This company plans to transplant pig hearts into babies next year

How tech companies got access to our tax data

Sponsored by Kyndryl Subscribe The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology By Rhiannon Williams • 07.17.23 Hello! Today: a biotech company's plans to transplant pig hearts into babies with serious heart conditions are off to a rocky start. Plus: how Big Tech is tracking our tax data. This company plans to transplant pig hearts into babies next year A biotech company called eGenesis is experimenting with transplanting the hearts of young gene-edited pigs into baby baboons as part of a study that could pave the way for similar transplants in human babies. It hopes to transplant pig hearts into babies with serious heart defects as early as next year, in a bid to buy them more time to wait for a human heart. The company has developed a technique that uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR to make around 70 edits to a pig's genome. In theory, these edits should allow the organs to be successfully transplanted into people. The practice is proving more difficult. The team is planning to test with 12 infant baboons, but of the two surgeries that have been performed so far, neither animal survived beyond a matter of days. Still the company, and others in the field, remain optimistic. Read the full story. —Jessica Hamzelou How tech companies got access to our tax data You might think (or at least hope) that sensitive data like your tax returns would be kept under close care. But we learned last week that tax prep companies have been sharing millions of taxpayers' sensitive personal information with Meta and Google, some for over a decade.  The tax companies shared the data through tracking pixels, which are used for advertising purposes, an investigative congressional report revealed on Wednesday. Many of them say they have removed the pixels, but it's not clear whether some sensitive data is still being held by the tech companies.  The findings expose the significant privacy risks that advertising and data sharing pose—and it's possible that regulators might actually do something about it. Read the full story. —Tate Ryan-Mosley This story is from The Technocrat, Tate's weekly newsletter covering power in Silicon Valley. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Friday. ADVERTISEMENT Sponsored by Kyndryl Harnessing technological transformation in the era of climate change As urgency around climate change grows, countries are doubling down on efforts to reach net zero emissions. Meeting these goals means creating measurable sustainability goals that leverage technological transformation. Learn more in this article provided by Kyndryl →   The must-reads I've combed the internet to find you today's most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Inside the fightback against AI  Writers and artists fed up with AI companies scraping their data are starting to mobilize. (NYT $) + Europe wants US lawmakers to act more quickly over regulating AI. (Wired $) + Five big takeaways from Europe's AI Act. (MIT Technology Review) + AI's economic impact will extend far beyond chatbots. (Economist $) 2 Inside Threads' plan to force Twitter to unravel  Six months' intensive work, fueled by a grudge. (The Information $) + Twitter is teetering on the precipice. (WSJ $)    3 A typo is behind the leak of sensitive US emails to Mali Senders keep mistyping email addresses, exposing highly classified messages. (FT $) 4 Israel is using AI to select air strike targets Despite serious questions about accuracy. (Bloomberg $) + The UN Security Council is meeting this week over its AI fears. (Reuters) + Why business is booming for military AI startups. (MIT Technology Review)   5 Tesla's cybertruck is finally going into production It's been a long four-year wait. (WSJ $) + EVs are helping to keep homes running during power cuts. (NYT $) 6 Ukraine's scientists are slowly trying to rebuild their institutions But the nation's budget is still being funneled into defense. (Undark Magazine)   7 This fusion reactor relies on superconducting tape 10,000 kilometers of it, in fact. (IEEE Spectrum) + A hole in the ground could be the future of fusion power. (MIT Technology Review)   8 Weather apps are more popular than ever ⛈️ Some people check them as often as they would their social media. (The Guardian)   9 Domino's has conceded defeat to Uber Eats It can no longer ignore the stranglehold delivery apps have over takeout. (The Atlantic $) 10 The case for logging your mood  It can help people to understand the factors that affect their wellbeing. (WSJ $) Quote of the day  "We built it, we trained it, but we don't know what it's doing." —Sam Bowman, an AI professor at New York University, explains to Vox that AI companies don't understand exactly how the tools they created work. The big story Humanity is stuck in short-term thinking. Here's how we escape. October 2020 Humans have evolved over millennia to grasp an ever-expanding sense of time. We have minds capable of imagining a future far off into the distance. Yet while we may have this ability, it is rarely deployed in daily life. If our descendants were to diagnose the ills of 21st-century civilization, they would observe a dangerous short-termism: a collective failure to escape the present moment and look further ahead. The world is saturated in information, and standards of living have never been higher, but so often it's a struggle to see beyond the next news cycle, political term, or business quarter. How to explain this contradiction? Why have we come to be so stuck in the "now"? Read the full story. —Richard Fisher 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.) + Yes, it's AI wizardry, but Johnny Cash singing Barbie Girl is extremely entertaining. + Talking of Barbie, these fans are truly getting into the spirit of things. + Yikes, don't mess with female moles! + Why we just can't get enough of musical memoirs. + I challenge you to find a better dancer than this bee. Subscribe for full access to the Accessibility issue and learn how technology can work for everyone. Plus, get in-depth stories on assistive devices, sonification, immigration, and climate change. SUBSCRIBE NOW Event ClimateTech Innovations for a sustainable future October 4-5, 2023 Learn more » Top image credit: GETTY IMAGES Please send Barbie girls in Barbie worlds to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @yannon_. Thanks for reading! —Rhiannon Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up today → View in browser | This email was sent to alexvarboffin.abbb@blogger.com. Manage your preferences | Unsubscribe | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy MIT Technology Review · 196 Broadway, 3rd fl, · Cambridge, MA 02139 · USA Copyright © 2023 MIT Technology Review, All rights reserved. Opt out of all promotional emails and newsletters from MIT Technology Review