The Download: how to connect the US’s grids, and OpenAI’s new voice mode
Michael Skelly hasn’t learned to take no for an answer. For much of the last 15 years, the energy entrepreneur has worked to develop long-haul transmission lines to carry wind power across the Great Plains, Midwest, and Southwest. But so far, he has little to show for the effort.
Skelly has long argued that building such lines and linking together the nation’s grids would accelerate the shift from coal- and natural-gas-fueled power plants to the renewables needed to cut the pollution driving climate change. But his previous business shut down in 2019, after halting two of its projects and selling off interests in three more.
Skelly contends he was early, not wrong, and that the market and policymakers are increasingly coming around to his perspective. After all, the US Department of Energy just blessed his latest company’s proposed line with hundreds of millions in grants. Read the full story.
—James Temple
OpenAI released its advanced voice mode to more people. Here’s how to get it.
OpenAI is broadening access to Advanced Voice Mode, a feature of ChatGPT that allows you to speak more naturally with the AI model. It allows you to interrupt its responses midsentence, and it can sense and interpret your emotions from your tone of voice and adjust its responses accordingly.
Users who’ve been able to try it have largely described the model as an impressively fast, dynamic, and realistic voice assistant—which has made its limited availability particularly frustrating to some other OpenAI users. This is the first time the company has promised to bring the new voice mode to a wide range of users. Here’s what you need to know.
—James O’Donnell
