The Download: Meet Cathy Tie, and Anthropic's new AI models | MIT Technology Review
Since the Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui was released from prison in 2022, he has sought to make a scientific comeback and to repair his reputation after a three-year incarceration for illegally creating the world’s first gene-edited children.
Meet Cathy Tie, Bride of “China’s Frankenstein”
One area of visible success on his come-back trail has been his X.com account. Over the past few years, his account has evolved from sharing mundane images of his daily life to spreading outrageous, antagonistic messages. This has left observers unsure what to take seriously.
Last month, in reply to MIT Technology Review’s questions about who was responsible for the account’s transformation into a font of clever memes, He emailed us back: “It’s thanks to Cathy Tie.” Tie is no stranger to the public spotlight. A former Thiel fellow, she is a partner in a project which promised to create glow-in-the-dark pets. Over the past several weeks, though, the Canadian entrepreneur has started to get more and more attention as the new wife to He Jiankui. Read the full story.
Anthropic’s new hybrid AI model can work on tasks autonomously for hours at a time
Anthropic has announced two new AI models that it claims represent a major step toward making AI agents truly useful. AI agents trained on Claude Opus 4, the company’s most powerful model to date, raise the bar for what such systems are capable of by tackling difficult tasks over extended periods of time and responding more usefully to user instructions, the company says.
They’ve achieved some impressive results: Opus 4 created a guide for the video game Pokémon Red while playing it for more than 24 hours straight. The company’s previously most powerful model was capable of playing for just 45 minutes. Read the full story.
The FDA plans to limit access to covid vaccines. Here’s why that’s not all bad.
This week, two new leaders at the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to limit access to covid vaccines, arguing that there is not much evidence to support the value of annual shots in healthy people. New vaccines will be made available only to the people who are most vulnerable—namely, those over 65 and others with conditions that make them more susceptible to severe disease.
The plans have been met with fear and anger in some quarters. But they weren’t all that shocking to me. In the UK, where I live, covid boosters have been offered only to vulnerable groups for a while now. And the immunologists I spoke to agree: The plans make sense.
The must-reads
1. Thousands of Americans are facing extreme weather
But help from the federal government may never arrive. (Slate $)
+ States struck by tornadoes and floods are begging the Trump administration for aid. (Scientific American $)
2. Spain’s grid operator has accused power plants of not doing their job
It claims they failed to control the system’s voltage shortly before the blackout. (FT $)
+ Did solar power cause Spain’s blackout? (MIT Technology Review)
3. Google is facing a DoJ probe over its AI chatbot deal
It will probe whether Google’s deal with Character.AI gives it an unfair advantage. (Bloomberg $)
+ It may not lead to enforcement action, though. (Reuters)
