DTN 025: AI Fears Fuel Historic Hollywood Strike

Plus: India returns to the moon, China strikes back in semiconductor war, CancerGPT, quantum photonics for better holograms, metahumans in the job market, and more.

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

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The Big Picture

Actors Approve Strike as AI Fears Bring Hollywood to a Standstill

“After talks between the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) broke down on Wednesday, members of the actors guild authorized a strike that began on Friday. Artificial intelligence, SAG-AFTRA said, poses an "existential threat" to actors and performers, one that the studios allegedly refused to meaningfully acknowledge. Some actors are concerned that AI technology will be used to replicate performances without their consent, or create additional content without compensation to match.” (Decrypt)

China just fought back in the semiconductor exports war

“China has been on the receiving end of semiconductor export restrictions for years. Now, it is striking back with the same tactic. On July 3, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced that the export of gallium and germanium, two elements used in producing chips, solar panels, and fiber optics, will soon be subject to a license system for national security reasons. That means exports of the materials will need to be approved by the government, and Western companies that rely on them could have a hard time securing a consistent supply from China.” (MIT Tech Review)

Life-Threatening Consequences Loom as Cancer Drug Shortages Grip the US

“Across the U.S., there is a shortage of at least 14 cancer drugs, with the situation being particularly critical for two of them: cisplatin and carboplatin. These two platinum-based chemotherapy drugs are used extensively in cancer treatment, leading to heightened concern among doctors, patient groups and industry analysts. Cisplatin and carboplatin have a cure rate of more than 90% when used in the treatment of testicular cancer, according to NCI. They are also effective in treating various other types of cancer, including bladder, cervical, ovarian, lung, gastric, breast and head and neck cancers. The current situation is due almost entirely to a range of production problems at a single manufacturing facility in Gujarat, India.” (BioSpace)

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Deep Tech News

• US senators get classified White House AI briefing

• Blue Origin rocket engine explodes during testing

• Elon Musk Unveils xAI Team

• Google’s medical AI chatbot is already being tested in hospitals

• India Aims for the Moon with Launch of Chandrayaan-3

• SpaceX Starlink satellites had to make 25,000 collision-avoidance maneuvers in just 6 months

• Examining our options for a lunar solar power satellite

• Science funding agencies say no to using AI for peer review

• Meet CancerGPT: An AI That Predicts the Results of Cancer Treatment Research

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Crypto News

• Founder of crypto lender Celsius Network arrested, charged with fraud

• AI Can Now Move Bitcoin With New Lightning Labs Tools

• Silk Road–Linked Bitcoin Worth $300M Moved by U.S. Government Ahead of Sale

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Peer Review

• A New Way to Save Water, and Money, in Making Cathodes

• Researchers devise new quantum photonics technique to create better holograms

• Fungi stores 1/3 carbon from fossil fuel emits

• New superconductors can be built atom by atom, researchers show

• Researchers demonstrate the power of quantum computing in drug design

• Supercomputer used to simulate winds that cause clear air turbulence

• Researchers engineer nanostructures to enhance the immune system's ability to combat cancer

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Funding x M&A

• Wind Turbine Recycling Gets $5.1M Boost from Department of Energy

• Wildfire detection startup Pano extends its $20M Series A with another $17M

• Energy Department invests $45M to bolster US solar manufacturing

• Avnos, a startup developing hybrid direct air capture tech for CO2 removal, raised $80M

• Causaly, an AI platform for drug discovery and biomedical research, raised a $60M Series B

• Tenpoint Therapeutics, a startup seeking to restore vision through cell-based therapeutics, raised a $70M Series A

• Allonnia, a startup extracting value from waste, raised a $30M Series A extension

• Voice cloning platform Resemble AI raised an $8M Series A

• CarbonCure Technologies, a startup building carbon removal technologies for the concrete industry, raised an $80M

• Genialis, a computational precision medicine startup, raised a $13M Series A

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Miscellanea

The mathematically correct way to tie your shoes / Here come the “metahumans”: Virtual avatars have real jobs in Indonesia / The Physicist Who’s Challenging the Quantum Orthodoxy / How to Build a Big Prime Number / Can AI chatbots replace human subjects in behavioral experiments? / Someone crafted a redstone PC in Minecraft to play Minecraft inside Minecraft / Supermassive Dark Star candidates seen by JWST / People on TikTok are paying elderly women to sit in stagnant mud for hours, cry / 'Stunning' cache of gold coins found in Kentucky cornfield / The Science of Hypersonic Flight / How the Brain Creates Your Physical Sense of Self / Tesla Optimus robot arrives in NYC stores

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