In a development that sounds like the opening scene of a dystopian sci-fi film, baby chicks are now hatching not from eggs but from transparent 3D-printed plastic cups at the Dallas headquarters of Colossal Biosciences. The biotech company claimed yesterday it has developed a “fully artificial egg” as part of its ambitious - and some say overstated - effort to resurrect extinct avian species like the dodo and the giant moa. While some scientists are rolling their eyes at the breakthrough, the technology could represent an early step toward artificial wombs, which is either exciting or terrifying depending on your tolerance for lab-grown life.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has lost his landmark lawsuit against OpenAI, which centered on allegations that cofounders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman misled him about the company’s nonprofit mission. AI reporter and attorney Michelle Kim, who covered the trial for MIT Technology Review, joined editor in chief Mat Honan to unpack the courtroom drama in an exclusive Roundtables discussion. Subscribers can watch the full recording now, presumably while muttering “I told you so” at their screens.
In other preserved-biology news, L. Stephen Coles’s brain sits in a vat at a storage facility in Arizona, held at a crisp −146 °C for over a decade, waiting patiently for reanimation. His friend, cryobiologist Greg Fahy, believes revival is possible, though other experts are less optimistic. Still, Fahy’s research could lead to new ways to study the brain, and cryopreservation for organ transplantation is becoming a viable reality - so maybe that brain isn’t just a very expensive ice cube.
The limitations of LLMs are pushing AI researchers toward “world models” - new systems that understand the physical environment. Google DeepMind, Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs, and Meta’s former Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun are leading the charge. MIT Technology Review is hosting an exclusive Roundtables discussion on Thursday, May 21, to explore where this technology is heading next. Register if you want to sound smart at parties.
In other news: Google is changing its search box for the first time in 25 years, Samsung workers plan to strike over AI profit sharing, the White House is releasing a new executive order on AI safety, and the FBI wants to buy nationwide access to license plate readers - because what could possibly go wrong with that? Also, Google is launching new smart glasses this fall (because the first attempt went so well), and OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy has joined rival Anthropic, proving that in AI, loyalty is as fleeting as a viral meme.
Finally, a book about AI’s effects on truth contains false quotes created by AI - which is either ironic or predictable, depending on your faith in humanity. And a missing cat was reunited with its owner after five years and 270 km apart, all thanks to an old Facebook post. So maybe the internet isn’t all bad.