The Download: hyperrealistic deepfakes, and using math to shape wood

1 Big Tech firms are going all-in on experimental clean energy projects
Due to the fact AI is so horribly polluting. But the projects range from ‘long shot’ to ‘magical thinking’. (WP $)
+ Making the grid smarter, rather than bigger, could help. (Semafor)
+ How virtual power plants are shaping tomorrow’s energy system. (MIT Technology Review)

2 Google is about to be hit with a ton of AI-related lawsuits
Its AI Overviews keep libeling people—and they’re lawyering up. (The Atlantic $)
+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Another AI-powered search engine, Perplexity, is running into the exact same issues. (Wired $)
+ Worst of all? There’s currently no way to fix the underlying problem. (MIT Technology Review)

3 Apple is exploring a deal with Meta
To integrate Meta’s generative AI models into Apple Intelligence. (Wall Street Journal $)
+ Apple is delaying launching AI features in Europe due to regulatory concerns. (Quartz)

4 NASA is indefinitely delaying the return of Starliner
In order to give it more time to review data. (Ars Technica)

5 Chinese tech companies are pushing their staff beyond breaking point
As growth slows and competition rises, work-life balance is going out the window. (FT $)

6 Used electric vehicles are now less expensive than gas cars in the US
It’s a worrying statistic that reflects the cratering demand for EVs. (Insider $)
+ The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers. (MIT Technology Review)

7 Check out these photos of San Francisco’s AI scene
The city is currently buzzing with people hoping to make their fortune off the back of the boom. (WP $)

8 The next wave of weight loss drugs is coming
The hope is that they might be cheaper, and come with fewer side effects. (NBC)

9 Elon Musk is obsessed with getting us to have more babies
He’s funding and promoting some pretty wacky theories about a coming population collapse. (Bloomberg $)
+ And we’re losing track of the number of kids he has himself. (Gizmodo)

10 Before smartphones, you could pay people to Google stuff for you
In the noughties, if you were arguing with friends over something factual, you could just call AQA to settle it. (Wired $)

Quote of the day

“The internet has just gotten so much duller.”

—Kelly, a copywriter from New Hampshire, tells the Wall Street Journal about the impact of AI online.

The big story

How a tiny Pacific Island became the global capital of cybercrime

an older 90s style computer with an image of "Beautiful Tokelau" emits spam emails with a hand holding a dust pan and brush tries to scoop them up

November 2023

Tokelau, a string of three isolated atolls strung out across the Pacific, is so remote that it was the last place on Earth to be connected to the telephone—only in 1997. Just three years later, the islands received a fax with an unlikely business proposal that would change everything.