This could make it easier for creators to stay across their DM queries.
The move by UBS to launch a tokenized fund on Ethereum is like “putting ETH right into the heart of traditional finance,” says one crypto commentator.
Roman Storm, currently free on bail and facing three federal charges, will have another four months to prepare for his criminal trial.
Prices had rallied early in U.S. trading on Friday alongside a soft economic data and a rebound in stocks.
Read more Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm’s upcoming criminal trial has been pushed to April instead of a previously scheduled December start date, a New York judge ruled Friday.
Read more Foreign real estate deals near sensitive U.S. military bases will get more government scrutiny under a new rule from the U.S. Department of the Treasury that has emerged after President Joe Biden ordered a China-tied crypto mining operation beside a Wyoming nuclear missile base shut down earlier this year.
Read more Orthodox venture capital will never provide the resources for decentralized AI to take on Microsoft, Alphabet, Apple, et al. The only way is to supplant equity financing with user-owned, token-based systems, says Michael J. Casey, Chairman of The Decentralized AI Society.
Read more The intensive energy usage of the Bitcoin network could tempt governments to ban mining due to environmental concerns. A new research paper indicates that could be a mistake, depending on the jurisdiction.
Read more 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.
OpenAI has brought a new web search tool to ChatGPT
The news: ChatGPT can now search the web for up-to-date answers to a user’s queries. Previously it was restricted to generating answers from its training data, and had limited web search capabilities. But now, ChatGPT will automatically search the web in response to queries about recent information such as sports, stocks, or news of the day, and can deliver rich multi-media results.
How to use it: The feature is available now for the chatbot’s paying users, but OpenAI intends to make it available for free later, even when people are logged out. It also plans to combine search with its voice features.
The context: OpenAI is the latest tech company to debut an AI-powered search assistant, challenging similar tools from competitors such as Google, Microsoft, and startup Perplexity. However, none of these tools are immune from the persistent tendency of AI language models to make things up or get them wrong. Read the full story.
—Melissa Heikkilä and Mat Honan
AI search could break the web
—Benjamin Brooks is a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard scrutinizing the regulatory and legislative response to AI.
At its best, AI search can better infer a user’s intent, amplify quality content, and synthesize information from diverse sources. But if AI search becomes our primary portal to the web, it threatens to disrupt an already precarious digital economy.
Today, the production of content online depends on a fragile set of incentives tied to virtual foot traffic: ads, subscriptions, donations, sales, or brand exposure. By shielding the web behind an all-knowing chatbot, AI search could deprive creators of the visits and “eyeballs” they need to survive. Here’s what the industry should do to make AI search sustainable.
This AI-generated Minecraft may represent the future of real-time video generation
When you walk around in a version of the video game Minecraft from the AI companies Decart and Etched, it feels a little off. Sure, you can move forward, cut down a tree, and lay down a dirt block, just like in the real thing. If you turn around, though, the dirt block you just placed may have morphed into a totally new environment. That doesn’t happen in Minecraft. But this new version is entirely AI-generated, so it’s prone to hallucinations. Not a single line of code was written.
For Decart and Etched, this demo is a proof of concept. But they believe that, with innovations in chip design and further improvements, there’s no reason it won’t soon be possible to develop a high-fidelity version of Minecraft, or really any game, using AI. Read the full story.
—Scott J Mulligan
Read next: AI-powered NPCs that don’t need a script could make games—and other worlds—deeply immersive. Read our feature about how generative AI could reinvent what it means to play.
How exosomes could become more than just an “anti-aging” fad
—Jessica Hamzelou
Over the past month or so, I’ve been working on a story about exosomes. They’re being touted as a hot new beauty treatment, a fountain of youth, and generally a cure-all therapy for a whole host of ailments.
Any cell biologist, though, will tell you what exosomes really are: tiny little blobs that bud off from cells and contain a mixture of proteins and other components. We’re not entirely clear what those components are or what they do, despite the promises made by medspas and cosmetic clinics charging thousands of dollars for exosome “therapies.”
However, there is some very exciting scientific research underway to better understand exactly what exosomes do. It might take longer for these kinds of exosome applications to get to the clinic, but when they do, at least they’ll be evidence based. Read all about what’s going on.
This story is from The Checkup, our weekly newsletter giving you the inside track on all things biotech and health. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 As the US election looms, social media platforms have given up moderating
Efforts to fight falsehoods have drastically backslid since 2020. (Wired $)
+ Young voters are encountering Trump’s ‘grab them’ comment for the first time on TikTok. (WP $)
+ Ignore the noise—the US election system is actually stronger than ever, experts say. (CNET)
2 AI policy is something Harris and Trump broadly agree on
On the surface, they look miles apart. But dig into their track records, and there are lots of similarities. (The Atlantic $)
+ Investors are getting tired of waiting for returns on their AI investments. (Quartz $)
+ What even is AI? No one seems to agree—and that’s a problem. (MIT Technology Review)
3 Inside Elon Musk’s grand plan to remake the US government
If he gets his promised role as efficiency ‘tsar’, he plans to go on a slashing and burning spree. (WP $)
4 Outside the US, the world is increasingly using Chinese technology
Despite US sanctions, it dominates fields like drones, solar panels, and electric vehicles. (Bloomberg $)
+ Chinese sanctions are causing a supply chain crisis for Skydio, the US’s largest drone maker. (FT $)
+ BYD posted higher quarterly revenues than Tesla for the first time. (FT $)
+ What’s next for drones. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Here’s how to make all the political text messages go away
Whatever you do, do not actually reply ‘Stop’ (seriously). (WSJ $)
6 Amazon workers are furious over its return-to-office policy
They say the company is failing to provide evidence to back it up, and misrepresenting their views. (Reuters $)
7 Hundreds of Dubliners turned up for a fake AI-generated Halloween parade 
We can expect to see more and more examples like this, of AI fakery spilling over into the physical world. (Metro)
8 Ghost jobs are haunting tech workers
Fake jobs posted by real companies are growing irritation for people seeking work. (SFGate)
9 ‘Cloud-milking’ is a new zero-energy way to extract water from fog 
It’s been successfully tested in the Canary Islands, but it could help other areas recovering from natural disasters. (The Guardian)
10 Your wall paints could soon do much more than look pretty
Innovators are working on paints that can peel off, resist dirt, and even provide insulation. (BBC)
Quote of the day
“We’re going to add a whole new category of content, which is AI generated or AI summarized content or kind of existing content pulled together by AI in some way. And I think that that’s going to be just very exciting.“
—Mark Zuckerberg says we can expect our timelines to be filled with more and more AI slop during a call with investors, 404 Media reports.
Why Generation Z falls for online misinformation
GETTY
June 2021
In November 2019, a TikTok video claiming that if Joe Biden is elected president of the United States, “trumpies” will commit mass murder of LGBT individuals and people of color rapidly went viral. It was viewed, shared, liked and commented on by hundreds of thousands of young people.
Clearly, the claims were false. Why, then, did so many members of Generation Z—a label applied to people aged roughly 9 to 24, who are presumably more digitally savvy than their predecessors—fall for such flagrant misinformation? The answer is complex, but may partly lie in a sense of common identity with the person who shared it in the first place. Read the full story.
—Jennifer Neda John
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 tweet ’em at me.)
+ Here are some words to warm you up on this first day of November.
+ Becky Barnicoat’s comics always make me laugh.
+ If you were also obsessed with Tom and Greg in Succession, you’ll enjoy this.
+ Let’s hear it for Missy Elliott—here’s why she’s such a peerless entertainer. ($)
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
Over the past month or so, I’ve been working on a story about exosomes. You might have seen them advertised—they’re being touted as a hot new beauty treatment, a fountain of youth, and generally a cure-all therapy for a whole host of ailments.
Any cell biologist, though, will tell you what exosomes really are: tiny little blobs that bud off from cells and contain a mixture of proteins and other components. We’re not entirely clear what those components are or what they do, despite the promises made by medspas and cosmetic clinics charging thousands of dollars for exosome “therapies.” As one recipient of an exosome treatment told me, “I feel like it’s a little bit of health marketing bullshit.”
But there is some very exciting scientific research underway to better understand exactly what exosomes do. Scientists are exploring not only how these tiny particles might help cells communicate, but also how they might be used to diagnose or treat diseases. One company is trying to use exosomes to deliver drugs to the brains of people with rare neurological disorders.
It might take longer for these kinds of exosome applications to get to the clinic, but when they do, at least they’ll be evidence based.
Exosomes are a type of extracellular vesicle. This is a scientific way of saying they are basically little packages that bud off from cells. They were once thought to contain cellular garbage, but now scientists believe they convey important signals between cells and tissues.
Exactly what those signals are is still being figured out. The contents of exosomes from cancer cells will probably be somewhat different to those from healthy cells, for example.
Because of that, many scientists hope that exosomes could one day be used to help us diagnose diseases. In theory, you could isolate exosomes from a blood sample, examine their contents, and figure out what might be going on in a person’s cells. Exosomes might provide clues as to how stressed or close to death a cell is. They might indicate the presence of a tumor.
Raghu Kalluri, a cancer biologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, is one of the researchers exploring this possibility. “I believe that exosomes are likely providing a forensic fingerprint of what the cells are undergoing,” he says.
But understanding these signals won’t be straightforward. Exosomes from cancer cells might send signals to surrounding cells in order to “subjugate” them into helping the cancer grow, says Kalluri. Cells around a tumor might also send distress signals, alerting the immune system to fight back against it. “There’s definitely a role for these exosomes in cancer progression and metastasis,” he says. “Precisely what [that role is] is an active area of research right now.”
Exosomes could also be useful for delivering drug treatments. After all, they are essentially little packages of proteins and other matter that can be shuttled between cells. Why not fill them with a medicine and use them to target specific regions of the body?
Because exosomes are made in our bodies, they are less likely to be seen as “foreign” and rejected by our immune systems. And the outer layer of an exosome can serve as a protective coat, shielding the drug from being degraded until it reaches its destination, says James Edgar, who studies exosomes at the University of Cambridge. “It’s a really attractive method for drug delivery,” he says.
Dave Carter is one scientist working on it. Carter and his colleagues at Evox Therapeutics in Oxford, UK, are engineering cells to produce compounds that might help treat rare neurological diseases. These compounds could then be released from the cells in exosomes.
In their research, Carter and his colleagues can change almost everything about the exosomes they study. They can alter their contents, loading them with proteins or viruses or even gene-editing therapies. They can tweak the proteins on their surfaces to make them target different cells and tissues. They can control how long exosomes stay in an animal’s circulation.
“I always used to love playing with Lego,” he adds. “I feel like I’m playing with Lego when I’m working with exosomes.”
Others are hopeful that exosomes themselves hold some kind of therapeutic value. Some hope that exosomes derived from stem cells, for example, might have some regenerative capacity.
Ke Cheng at Columbia University in New York is interested in the idea of using exosomes to treat heart and lung conditions. Several preliminary studies suggest that exosomes from heart and stem cells might help animals like mice and pigs recover from heart injuries, such as those caused by a heart attack.
There are certainly plenty of clinical trials of exosomes underway. When I searched for “exosomes” on clinicaltrials.gov, I got over 400 results. These are early-stage trials, however—and are of variable quality.
Still, it’s an exciting time for exosome research. “It’s a growing field … I think we will see a lot of exciting science in the next five years,” says Cheng. “I’m very optimistic.”
Now read the rest of The Checkup
Read more from MIT Technology Review’s archive
You can read the piece about the costly exosome treatments being sold in aesthetic clinics and medspas in my longer piece, which was published earlier this week.
It can be difficult to establish credibility in a medical field when you’re being undercut by clinics selling unapproved treatments and individuals making outlandish claims. Just ask the doctors and scientists trying to legitimize longevity medicine.
Some treatments can take off culturally without the backing of rigorous evidence, only to go up in flames when the trial results come in. We saw this earlier this year, when FDA advisors rejected the use of MDMA (or ecstasy) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) owing to “significant confounders” in the trials.
For some people, unproven treatments might represent a last hope for survival. In those cases, how do we balance access to experimental medicine with the need to protect people who are vulnerable?
Stem cells from human embryos promised to “launch a medical revolution in which ailing organs and tissues might be repaired” when they were isolated just over 25 years ago. So why haven’t they?
From around the web
Having a disability shouldn’t prevent you from getting married. But that’s exactly the conundrum facing some people in the US, as this heartbreaking short documentary shows. (STAT)
A Neuralink rival says its eye implant restored vision in blind people. Science Corporation’s retinal implant enabled some legally blind individuals to read from a book, play cards, and fill out crossword puzzles. (Wired)
Women in Texas are dying after doctors delay treating them for miscarriages. Doctors treating Josseli Barnica waited 40 hours for the heart of her fetus to stop beating, despite the fact that miscarriage was “inevitable.” Her husband says doctors worried that “it would be a crime to give her an abortion.” She died of a preventable infection three days later. (ProPublica)
Between 30% and 50% of twins share a secret language or mode of communication, a phenomenon known as cryptophasia. The Youlden twins call theirs Umeri. (BBC Future)
Can a machine express fear? Try your hand at creating AI-generated images frightening enough to “spook the machine” as part of a project to explore how machines might express humanlike emotions. It is Halloween, after all. (Spook the Machine)