problem, says Mangola, is that scientists have tended to come and study the Hadza without properly explaining their research or their results. They arrive from Europe or the US, accompanied by guides, and collect feces, blood, hair, and other biological samples. Often, the people giving up these samples don’t know what they will be used for, says Mangola. Scientists get their results and publish them without returning to share them. “You tell the world [what you’ve discovered]—why can’t you come back to Tanzania to tell the Hadza?” asks Mangola. “It would bring meaning and excitement to the community,” he says.

Some scientists have talked about the Hadza as if they were living fossils, says Alyssa Crittenden, a nutritional anthropologist and biologist at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, who has been studying and working with the Hadza for the last two decades.

The Hadza have been described as being “locked in time,” she adds, but characterizations like that don’t reflect reality. She has made many trips to Tanzania and seen for herself how life has changed. Tourists flock to the region. Roads have been built. Charities have helped the Hadza secure land rights. Mangola went abroad for his education: he has a law degree and a master’s from the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy program at the University of Arizona.

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The Download: a microbiome gold rush, and Eric Schmidt’s election misinformation plan

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The Download: a microbiome gold rush, and Eric Schmidt’s election misinformation plan


Over the last couple of decades, scientists have come to realize just how important the microbes that crawl all over us are to our health. But some believe our microbiomes are in crisis—casualties of an increasingly sanitized way of life. Disturbances in the collections of microbes we host have been associated with a whole host of diseases, ranging from arthritis to Alzheimer’s.

Some might not be completely gone, though. Scientists believe many might still be hiding inside the intestines of people who don’t live in the polluted, processed environment that most of the rest of us share. They’ve been studying the feces of people like the Yanomami, an Indigenous group in the Amazon, who appear to still have some of the microbes that other people have lost. 

But there is a major catch: we don’t know whether those in hunter-gatherer societies really do have “healthier” microbiomes—and if they do, whether the benefits could be shared with others. At the same time, members of the communities being studied are concerned about the risk of what’s called biopiracy—taking natural resources from poorer countries for the benefit of wealthier ones. Read the full story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

Eric Schmidt has a 6-point plan for fighting election misinformation

—by Eric Schmidt, formerly the CEO of Google, and current cofounder of philanthropic initiative Schmidt Futures

The coming year will be one of seismic political shifts. Over 4 billion people will head to the polls in countries including the United States, Taiwan, India, and Indonesia, making 2024 the biggest election year in history.

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Navigating a shifting customer-engagement landscape with generative AI

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Navigating a shifting customer-engagement landscape with generative AI


A strategic imperative

Generative AI’s ability to harness customer data in a highly sophisticated manner means enterprises are accelerating plans to invest in and leverage the technology’s capabilities. In a study titled “The Future of Enterprise Data & AI,” Corinium Intelligence and WNS Triange surveyed 100 global C-suite leaders and decision-makers specializing in AI, analytics, and data. Seventy-six percent of the respondents said that their organizations are already using or planning to use generative AI.

According to McKinsey, while generative AI will affect most business functions, “four of them will likely account for 75% of the total annual value it can deliver.” Among these are marketing and sales and customer operations. Yet, despite the technology’s benefits, many leaders are unsure about the right approach to take and mindful of the risks associated with large investments.

Mapping out a generative AI pathway

One of the first challenges organizations need to overcome is senior leadership alignment. “You need the necessary strategy; you need the ability to have the necessary buy-in of people,” says Ayer. “You need to make sure that you’ve got the right use case and business case for each one of them.” In other words, a clearly defined roadmap and precise business objectives are as crucial as understanding whether a process is amenable to the use of generative AI.

The implementation of a generative AI strategy can take time. According to Ayer, business leaders should maintain a realistic perspective on the duration required for formulating a strategy, conduct necessary training across various teams and functions, and identify the areas of value addition. And for any generative AI deployment to work seamlessly, the right data ecosystems must be in place.

Ayer cites WNS Triange’s collaboration with an insurer to create a claims process by leveraging generative AI. Thanks to the new technology, the insurer can immediately assess the severity of a vehicle’s damage from an accident and make a claims recommendation based on the unstructured data provided by the client. “Because this can be immediately assessed by a surveyor and they can reach a recommendation quickly, this instantly improves the insurer’s ability to satisfy their policyholders and reduce the claims processing time,” Ayer explains.

All that, however, would not be possible without data on past claims history, repair costs, transaction data, and other necessary data sets to extract clear value from generative AI analysis. “Be very clear about data sufficiency. Don’t jump into a program where eventually you realize you don’t have the necessary data,” Ayer says.

The benefits of third-party experience

Enterprises are increasingly aware that they must embrace generative AI, but knowing where to begin is another thing. “You start off wanting to make sure you don’t repeat mistakes other people have made,” says Ayer. An external provider can help organizations avoid those mistakes and leverage best practices and frameworks for testing and defining explainability and benchmarks for return on investment (ROI).

Using pre-built solutions by external partners can expedite time to market and increase a generative AI program’s value. These solutions can harness pre-built industry-specific generative AI platforms to accelerate deployment. “Generative AI programs can be extremely complicated,” Ayer points out. “There are a lot of infrastructure requirements, touch points with customers, and internal regulations. Organizations will also have to consider using pre-built solutions to accelerate speed to value. Third-party service providers bring the expertise of having an integrated approach to all these elements.”

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