In this week’s issue:
🚀 The Toronto tech entrepreneur making the most of the crypto rebound
🤝 Tech giants make AI pledges
🧠 Neuralink gets the go ahead for a second patient
😶🌫️ Some things don’t last forever on the internet
The return of crypto
Tech entrepreneur Mike Silagadze is feeling the crypto rebound with his company Ether.fi.Peter Power/The Globe and Mail
The value of bitcoin has soared in the past year as investors pour money into newly approved cryptocurrency ETFs, which allow investors to dip their toes into the world of crypto without buying it directly. And, earlier this month, FTX said it could repay nearly all its customers who lost money – plus interest – after the cryptocurrency exchange imploded in spring 2022. One of the crypto companies enjoying this comeback is Ether.fi, a blockchain-based financial services entity founded by Toronto entrepreneur Mike Silagadze. Ether.fi allows users to save, invest and spend crypto in real-life transactions. This week, tech reporter Sean Silcoff spoke with Silagadze about Ether.fi’s explosive growth and the regulatory grey area of the crypto market.
Tech companies pledge to develop AI safely, pinky swear
The world’s leading artificial intelligence companies came together this week to sign a pledge saying they will follow AI safety standards, which were first introduced in a summit last year in Britain. The voluntary pledge is a kind of international agreement on the industry’s “red lines” for machine learning standards and testing. The European Union also endorsed landmark rules on AI, which impose strict transparency obligations on high-risk systems such as health and government.
Questions around AI safety are reaching a fever pitch. Last week, OpenAI’s Jan Leike announced he had resigned the day after the company released GPT-4o, an eerily human-like voice assistant capable of real-time conversations. “Safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products,” Leike wrote on X. Another former OpenAI employee told Vox Media that he had “gradually lost trust in OpenAI leadership and their ability to responsibly handle AGI, so I quit.”
Neuralink gets the greenlight from the FDA
Noland Arbaugh is the first patient to take part in the first human clinical trial of the Neuralink device.REBECCA NOBLE/The New York Times News Service
Elon Musk’s brain implant startup Neuralink got Food and Drug Administration approval to embed its chip into a second person, according to a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The implant is about the size of a quarter and has 64 external threads that are inserted into the brain’s motor cortex, which can turn movement signals into computer commands. Essentially, once in the brain of a quadriplegic patient, they would just need to think about using their hand to move a cursor or click a button, and it would happen.
Neuralink’s first patient had the procedure done earlier this year and although only around 15 per cent of the threads in his brain are still in place, the chip continues to work. To prevent the threads from falling out, for the second patient, Neuralink will embed them deeper into the brain, to eight millimetres compared to the three-to-five millimetres in the first patient. Neuralink said it aims to implant 10 people this year and plans to submit applications to Canada for a similar clinical trial.
Turns out, the internet can forget
A few years ago, I tried to find the blog I kept in high school, which essentially was an online diary written in the voice of whichever writer I was enamoured with at the time, like Kurt Vonnegut or J.D. Salinger. (Yes, I was insufferable.) But despite all my googling, I couldn’t find it, which left me wondering: Is it still online somewhere? Or did it evaporate into the ether of the internet? People always say that nothing truly disappears off the internet. But in reality, large swaths of the web are already gone.
According to a new analysis from Pew Research Centre, 38 per cent of webpages from 2013 are no longer accessible, 54 per cent of Wikipedia pages contain at least one link in the references section that directs to a page that is no longer live, and 23 per cent of news sites have at least one broken link. To someone who has worked in digital publishing long enough to see enough publications fold and take their entire archive down with them, that last stat isn’t all too surprising. At least we still have the Wayback Machine.
What else we’re reading this week:
Euclid project’s stunning panoramas of deep space give dark-energy detectives valuable clues (The Globe and Mail)
Crypto astrologers see price moves in the stars (Wired)
When you’re a clickworker, no one knows you’re old (Rest of the World)
Soundbite
“What is unusual now, in the context of drug history, is that people are going to drug dealers to buy drugs, not to have a good time, but to work more efficiently” - Daniel Kolitz, on the rise of Adderall, as heard on this week’s episode of Lately.
Adult Money:
SpectraLite FaceWare Pro, $455
Red light therapy is all the rage and I want in.Supplied
Okay, hear me out. I know this mask looks freaky. And expensive. And, perhaps, the epicentre of dubious health claims and grotesque influencer culture. But I still want it! Sue me! Light therapy is all the rage with skincare and beauty influencers – and also with neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman – who say it improves skin, enhances alertness and boosts your mood. This mask from Dr. Dennis Gross Skincare has a red light mode for fighting wrinkles and building collagen, blue light for treating acne by destroying bacteria, and combined purple light to combat both aging and acne. I’ve yet to try this myself, but I have friends who now swear by this mask. Consider me influenced.
Culture radar
A good candidate for a tall man in finance with blue eyes and a trust fund.iStockPhoto / Getty Images
From TikTok to the main stage, “Man in finance” is the song of the summer
Every once in a while, a viral moment breaks through the social media feeds and crosses into the real world. For those who are Extremely Online, it’s magical and jarring.
This particular tune started on TikTok by 26-year-old creator Megan Boni, who goes by the username Girl On Couch, who made a video of her singing a satirical love anthem a capella: “I’m looking for a man in finance. Trust fund. 6′5. Blue eyes.” In the caption Boni writes, “Can someone make this into an actual song pls just for funzies.”
Since it was first posted three weeks ago, the clip has been viewed more than 26 million times and has spawned countless DJ remixes, including by the Canadian electronic duo Loud Luxury who recently performed their rendition to thousands of screaming fans. After her song broke into the mainstream, Boni quit her day job and will be officially releasing the song as a single. And for those wondering, she’s still looking for a man in finance.