The Download: combating audio deepfakes, and AI in the classroom
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.
AI text-to-speech programs could one day “unlearn” how to imitate certain people
The news: A new technique known as “machine unlearning” could be used to teach AI models to forget specific voices.
How it works: Currently, companies tend to deal with this issue by checking whether the prompts or the AI’s responses contain disallowed material. Machine unlearning instead asks whether an AI can be made to forget a piece of information that the company doesn’t want it to know. It works by taking a model and the specific data to be redacted then using them to create a new model—essentially, a version of the original that never learned that piece of data.
Why it matters: This could be an important step in stopping the rise of audio deepfakes, where someone’s voice is copied to carry out fraud or scams. Read the full story.
—Peter Hall
AI’s giants want to take over the classroom
School’s out and it’s high summer, but a bunch of teachers are plotting how they’re going to use AI this upcoming school year. God help them.
On July 8, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic announced a $23 million partnership with one of the largest teachers’ unions in the United States to bring more AI into K–12 classrooms. They will train teachers at a New York City headquarters on how to use AI both for teaching and for tasks like planning lessons and writing reports, starting this fall.
But these companies could face an uphill battle. There’s a lack of clear evidence that AI can be a net benefit for students, and it’s hard to trust that the AI companies funding this initiative will give honest advice on when not to use AI in the classroom. Read the full story.
—James O’Donnell
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Nvidia says the US has lifted its ban on AI chip sales to China
Jensen Huang has sweet-talked Donald Trump into reversing his three-month old ban. (BBC)
+ The company will start selling its H20 chip to China. (WSJ $)
+ America may slap tariffs on a raw material used for chips and solar panels. (FT $)
2 China has launched its digital ID system
It’ll give the country even greater powers to surveil and censor its internet users. (WP $)
3 xAI has secured a contract with the US Department of Defense
Just days after its Grok chatbot had an anti-Semitic meltdown. (The Guardian)
+ EU officials are holding talks with X representatives after the outburst. (Bloomberg $)
4 Meta’s data centers are on the verge of triggering a major water shortage
Local residents in Newton County, Georgia are suffering. (NYT $)
+ But Zuckerberg wants to build gigawatt-size centers anyway. (Bloomberg $)
+ We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard. (MIT Technology Review)
5 The Trump administration is incinerating tons of emergency food
Rather than sending it to people in need. (The Atlantic $)
6 The US is attempting to revive its rare-earth industry
The Pentagon has invested more than $1 billion in American firm MP Materials. (WSJ $)
+ It’s all part of a plan to counter China’s critical mineral dominance. (FT $)
+ This rare earth metal shows us the future of our planet’s resources. (MIT Technology Review)
7 AI nudifying apps are big business
They’re making millions of dollars a year, and rely on tech built by US companies. (Wired $)
+ The viral AI avatar app Lensa undressed me—without my consent. (MIT Technology Review)
8 Can anything save the web at this point?
Traffic is dropping, and AI use is rising. (Economist $)
+ How to fix the internet. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Bytedance is working on its own mixed reality goggles
A couple of years after it scaled back its work on an AR and VR headset. (The Information $)
+ What’s next for smart glasses. (MIT Technology Review)
10 Minecraft has birthed a generation of entrepreneurs
The game encourages players to learn to program. (Insider $)
Quote of the day
“I suddenly felt pure, unconditional love.”
—Faeight, a woman ‘married’ to a chatbot named Gryff, describes her strong feelings for a previous AI partner, the Guardian reports.
One more thing
End of life decisions are difficult and distressing. Could AI help?
End-of-life decisions can be extremely upsetting for surrogates—the people who have to make those calls on behalf of another person. Friends or family members may disagree over what’s best for their loved one, which can lead to distressing situations.
David Wendler, a bioethicist at the US National Institutes of Health, and his colleagues have been working on an idea for something that could make things easier: an artificial intelligence-based tool that can help surrogates predict what the patients themselves would want in any given situation.
Wendler hopes to start building their tool as soon as they secure funding for it, potentially in the coming months. But rolling it out won’t be simple. Critics wonder how such a tool can ethically be trained on a person’s data, and whether life-or-death decisions should ever be entrusted to AI. Read the full story.
—Jessica Hamzelou
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ Did you know the shark in the Jaws poster isn’t actually a great white?
+ Japan’s Nakagin Capsule Tower was ahead of its time.
+ I love the Public Domain Image Archive.
+ Forums are far from dead—here are some of the best that are still alive and kicking.