This week’s great tech stories from around the web (through November 16)

IBM increases the amount of computing you can do on Quantum Hardware
Jan Timmer | Ars Technica
“There is a general consensus that we will not be able to consistently perform advanced quantum computations without the development of error-corrected quantum computing, which will likely not occur until the end of this decade. However, it is still an open question whether we could perform limited but useful calculations at an earlier point. IBM is one of the companies betting that the answer is yes, and on Wednesday it announced a series of developments to make that possible.”

OpenAI is changing its strategy as the number of ‘GPT’ AI improvements decreases
Stephanie Palazzolo, Erin Woo and Emir Efrati | The information
“The Orion situation could test a core assumption of the AI ​​field known as scaling laws: that LLMs would continue to improve at the same rate as long as they had more data to learn from and additional computing power to facilitate that training process. In response to the recent challenge to training-based scaling laws caused by slowing GPT improvements, the industry appears to be shifting its efforts to improving models after their initial training, which would potentially yield a different kind of scaling law.”

The first CRISPR treatment finds its way to patients
Emily Mullen | Wired
“Vertex, the pharmaceutical company that markets Casgevy, announced in a Nov. 5 earnings call that the first person to receive Casgevy outside of a clinical trial received a dose in the third quarter of this year. …When Wired When contacted by Vertex via email, spokesperson Eleanor Celeste declined to provide the exact number of patients Casgevy has received. However, the company says cell collections have occurred in 40 patients while awaiting treatment, compared to 20 patients in the last quarter.”

AI now designs chips for AI
Kristen Houser | Big think
“It’s 2028 and your tech startup has an idea that could revolutionize the industry, but you need a custom-designed microchip to bring the product to market. Five years ago, designing that chip would have cost more than your entire company is worth, but now your team can do it for a fraction of the price and in a fraction of the time – all thanks to AI, suitably powered by chips like this.”

Now anyone in LA can hail a Waymo Robotaxi
Kirsten Korosec | TechCrunch
“Waymo has opened its robotaxi service to everyone in Los Angeles, eliminating a waiting list of 300,000 people. The Alphabet-backed company said that starting Tuesday, anyone can download the Waymo One app to take a ride in its service area, which now covers about 80 square miles in Los Angeles County.

The first fully AI-generated video game is crazy weird and fun
Will Knight | Wired
“Minecraft remains remarkably popular some ten years after it was first released, thanks to a unique blend of quirky gameplay and open world building capabilities. A knock-off called Oasis, released last month, captures much of the flavor of the original game with a notable and strange twist. The entire game is not generated by a game engine and hand-coded rules, but by an AI model that invents every frame.”

Nuclear power was once shunned during climate talks. Now it is a rising star.
Brad Plumer | The New York Times
“At last year’s climate conference in the United Arab Emirates, 22 countries pledged for the first time to triple global use of nuclear energy by mid-century to help curb global warming. At this year’s summit in Azerbaijan, six more countries signed the pledge. “It’s a very different dynamic today,” says Dr. Bilbao y Leon, who now heads the World Nuclear Association, an industry trade group. ‘Many more people are open to talking about nuclear energy as a solution.’”

The next omics? Tracking a lifetime of exposure to better understand diseases
Lindzi Wessel | Well-known magazine
“Of the millions of substances that people encounter every day, health researchers have focused on only a few hundred. Those in the emerging field of exposomics want to change that. …In homes, on buildings, via satellites and even in apps on the phone in your pocket, tools to monitor the environment are on the rise. At the intersection of public health and toxicology, these tools are fueling a new movement in exposure science. It’s called the exposome and represents the sum of all environmental exposures over a lifetime.”

Buckle up: SpaceX aims for fast spaceship launches by 2025
Passer-by Rabie | Gizmodo
“SpaceX has big plans for its Starship rocket. After a groundbreaking test flight in which the landing tower caught the booster, company founder and CEO Elon Musk wants to see the mega rocket fly up to 25 times next year, working its way to a launch rate of 100 flights per year. ultimately a spaceship that is launched daily.’

Are AI clones the future of dating? I’ve tried them myself.
Eli Tan | The New York Times
“As chatbots like ChatGPT improve, their use in our personal and even romantic lives becomes more common. To that extent, some executives in the dating app industry have begun pitching a future in which humans can create AI clones of themselves that date other clones and send the results back to their human counterparts.

Genetic discrimination awaits us all
Kristen V. Brown | The Atlantic Ocean
“For decades, researchers have feared that people could be targeted for their DNA, but they weren’t sure how often this happened. Now at least a handful of Americans are experiencing what they claim is a form of discrimination. And as more people get their genomes sequenced – and researchers learn to extract even more information from the results – a growing number of people may be targeted in the same way.”

Image credits: Evgeny Tcherkassky on Unsplash