#134 - AI Cyberdefense, HF0 Applications, and the Revival of the American Chestnut!
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In the News
We wrote this edition of our newsletter in the afternoon of Tuesday, November 5th, so we don’t know what’s happened (or happening) with the US election.
Emissions in China this year are projected to be lower than 2023.
This new biotech startup is bringing back American chestnut trees from functional extinction.
Project Naptime, a Google initiative, is an LLM-based cyberdefense agent that successfully identified an exploitable memory-safety issue in SQLite, a very common database. Pretty cool to think that this issue was around for a while, but that no one found it before the AI systems did.
Opportunities
Applications for the Impact Fellowship are open for just a bit longer! Have you applied yet? Have you sent the link to someone who would be a great fit yet? Have you flossed yet? Don’t delay! www.impactlabs.io/fellowship
HF0, the startup accelerator and hacker monastery, has applications open until November 10th. If you’re working on a company (or have an idea), don’t wait to apply. They invest $1M for 5%.
Apollo Research is looking for an operations generalist. “The capabilities of current AI systems are evolving at a rapid pace. While these advancements offer tremendous opportunities, they also present significant risks, such as the potential for deliberate misuse or the deployment of sophisticated yet misaligned models. At Apollo Research, our primary concern lies with deceptive alignment, a phenomenon where a model appears to be aligned but is, in fact, misaligned and capable of evading human oversight. You can learn more about our work on our blog and research page. At Apollo, we foster a culture centered on truth-seeking, goal orientation, constructive feedback, and a supportive, friendly environment. For more details about working at Apollo, you can find additional information here.”
“At Biotia, we fight infectious diseases powered by AI software and genomics while developing a world leading microbial sequence database. We work with researchers, labs, and clinicians, leveraging high-complexity testing for rapid precision infectious disease discovery, providing critical insights to guide patient treatment and improve health outcomes. Our work in infectious disease has included pioneering products for SARS-CoV-2 variant detection (received FDA EUA), launching of bioinformatic pipelines with NASA, characterization of hard-to-diagnose infections and bacterial outbreaks in hospitals, and development of new diagnostic tools for women’s health.” They are currently hiring a clinical lab supervising technologist based in New York.
What We’re Watching
Boston Dynamics being very cool and very creepy (again).
1 gram of DNA can store 215 petabytes of data.
BYD, the Chinese car manufacturer, is completely shaking up the auto industry.
India struggles to develop its tech sector when the government keeps shutting down the internet.
Quotes We Love
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”
- Leonardo da Vinci
That’s all for now! See you in your inbox in another two weeks! ❤️