DTN 015: Brain images just got 64 million times sharper

Plus: Telescopes on the moon, solar sails for interstellar travel, DIY brain-computer interfaces, and more.

Apr 23, 2023

Welcome to The Deep Tech Newsletter, a weekly exploration of the business, science, and engineering behind the world’s most important frontier technologies.

The Big Picture

Brain images just got 64 million times sharper

“Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the first MRI, the researchers generated scans of a mouse brain that are dramatically crisper than a typical clinical MRI for humans, the scientific equivalent of going from a pixelated 8-bit graphic to the hyper-realistic detail of a Chuck Close painting. A single voxel of the new images—think of it as a cubic pixel—measures just 5 microns. That's 64 million times smaller than a clinical MRI voxel.” (MedicalXpress)

OpenAI’s CEO Says the Age of Giant AI Models Is Already Over

“OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, says further progress will not come from making models bigger. “I think we're at the end of the era where it's going to be these, like, giant, giant models,” he told an audience at an event held at MIT late last week. “We'll make them better in other ways.” (WIRED)

Building telescopes on the Moon could transform astronomy

“The lunar far side is permanently shielded from the radio signals generated by humans on Earth. During the lunar night, it is also protected from the Sun. These characteristics make it probably the most “radio-quiet” location in the whole solar system as no other planet or moon has a side that permanently faces away from the Earth. It is therefore ideally suited for radio astronomy.” (The Conversation)

Proliferation of AI weapons among non-state actors could be impossible to stop

"If you're having arms control, you need to have some process of validation," he said. "But the signature for developing AI is quite small. You don't need these uranium enrichment facilities, for example. You're talking about warehouses with computers and scientists. How can you monitor potential defection from the arms control regime? There's a huge incentive to cheat on regulation if you believe that these technologies confer profound military advantage. That makes me slightly uncomfortable… I'm slightly skeptical about the prospects for regulation." (The Register)

SpaceX launches fully stacked Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket

“SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded on Thursday, minutes after lifting off from a launchpad in South Texas. The rocket, the most powerful ever built, did not reach orbit but provided important lessons for the private spaceflight company as it worked toward a more successful mission.” (New York Times)

Deep Tech News

Crypto News

Peer Review

Funding x M&A

DEEP TECH

CRYPTO

Miscellanea

Fungi makes a meal of hard-to-recycle plastic / California Wants to Cover Its Canals with Solar Panels / A Peter Thiel-Backed Startup City Wants to Be Africa’s Delaware / DIY Brain-computer Interface / Large language models: Scaling laws and emergent properties / A big offshore wind company is building a fish farm inside a turbine’s foundation / First space images captured by balloon-borne telescope / A Giant Telescope Grows in Chile / A social media site for chatbots to talk to each other / DARPA wants to rethink the fundamentals of AI to include trust / Everyone with Blue Eyes May Descend from a Single Human Ancestor

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