#113 - Biocomputers, Social Impact Talent Matching, and Mitigating Bias in LLMs!
Happy holidays, and welcome to the Impact Labs Newsletter! If you like what you see and know others who would be interested in subscribing, send them this email and they can join the fam by signing up here! 😀
In the News
🧬 Last edition, we shared about the first approved CRISPR-enabled gene therapy for sickle cell disease, and now researchers are hoping to use the same pathway for a CRISPR-enabled Alzheimer’s therapy.
🧠 Researchers from UI Bloomington have created a “biocomputer” by combining lab-grown brain tissue and conventional computers that can recognize voices.
🐳 Humans can talk to whales now.
💉 Japan approved the world’s first self-amplifying vaccine for Covid19.
🛰️ Bezos wants to sell you internet from space.
Opportunities
Tekalo is a platform that matches tech talent to opportunities at impact-driven organizations. Specifically, Tekalo matches software engineers, product managers, designers and data analysts to full-time and part-time opportunities at a select set of impact-driven and public service organizations. Tekalo was built by Schmidt Futures in partnership with All Tech Is Human, Fast Forward, and U.S. Digital Response. Since this initiative is entirely supported by philanthropic capital, no organizations nor candidates will be responsible for any fees at any time. We’ve met the folks on the team at Schmidt behind the initiative, and they are so kind and thoughtful - we highly recommend that you check it out, and tell them that Impact Labs sent you!
For anyone interested in investigating the problems and opportunities of networked communication and social media, The Institute for Rebooting Social Media at Harvard is now accepting applications for their 2024-2025 Visiting Scholar Program!
Zipline uses drones all around the world to deliver medications and blood transfusions in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, and they’ll soon be delivering groceries in the US too! We think one of those verticals is obviously more impactful than the other, but hey, drone delivered groceries are pretty darn cool too! They now have open Internships! Read more about there work in Rwanda here.
“The Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI) is a global health organization committed to our mission of saving lives and reducing the burden of disease in low-and middle-income countries. We work at the invitation of governments to support them and the private sector to create and sustain high-quality health systems.” CHAI is currently looking for a summer associate in their Strategy & Special Projects department, and applications are currently open.
What We’re Watching
In honor of Spotify wrapped, check out this visualization of all the different genres on the platform. But also check out all the layoffs… Yikes.
Anthropic released a paper on mitigating bias and discrimination in LLMs.
The World Bank approved a $266M project to expand internet access across West Africa.
Despite popular sentiment to the contrary, many economic indicators are showing a rosy picture for labor.
Now that LLMs can pass the Turing test, this article explores what might be next in terms of benchmarking and evaluating AI.
Quotes We Love
“A culture that is dead to love can only be resurrected by spiritual awakening… All awakening to love is spiritual awakening.”
-Bell Hooks
That’s all for now! See you in your inbox in another 2 weeks! We said in the last edition that we’d be taking a break this week, but we just couldn’t help ourselves… 😅