Technology

OpenAI ups its lobbying efforts nearly seven-fold

January 22, 2025
OpenAI spent $1.76 million on lobbying in 2024 and $510,000 in the last three months of the year alone, according to a new disclosure filed on Tuesday–a significant jump from 2023 when the company disclosed just $260,000 spent on Capitol Hill. The company also disclosed a new in-house lobbyist, Meghan Dorn, who worked for five…

There can be no winners in a US-China AI arms race

January 21, 2025
The United States and China are entangled in what many have dubbed an “AI arms race.”  In the early days of this standoff, US policymakers drove an agenda centered on “winning” the race, mostly from an economic perspective. In recent months, leading AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic got involved in pushing the narrative of “beating China” in…

A new company plans to use Earth as a chemical reactor

January 21, 2025
Forget massive steel tanks—some scientists want to make chemicals with the help of rocks deep beneath Earth’s surface. New research shows that ammonia, a chemical crucial for fertilizer, can be produced from rocks at temperatures and pressures that are common in the subsurface. The research was published today in Joule, and MIT Technology Review can…

The Download: AI for cancer diagnosis, and HIV prevention

January 21, 2025
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. Why it’s so hard to use AI to diagnose cancer Finding and diagnosing cancer is all about spotting patterns. Radiologists use x-rays and magnetic resonance imaging to illuminate tumors, and pathologists examine tissue…

Why it’s so hard to use AI to diagnose cancer

January 21, 2025
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Peering into the body to find and diagnose cancer is all about spotting patterns. Radiologists use x-rays and magnetic resonance imaging to illuminate tumors, and pathologists examine tissue from kidneys, livers,…

President Trump repeals Biden’s AI executive order

January 21, 2025

During his first day in office, President Donald Trump revoked a 2023 executive order signed by former President Joe Biden that sought to reduce the potential risks AI poses to consumers, workers, and national security. Biden’s executive order directed the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to author guidance that helps companies […]

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The Download: AI’s coding promises, and OpenAI’s longevity push

January 20, 2025
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. The second wave of AI coding is here Ask people building generative AI what generative AI is good for right now—what they’re really fired up about—and many will tell you: coding. Everyone from…

The second wave of AI coding is here

January 20, 2025
Ask people building generative AI what generative AI is good for right now—what they’re really fired up about—and many will tell you: coding.  “That’s something that’s been very exciting for developers,” Jared Kaplan, chief scientist at Anthropic, told MIT Technology Review this month: “It’s really understanding what’s wrong with code, debugging it.” Copilot, a tool…

OpenAI is trying to extend human life, with help from a longevity startup

January 17, 2025

OpenAI says it trained a new AI model called GPT-4b micro with Retro Biosciences, a longevity science startup trying to extend the human lifespan by 10 years, according to the MIT Technology Review. Retro, which is backed by Sam Altman, has been working with OpenAI for roughly a year on this research, according to the […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

OpenAI has created an AI model for longevity science

January 17, 2025
When you think of AI’s contributions to science, you probably think of AlphaFold, the Google DeepMind protein-folding program that earned its creator a Nobel Prize last year. Now OpenAI says it’s getting into the science game too—with a model for engineering proteins. The company says it has developed a language model that dreams up proteins…