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This week in AI: Experiments, retirements, and extinction events on August 5, 2023 at 2:02 pm
Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of the last week’s stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn’t cover on their own.
YouTube has begun experimenting with AI-generated summaries for videos on the watch and search pages, though only for a limited number of English-language videos and viewers.
Certainly, the summaries could be useful for discovery — and accessibility. Not every video creator can be bothered to write a description. But I worry about the potential for mistakes and biases embedded by the AI.
Even the best AI models today tend to “hallucinate.” OpenAI freely admits that its latest text-generating-and-summarizing model, GPT-4, makes major errors in reasoning and invents “facts.” Patrick Hymel, an entrepreneur in the health tech industry, wrote about the ways in which GPT-4 makes up references, facts and figures without any identifiable link to real sources. And Fast Company tested ChatGPT’s ability to summarize articles, finding it… quite bad.
One can imagine AI-generated video summaries going off the deep end, given the added challenge of analyzing the content contained within the videos. It’s tough to evaluate the quality of YouTube’s AI-generated summaries. But it’s well established that AI isn’t all that great at summarizing text content.
YouTube subtly acknowledges that AI-generated descriptions are no substitute for the real thing. On the support page, it writes: “While we hope these summaries are helpful and give you a quick overview of what a video is about, they do not replace video descriptions (which are written by creators!).”
Here’s hoping the platform doesn’t roll out the feature too hastily. But considering Google’s half-baked AI product launches lately (see its attempt at a ChatGPT rival, Bard), I’m not too confident.
Here are some other AI stories of note from the past few days:
Dario Amodei is coming to Disrupt: We’ll be interviewing the Anthropic co-founder about what it’s like to have so much money. And AI stuff too.
Google Search gains new AI features: Google is adding contextual images and videos to its AI-powered Search Generative Experiment, the generative AI-powered search feature announced at May’s I/O conference. With the updates, SGE now shows images or videos related to the search query. The company also reportedly is pivoting its Assistant project to a Bard-like generative AI.
Microsoft kills Cortana: Echoing the events of the Halo series of games from which the name was plucked, Cortana has been destroyed. Fortunately this was not a rogue general AI but an also-ran digital assistant whose time had come.
Meta embraces generative AI music: Meta this week announced AudioCraft, a framework to generate what it describes as “high-quality,” “realistic” audio and music from short text descriptions, or prompts.
Google pulls AI Test Kitchen: Google has pulled its AI Test Kitchen app from the Play Store and the App Store to focus solely on the web platform. The company launched the AI Test Kitchen experience last year to let users interact with projects powered by different AI models such as LaMDA 2.
Robots learn from small amounts of data: On the subject of Google, DeepMind, the tech giant’s AI-focused research lab, has developed a system that it claims allows robots to effectively transfer concepts learned on relatively small data sets to different scenarios.
Kickstarter enacts new rules around generative AI: Kickstarter this week announced that projects on its platform using AI tools to generate content will be required to disclose how the project owner plans to use the AI content in their work. In addition, Kickstarter is mandating that new projects involving the development of AI tech detail info about the sources of training data the project owner intends to use.
China cracks down on generative AI: Multiple generative AI apps have been removed from Apple’s China App Store this week, thanks to new rules that’ll require AI apps operating in China to obtain an administrative license.
Stable Diffusion releases new model: Stability AI launched Stable Diffusion XL 1.0, a text-to-image model that the company describes as its “most advanced” release to date. Stability claims that the model’s images are “more vibrant” and “accurate” colors and have better contrast, shadows and lighting compared to artwork from its predecessor.
The future of AI is video: Or at least a big part of the generative AI business is, as Haje has it.
AI.com has switched from OpenAI to X.ai: It’s extremely unclear whether it was sold, rented, or is part of some kind of ongoing scheme, but the coveted two-letter domain (likely worth $5-10 million) now points to Elon Musk’s X.ai research outfit rather than the ChatGPT interface.
Other machine learnings
AI is working its way into countless scientific domains, as I have occasion to document here regularly, but you could be forgiven for not being able to list more than a few specific applications offhand. This literature review at Nature is as comprehensive an accounting of areas and methods where AI is taking effect as you’re likely to find anywhere, as well as the advances that have made them possible. Unfortunately it’s paywalled, but you can probably find a way to get a copy.
A deeper dive into the potential for AI to improve the global fight against infectious diseases can be found here at Science, and a few takeaways at UPenn’s summary. One interesting part is that models built to predict drug interactions could also help “unravel intricate interactions between infectious organisms and the host immune system.” Disease pathology can be ridiculously complicated so epidemiologists and doctors will probably take any help they can get.
Asteroid spotted, ma’am.
Another interesting example, with the caveat that not every algorithm should be called AI, is this multi-institutional work algorithmically identifying “potentially hazardous” asteroids. Sky surveys generate a ton of data and sorting through it for faint signals like asteroids’ is tough work that’s highly susceptible to automation. The 600-foot 2022 SF289 was found during a test of the algorithm on ATLAS data. “This is just a small taste of what to expect with the Rubin Observatory in less than two years, when HelioLinc3D will be discovering an object like this every night,” said UW’s Mario Jurić. Can’t wait!
A sort of halo around the AI research world is research being done on AI — how it works and why. Usually these studies are pretty difficult for non-experts to parse, and this one from ETHZ researchers is no exception. But lead author Johannes von Oswald also did an interview explaining some of the concepts in plain English. It’s worth a read if you’re curious about the “learning” process that happens inside models like ChatGPT.
Improving the learning process is also important, and as these Duke researchers find, the answer is not always “more data.” In fact, more data can hinder a machine learning model, said Duke professor Daniel Reker: “It’s like if you trained an algorithm to distinguish pictures of dogs and cats, but you gave it one billion photos of dogs to learn from and only one hundred photos of cats. The algorithm will get so good at identifying dogs that everything will start to look like a dog, and it will forget everything else in the world.” Their approach used an “active learning” technique that identified such weaknesses in the dataset, and proved more effective while using just 1/10 of the data.
A University College London study found that people were only able to discern real from synthetic speech 73 percent of the time, in both English and Mandarin. Probably we’ll all get better at this, but in the near term the tech will probably outstrip our ability to detect it. Stay frosty out there.
Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of the last week’s stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn’t cover on their own. YouTube has begun experimenting with AI-generated summaries for
The “Big Beautiful Bill” (officially the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) is a sweeping tax and spending package passed in July 2025. It makes permanent many Trump-era tax cuts, introduces new tax breaks for working Americans, and enacts deep cuts to federal safety-net programs. The bill also increases spending on border security and defense, while rolling back clean energy incentives and tightening requirements for social programs.
Pros
1. Tax Relief for Middle and Working-Class Families
- Makes the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent, preventing a scheduled tax hike for many Americans.
- Introduces new tax breaks: no federal income tax on tips and overtime pay (for incomes under $150,000, with limits).
- Doubles the Child Tax Credit to $2,500 per child through 2028.
- Temporarily raises the SALT (state and local tax) deduction cap to $40,000.
- Creates “Trump Accounts”: tax-exempt savings accounts for newborns.
2. Support for Small Businesses and Economic Growth
- Makes the small business deduction permanent, supporting Main Street businesses.
- Expands expensing for investment in short-lived assets and domestic R&D, which is considered pro-growth.
3. Increased Spending on Security and Infrastructure
- Allocates $175 billion for border security and $160 billion for defense, the highest peacetime military budget in U.S. history.
- Provides $12.5 billion for air traffic control modernization.
4. Simplification and Fairness in the Tax Code
- Expands the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and raises marginal rates on individuals earning over $400,000.
- Closes various deductions and loopholes, especially those benefiting private equity and multinational corporations.
Cons
1. Deep Cuts to Social Safety Net Programs
- Cuts Medicaid by approximately $930 billion and imposes new work requirements, which could leave millions without health insurance.
- Tightens eligibility and work requirements for SNAP (food assistance), potentially removing benefits from many low-income families.
- Rolls back student loan forgiveness and repeals Biden-era subsidies.
2. Increases the Federal Deficit
- The bill is projected to add $3.3–4 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years.
- Critics argue that the combination of tax cuts and increased spending is fiscally irresponsible.
3. Benefits Skewed Toward the Wealthy
- The largest income gains go to affluent Americans, with top earners seeing significant after-tax increases.
- Critics describe the bill as the largest upward transfer of wealth in recent U.S. history.
4. Rollback of Clean Energy and Climate Incentives
- Eliminates tax credits for electric vehicles and solar energy by the end of 2025.
- Imposes stricter requirements for renewable energy developers, which could lead to job losses and higher electricity costs.
5. Potential Harm to Healthcare and Rural Hospitals
- Reduces funding for hospitals serving Medicaid recipients, increasing uncompensated care costs and threatening rural healthcare access.
- Tightens verification for federal premium subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, risking coverage for some middle-income Americans.
6. Public and Political Backlash
- The bill is unpopular in public polls and is seen as a political risk for its supporters.
- Critics warn it will widen the gap between rich and poor and reverse progress on alternative energy and healthcare.
Summary Table
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Permanent middle-class tax cuts | Deep Medicaid and SNAP cuts |
| No tax on tips/overtime for most workers | Millions may lose health insurance |
| Doubled Child Tax Credit | Adds $3.3–4T to deficit |
| Small business support | Benefits skewed to wealthy |
| Increased border/defense spending | Clean energy incentives eliminated |
| Simplifies some tax provisions | Threatens rural hospitals |
| Public backlash, political risk |
In summary:
The Big Beautiful Bill delivers significant tax relief and new benefits for many working and middle-class Americans, but it does so at the cost of deep cuts to social programs, a higher federal deficit, and reduced support for clean energy and healthcare. The bill is highly polarizing, with supporters touting its pro-growth and pro-family provisions, while critics warn of increased inequality and harm to vulnerable populations.
The escalating conflict between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk reached a new peak this week, as Trump publicly suggested he would consider deporting the billionaire entrepreneur in response to Musk’s fierce criticism of the president’s signature tax and spending bill.
“I don’t know, we’ll have to take a look,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday when asked directly if he would deport Musk, who was born in South Africa but has been a U.S. citizen since 2002.
This threat followed a late-night post on Trump’s Truth Social platform, where he accused Musk of being the largest recipient of government subsidies in U.S. history. Trump claimed that without these supports, Musk “would likely have to shut down operations and return to South Africa,” and that ending such subsidies would mean “no more rocket launches, satellites, or electric vehicle production, and our nation would save a FORTUNE”.
Trump also invoked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—a federal agency Musk previously led—as a potential tool to scrutinize Musk’s companies. “We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? The DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon,” Trump remarked, further intensifying the feud.
Background to the Feud
The rupture comes after Musk’s repeated attacks on Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill,” a comprehensive spending and tax reform proposal that Musk has labeled a “disgusting abomination” and a threat to the nation’s fiscal health. Musk, once a Trump ally who contributed heavily to his election campaign and served as a government advisor, has called for the formation of a new political party, claiming the bill exposes the need for an alternative to the current two-party system.
In response, Trump’s allies have amplified questions about Musk’s citizenship and immigration history, with some suggesting an investigation into his naturalization process. However, legal experts note that deporting a naturalized U.S. citizen like Musk would be extremely difficult. The only path would involve denaturalization—a rare and complex legal process requiring proof of intentional fraud during the citizenship application, a standard typically reserved for the most egregious cases.
Political Fallout
Musk’s criticism has rattled some Republican lawmakers, who fear the feud could undermine their party’s unity ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Meanwhile, Musk has doubled down on his opposition, warning he will support primary challengers against Republicans who back Trump’s bill.
Key Points:
- Trump has publicly threatened to “take a look” at deporting Elon Musk in retaliation for Musk’s opposition to his legislative agenda.
- Legal experts say actual deportation is highly unlikely due to the stringent requirements for denaturalizing a U.S. citizen.
- The feud marks a dramatic reversal from the pair’s earlier alliance, with both men now trading barbs over social media and in public statements.
As the dispute continues, it has become a flashpoint in the broader debate over government spending, corporate subsidies, and political loyalty at the highest levels of American power.
Christianity is experiencing unprecedented growth in Iran, making it the fastest-growing religion in the country despite severe government crackdowns and the risk of harsh penalties for converts. Recent studies and reports from both religious organizations and independent researchers confirm that the number of Christians in Iran has surged over the past decade, with estimates now ranging from 800,000 to as many as 3 million believers, many of whom are converts from Islam.
This remarkable trend is unfolding against a backdrop of systematic persecution. Iranian authorities routinely target house churches, arresting and imprisoning Christians for activities deemed a threat to national security or as “propaganda against the regime.” In 2022 alone, at least 134 Christians were arrested, with dozens receiving prison sentences or being forced into exile. Conversion from Islam remains a criminal offense in Iran, punishable by severe penalties, including, in rare cases, the death penalty.
Despite these dangers, the church in Iran is flourishing underground. The growth is especially notable among young people, many of whom are disillusioned with the country’s strict Islamic rule and are seeking spiritual alternatives that emphasize personal faith and community. Secret house churches and underground networks have become the primary venues for worship and community, with large-scale baptisms sometimes taking place in secret or even across the border.
The Iranian government has acknowledged the trend with concern. Officials have dispatched agents to counter the spread of Christianity, and Islamic clerics have issued warnings about the faith’s rapid expansion. Nevertheless, satellite TV broadcasts, digital outreach, and word-of-mouth continue to fuel the movement, bringing the Christian message to new audiences across the country.
Scholars and observers agree that Iran is witnessing one of the highest rates of Christianization in the world today. Forecasts suggest the Christian population could double again by 2050, even as persecution persists. For many Iranians, Christianity offers a message of hope and transformation that stands in stark contrast to the repressive environment they face, making its spread all the more remarkable in one of the world’s most closed societies.
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