Hello and welcome to Weekly News Roundup Issue #473! We have a packed issue this week, with the main story being the new legislation that could ban the sale of DJI drones in the US.

In the world of AI, Apple is delaying the launch of Apple Intelligence and other AI tools in the EU. Toys’R’Us has made the first ad with Sora, OpenAI’s video generator. Meanwhile, Sohu, the world’s first chip specialized for transformers, has been released, promising an order of magnitude performance improvement over traditional GPUs.

In robotics, Agility Robotics’ humanoid robot, Digit, got its first job. Meanwhile, speaking at the G7 summit, the Pope called for the ban of autonomous weapons.

In biotech, a new startup with $142 million in funding is taking on DeepMind’s AlphaFold, and a new and promising gene editing technique has been discovered.

Hope you enjoy this week’s selection!

In this New Cold War between the US and China, both powers are engaged in a complex game of strategy and influence played on multiple fronts. One of those key fronts is technology.

In 2022, the US banned Huawei and ZTE because they pose "an unacceptable risk" to US national security. In the recent years, various other bills and directives were issued to block the sale of advanced chips, such as Nvidia’s A100 and H100, to China. The reason was, again, the risk to the US national security. In April of this year, ByteDance, the owners of TikTok, were banned from operating in the US and were given 270 days to sell TikTok to a US company. Now, DJI, a giant in the commercial drone space, might be added to this list.

Even if you haven’t heard about DJI, chances are that you have seen their drones or footage captured by them. Even generic drone icons often look like the DJI Phantom, that’s how ubiquitous DJI drones are.

DJI dominates the US consumer drone market with a 70% share. Their drones are used by hobbyists, photographers, and videographers. Beyond the consumer market, DJI drones are often used in industries such as construction, energy, and agriculture, to name a few. They are employed to monitor buildings and construction sites, infrastructure, and crops. They assist in making detailed maps, surveying land, monitoring the environment, and more.

However, DJI’s dominance in the US might soon come to an end. On June 14th, 2024, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would completely ban DJI’s drones from being sold in the US. The potential ban comes in the form of the Countering CCP Drones Act, which is part of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. That bill allocates defence spending for the next year and has passed through the House without issue. Now, the bill is in the Senate which has to pass its own version of the bill, and if successful they’ll be merged and passed onto the White House for the President to sign into law.

The proposed bill would ban the sale of DJI drones in the US. The bill will not affect drones that have already been purchased. However, there is a possibility that if the bill passes, drone operators may have their existing FCC authorizations for their DJI drones revoked and grounded. It is also unclear if the bill would affect other products sold by DJI, such as action cameras or gimbals.

The main reason for the bill’s existence is the fear that DJI, a Chinese company with 6% of its stock held by Chinese state-owned businesses, could pose a national security threat. Concerns include the potential for the drones to be used for surveillance or as a means to introduce Chinese government backdoors.

“DJI poses an unacceptable national security risk, as Chinese law provides the Chinese government with power to compel DJI to participate in and assist in its espionage activities.” writes Elise Stefanik, a Republican representative in New York's 21st congressional district and the sponsor of the Countering CCP Drones Act, in a statement. “DJI drones pose the national security threat of TikTok, but with wings. The possibility that DJI drones could be equipped to send live imagery of military installations, critical infrastructure, and the personal lives of American citizens to China poses too great a threat. Allowing this practice to continue in the U.S. is playing with fire. This Chinese-controlled company cannot be allowed to continue to operate in the U.S.”

In response to the proposed bill, DJI published Get The Facts: Countering CCP Drones Act post in which DJI argues that the proposed legislation continues “to reference inaccurate and unsubstantiated allegations regarding DJI’s operations, and have amplified xenophobic narratives in a quest to support local drone manufacturers and eliminate market competition.“ DJI also states that the bill “damages not just DJI, but also the broad ecosystem of operators, businesses and public safety agencies that rely on their technologies to conduct safe and efficient operations.”

In the same post, DJI also addresses the privacy claims, stating that the company does not collect flight logs, photos, or videos. The company also clarifies that it is not a Chinese military company. “We remain one of the few drone companies to clearly denounce and actively discourage the use of our drones in combat. DJI does not manufacture military-grade equipment, nor does it pursue business opportunities for combat use or operations,” reads the statement. DJI has also insisted it “follows the rules and regulations in the markets it operates in.”

The potential ban would hit DJI hard. The company controls 70% of the US commercial drone market, which was worth $6 billion in 2023. If the ban passes through the Senate, there may still be a transition period that could potentially last three or more years. This would allow for adjustments to the ban before it fully takes effect and may even give DJI the chance to sell off some portion of its drone business to a non-Chinese entity, similar to how ByteDance was ordered to sell TikTok to a US company or lose access to the US market.

DJI and the Drone Advocacy Alliance (non-partisan, drone-agnostic sponsored by DJI) have urged the US public to reach out to Senators to oppose Countering CCP Drones Act.

Should the ban pass, it would be great news for other drone manufacturers operating in the US, as they would have a DJI-shaped hole in the market to fill. Additionally, other countries may follow the US example and introduce their own legislation banning DJI from their markets.

I will be keeping an eye on how the situation develops and will post any updates in the Weekly News Roundups.

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🦾 More than a human

UK boy has brain implant fitted to control epilepsy seizures in world first
A UK teenager, Oran Knowlson, has become the first person to receive a brain implant designed to control severe epilepsy. The neurostimulator, implanted under his skull, has significantly improved his quality of life by reducing his daytime seizures by 80% and giving him greater independence.

Ray Kurzweil explains how AI makes radical life extension possible
In this article, Ray Kurzweil lays out how we can, with the help of AI, make radical life extension a reality. According to Kurzweil, this decade will see a slew of new solutions combining AI and biotechnology to defeat various diseases. As he writes, “the current trickle of applications will become a flood by the end of the 2020s.” In the 2030s, Kurzweil envisions medical nanorobots conducting cellular-level maintenance and repair throughout our bodies, and in the 2040s, he predicts that mind uploading and digital immortality will be achieved.

🧠 Artificial Intelligence

Apple delays launch of AI-powered features in Europe, blaming EU rules
Apple will delay launching Apple Intelligence, Phone Mirroring, and SharePlay Screen Sharing in Europe due to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). This act requires Apple to ensure rival products and services can function with its devices. Apple argued that complying with the EU regulations would compromise its devices' security, a claim Apple has made before and that EU officials have pushed back on. While Apple Intelligence will launch in the US this fall, it will not arrive in Europe until 2025.

Apple, Meta Have Discussed an AI Partnership
The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is in talks with Meta to include their Llama 3 model on Apple devices as part of Apple Intelligence. However, according to TechCrunch, the idea of Meta’s models running on Apple devices has been shelved due to privacy concerns. Currently, Apple Intelligence is integrated with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but Apple has indicated that other models, such as Google’s Gemini, could be added soon. In addition to Google and Meta, Apple is reportedly also in talks with Anthropic and Perplexity to add their models to Apple Intelligence.

Etched releases Sohu, the world’s first specialized chip for transformers
Etched has unveiled Sohu, a new AI chip that, according to the company, is an order of magnitude faster and cheaper than GPUs. However, there is a catch—Sohu is an ASIC, a highly specialized chip that can run only transformer models. But with this level of specialization come massive performance improvements. Etched claims that one 8xSohu server can replace 160 Nvidia H100 GPUs and serve over 500,000 Llama 3 70B tokens per second. For comparison, eight H100 GPUs achieve 25,000 tokens per second, while eight of the latest B200 GPUs reach 43,000 tokens per second. Sohu only supports transformer inference, meaning big GPU servers will still be needed for training. Etched has not mentioned any customers yet, but if Sohu and the idea of transformer ASICs catch on, we might see a dramatic improvement in AI performance.

First Ever Brand Film Created with SORA

Toys"R"Us has become the first brand to use OpenAI’s video generator, Sora (which has not yet been publicly released). The video, created together with the creative agency Native Foreign, tells the story of Toys"R"Us founder Charles Lazarus using AI-generated video clips. According to the PR statement, the video was almost entirely created with Sora, with some corrective VFX and an original music score composed by Aaron Marsh. The full 66-second video is available on the Toys"R"Us website. As with any form of art created using AI tools, the reception has been mixed to displeased.

Gemma 2 is now available to researchers and developers

Google has released Gemma 2, a new version of their open-source large language model. First announced at Google I/O 2024, Gemma 2 comes in two sizes—9B and 27B—and is built with developers and researchers in mind. According to benchmarks published by Google, Gemma 2 9B outperforms Llama 3 8B, while Gemma 2 27B outperforms the much larger Llama 3 70B and Grok-1 314B models.

OpenAI Builds AI to Critique AI

OpenAI has released a new model, CriticGPT, designed to check the correctness of answers by ChatGPT. For now, CriticGPT only checks code generated by ChatGPT as it is easier to evaluate and spot mistakes than in text. According to OpenAI, people who use CriticGPT to review ChatGPT-generated code outperform those without help 60% of the time. CriticGPT will be used as part of the Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF) step, in which human trainers evaluate a variety of outputs from a language model, all generated in response to the same question, and indicate which response is best. Alongside the blog post, OpenAI also released the paper describing CriticGPT.

Expanding access to Claude for government
Anthropic has made the Claude 3 Haiku and Claude 3 Sonnet models available to the US Intelligence Community and government agencies via AWS (interestingly, the recently released Claude 3.5 Sonnet is not mentioned). Additonally, the company has has updated its usage policies to clarify how government agencies can use their models. Anthropic hopes their models will be used to make government agencies more efficient, enhance policymaking with data-driven insights, and create realistic training scenarios. The company also clarified which applications are allowed and which are not. Prohibited uses include disinformation campaigns, the design or use of weapons, censorship, and malicious cyber operations.

Light-Based Chips Could Help Slake AI’s Ever-Growing Thirst for Energy
The amount of energy needed to operate modern servers running state-of-the-art AI models is enormous. To deal with these massive energy bills, some people are exploring alternative methods of computation. One of them is optical computing. Recent results suggest that for certain computational tasks fundamental to modern artificial intelligence, light-based “optical computers” may offer an advantage.

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🤖 Robotics

Pope calls on G7 leaders to ban use of autonomous weapons
Speaking at the G7 summit in Italy, Pope Francis made a historic address to G7 leaders, urging them to recognize their power to decide if AI becomes a terrifying or creative tool. He called on them to ban the use of autonomous weapons in war, stating that it should never be for machines to decide whether human beings live or die.

Agility’s humanoid robots are going to handle your Spanx
Agility Robotics’ humanoid robot has secured its first paying job following a successful pilot with logistics giant GXO. An undisclosed number of robots will be deployed at the Connecticut Spanx factory to move boxes. The systems are being leased as part of a RaaS (robots as a service) model, rather than being purchased outright. It is also worth noting that a week ago, GXO announced a pilot deal with Apptronik, another player in the humanoid robotics industry. Additionally, Agility robots have been tested by Amazon since October last year, but no updates have been provided by either company since then.

▶️ Adam Savage Swallows This Camera Robot (31:42)

Adam Savage (who you might know from Mythbusters) visits the workshop of Endiatx to learn about how Pillbot—a robotic endoscope—was made. The video shows the journey the team at Endiatx went through, from a large proof-of-concept robot to what it is now—the smallest medical robot weighing only 3 grams—iteration after iteration. I also enjoyed how open the company was in explaining the engineering of Pillbot, how it is made, and how it works.

Manchester engineers unlock design for record-breaking robot that could jump twice the height of Big Ben
Engineers at The University of Manchester have designed a robot capable of jumping 120 metres—higher than any other jumping robot designed to date. The current record holder can jump up to 33 metres. The new robot design could potentially jump as high as 120 metres. Researchers are exploring jumping as an alternative way for robots to effectively travel through tough terrain, such as inside caves, through forests, over boulders, or even on the surface of other planets in space.

Meet DAL-e Delivery and Parking Robot, Hyundai’s office-friendly systems

Hyundai Motor Group announced the deployment of two new robots—DAL-e Delivery Robot and Hyundai WIA’s Parking Robot. The first robot is designed to work in an office environment, delivering packages from the reception to anyone across the office. The second robot takes care of finding a parking spot—all you need to do is leave the car at the parking entrance, and the robot will take it to the right parking spot. Both robots are being deployed at Factorial Seongsu, a smart building owned by IGIS Asset Management, and are part of Hyundai’s Robot Total Solution.

🧬 Biotechnology

EvolutionaryScale, backed by Amazon and Nvidia, raises $142M for protein-generating AI
EvolutionaryScale, a bioinformatics startup founded in 2023, has raised a massive $142 million in a seed round and revealed their product—ESM3—a “frontier model” for biology. According to the company, ESM3 can “reason over” the sequence, structure, and function of proteins and generate new ones, similar to DeepMind’s AlphaFold. The full 98-billion parameter model will be available for non-commercial use through its cloud Forge developer platform. Additionally, a smaller model for offline use will be released, too.

Come Together: Bridge RNAs Close the Gap to Genome Design
Researchers have discovered a genome editing technique that goes beyond what is possible with CRISPR, providing a precise and powerful tool to recombine and rearrange DNA in a programmable way. This new technique enables scientists to specify not only the target DNA to be modified, but also the donor material to be recognized. This allows them to insert new, functional genetic material, cut out faulty DNA, or invert any two sequences of interest. With bridge recombination, genetic engineers can have precise control over where the edits are made, enabling a new generation of genome editing and design tools.

Is this the end of animal testing?
Up until recently, every drug had to be developed and tested in animals. However, 95% of drugs developed using animals fail in humans. But now, researchers have a promising alternative to animal testing—organs on chips. These small, rectangular pieces of plastic with microscopic channels inside them provide a suitable environment for liver, kidney, lung, intestine, and brain tissue to grow and act as closely as possible to how real tissue behaves in the human body. This article explains how organs on chips came to be and how they are revolutionizing drug research and testing.

Swedish company launches bio-based plastic derived from forest residues
Swedish greentech company Lignin Industries AB has announced the mass commercialization of its Renol technology. Renol, a bio-based material derived from lignin—an organic polymer found in trees—aims to replace fossil fuel-based plastics, offering sustainable alternatives for various commonly used plastics. After five years of research and development, Renol is now being produced at a factory near Stockholm, Sweden.

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