MIT Technology Review

Despite all of the hype around large language models, we know remarkably little about how they work and why they generate the things they do. https://trib.al/JHfY4In

In the year or so, kids, teachers, and parents have had a crash course in artificial intelligence, thanks to the wildly popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. In a knee-jerk reaction, some schools, such as the New York City public schools, banned the technology—only to cancel the ban months later. Now that many adults have caught up with the technology, schools have started exploring ways to use AI systems to teach kids important lessons on critical thinking. While some students will invariably be more interested in AI than others, understanding the fundamentals of how these systems work is becoming a basic form of literacy. At the start of the new school year, here are MIT Technology Review’s six essential tips for how to get started on giving your kid an AI education. https://trib.al/KQBNJ9e

Midjourney can now make better hands, more realistic Asian faces, and convincing vintage photographs. https://trib.al/jwMB80B

“What do you think of my artificial voice?” asks a woman on a computer screen, her green eyes widening slightly. The image is clearly computerized, and the voice is halting, but it’s still a remarkable moment. The image is a digital avatar of a person who lost her ability to speak after a stroke 18 years ago. Now, as part of an experiment involving a brain implant and AI algorithms, she can speak with a replication of her own voice and even convey a limited range of facial expressions via her avatar. These two papers show just how quickly this field is advancing—though these proofs of concept are still a very long way from tech that’s available to the wider public. https://trib.al/ryZ3wvD

New materials can supercharge technological breakthroughs, but discovering them usually takes months or even years of trial-and-error research. Google DeepMind hopes to change that with a tool that uses deep learning to dramatically speed up the process of discovering new materials. https://trib.al/M9dEgP7

Last year’s Canadian wildfires smashed records, burning about seven times more land in Canada’s forests than the annual average over the previous four decades. Eight firefighters were killed and 180,000 people displaced. Now a new study reveals how these blazes can create a vicious cycle, contributing to climate change even as climate-fueled conditions make for worse wildfire seasons. Emissions from 2023’s Canadian wildfires reached 647 million metric tons of carbon, according to the study published today in Nature. If the fires were a country, they’d rank as the fourth-highest emitter, following only China, the US, and India. The sky-high emissions from the fires reveals how human activities are pushing natural ecosystems to a place that’s making things tougher for our climate efforts.

Three books explore the wonders of sound on land, in the sea, and in our heads.

Machines may never acquire humans’ innate know-how.

A number of farmers are turning to space-based monitoring to get a better picture of what their crops need.

Much of the western United States relies on winter snowpack to supply its rivers and reservoirs through the summer months. But with warming temperatures, less and less snow is falling—a recent study showed a 23% decline in annual snowpack since 1955. By some estimates, runoff from snowmelt in the western US could decrease by a third between now and the end of the century, meaning less water will be available for agriculture, hydroelectric projects, and urban use in a region already dealing with water scarcity. That's where weather makers come in. Their job is to figure out how to increase winter snowfall so that desert towns have water in summer.