The Download: a biological de-aging contest and why LLMs don’t reason

The Download：一场生物学逆龄竞赛，以及为什么大语言模型（LLM）并不具备推理能力

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. 这是今日份的《The Download》，我们平日更新的简报，为您提供每日科技界动态。

A new contest pits competitors against each other in a race to biological youth —Jessica Hamzelou

一场让参赛者竞相追逐“生物学年轻化”的新比赛 ——Jessica Hamzelou

This week, I officially signed up for an unusual competition. One that rewards competitors for getting younger. I recently turned 40, and I don’t need reminding that both time and my chronological age only tick forward. But this game is focused on competitors’ biological ages, figures that are meant to provide a better way to measure the age-related health of our organs and bodies. Over six months, around 500 of us will try to reverse our biological age using a bunch of different measures. There’s even a leaderboard! But is it even possible to measure whether someone is getting younger? Read the full story on the controversy around biological age measurements and how I’ll test them myself. This story is from The Checkup, our weekly biotech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Thursday. 本周，我正式报名参加了一场不同寻常的比赛。这场比赛奖励那些变得更年轻的参赛者。我最近刚满 40 岁，不需要别人提醒我也知道，时间和我的生理年龄只会不断向前。但这场比赛关注的是参赛者的“生物学年龄”——这一指标旨在提供一种更好的方式来衡量我们器官和身体与年龄相关的健康状况。在接下来的六个月里，我们大约 500 人将尝试通过各种不同的措施来逆转我们的生物学年龄。甚至还有一个排行榜！但衡量一个人是否真的在变年轻，这可能吗？阅读关于生物学年龄测量争议的完整报道，以及我将如何亲自测试这些方法。本文来自我们的每周生物技术简报《The Checkup》。欢迎订阅，每周四即可在收件箱中查收。

Opinion: Don’t be fooled—LLMs don’t reason —Thore Graepel

观点：别被骗了——大语言模型（LLM）并不具备推理能力 ——Thore Graepel

Ten years ago, I watched a program I helped build stun the world by beating Go champion Lee Sedol. AlphaGo won after making a move so strange that some commentators thought it was a programming glitch. It was AlphaGo’s powers of reasoning that made this creative choice—and these are powers that today’s AI lacks. This is why I recently left my position at Google DeepMind. I believe we need a fresh approach to machine reasoning, one that draws on AlphaGo’s architecture. Here’s why today’s AI doesn’t really reason—and what it would take to change that. Thore Graepel is chair of machine learning at University College London. He was a core member of the AlphaGo team at DeepMind. 十年前，我看着我参与构建的程序击败了围棋冠军李世石，震惊了世界。AlphaGo 在做出一步极其诡异的棋后获胜，以至于一些评论员认为那是程序故障。正是 AlphaGo 的推理能力做出了这一创造性的选择——而这正是当今人工智能所缺乏的能力。这就是我最近离开 Google DeepMind 的原因。我相信我们需要一种全新的机器推理方法，一种借鉴 AlphaGo 架构的方法。这就是为什么当今的人工智能并不真正具备推理能力，以及我们需要做些什么来改变这一点。Thore Graepel 是伦敦大学学院机器学习系主任，曾是 DeepMind AlphaGo 团队的核心成员。

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The must-reads

必读内容

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 我梳理了互联网，为您找出了今天最有趣、最重要、最令人担忧以及最引人入胜的科技新闻。

1. OpenAI says rogue agents may have affected more than 100 organizations The company is searching 50 petabytes of data for incidents. (Reuters) It says none of the incidents matched the Hugging Face attack. (Gizmodo) OpenAI has fired three workers for allegedly mishandling information. (BBC) California has subpoenaed OpenAI over its rogue AI agents. (Guardian) Who’s liable when AI agents go rogue? (MIT Technology Review) OpenAI 称“流氓智能体”可能已影响超过 100 家机构 该公司正在 50 PB 的数据中搜寻相关事件。（路透社） 其表示，没有任何事件与 Hugging Face 遭受的攻击相符。（Gizmodo） OpenAI 已解雇三名涉嫌处理信息不当的员工。（BBC） 加州已就其“流氓 AI 智能体”向 OpenAI 发出传票。（卫报） 当 AI 智能体失控时，谁该负责？（麻省理工科技评论）

2. A US man allegedly smuggled $300 million of Nvidia chips to China He’s been arrested in California on federal charges. (Reuters) The chip smuggling cases expose Nvidia’s blind spots. (Bloomberg) China plans to teach AI in every school by 2030. (WP) But it already has an overuse problem. (NYT) 一名美国男子涉嫌向中国走私价值 3 亿美元的英伟达芯片 他已在加州被捕并面临联邦指控。（路透社） 芯片走私案暴露了英伟达的盲点。（彭博社） 中国计划到 2030 年在每所学校普及人工智能教育。（华盛顿邮报） 但目前已经存在过度使用的问题。（纽约时报）

3. Florida officials have found 11 Flock cameras with unknown owners They don’t know who installed them or who has their data. (WP) Lawmakers are considering new regulations on Flock cameras. (Axios) Here’s what Flock’s defenders are missing. (MIT Technology Review) 佛罗里达州官员发现了 11 台所有者不明的 Flock 摄像头 他们不知道是谁安装了这些设备，也不知道谁掌握了数据。（华盛顿邮报） 立法者正在考虑对 Flock 摄像头实施新规。（Axios） Flock 的支持者们忽略了这一点。（麻省理工科技评论）

4. Ukraine has developed an acoustic fence that can cut drone cables Acoustic sensors detect drones before hooks trap their cables. (New Scientist) Drone data from Ukraine is fueling a wild market. (MIT Technology Review) 乌克兰开发出一种可以切断无人机缆线的“声学围栏” 声学传感器在钩子缠住无人机缆线前先探测到目标。（新科学家） 来自乌克兰的无人机数据正在助推一个疯狂的市场。（麻省理工科技评论）

5. A new AI “speech clock” can assess how fast you’re ageing It uses hundreds of vocal features to estimate biological age. (Nature) Aging clocks aim to predict how long you’ll live. (MIT Technology Review) 一种新型 AI“语音时钟”可以评估你的衰老速度 它利用数百种语音特征来估算生物学年龄。（自然） 衰老时钟旨在预测你的寿命。（麻省理工科技评论）

6. “Underwater umbrellas” could help corals survive hotter oceans The shades protected corals during intense heat stress. (Gizmodo) “水下遮阳伞”可能帮助珊瑚在更热的海洋中生存 这些遮阳装置在极端高温压力下保护了珊瑚。（Gizmodo）

7. Apple’s upcoming smart home camera reportedly won’t record video It will instead only give users text event descriptions. (Verge) 据报道，苹果即将推出的智能家居摄像头将不会录制视频 它只会向用户提供文字形式的事件描述。（The Verge）

8. Retired humanoid robots are being trained to jump into molten steel A Terminator-style death protects IP. (IE) 退役的人形机器人正被训练跳入熔融钢水中 这种“终结者”式的死亡方式是为了保护知识产权。（IE）

9. A man faces years in prison after AI slop caused a crocodile panic Officials spent days searching for his AI-generated crocodile. (Futurism) 一名男子因 AI 生成的垃圾内容引发鳄鱼恐慌而面临多年监禁 官员们花了数天时间搜寻他那只 AI 生成的鳄鱼。（Futurism）

10. Finally, a laser mosquito killer is entering the market Chinese startup Photon Matrix Lab plans to start shipments this month. (SCMP) 最后，一款激光灭蚊器即将上市 中国初创公司光子矩阵（Photon Matrix Lab）计划本月开始发货。（南华早报）

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Quote of the day

今日名言

“Those agents are doing exactly what they’ve been asked to do. They were supposed to be in sandboxes, but the sandboxes were leaky and horribly designed.” —Yann LeCun, a Turing Award winner and former Meta chief AI scientist, tells Fortune that human error can be the real culprit behind the recent wave of AI agents going rogue. “这些智能体所做的正是它们被要求做的事情。它们本应被限制在沙盒中，但这些沙盒存在漏洞，设计得非常糟糕。” ——图灵奖得主、Meta 前首席人工智能科学家 Yann LeCun 在接受《财富》杂志采访时表示，人类的失误可能是近期 AI 智能体失控浪潮背后的真正罪魁祸首。

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One more thing

还有一件事

NASA is building the first nuclear reactor-powered interplanetary spacecraft. How will it work? Just before Artemis II began its historic slingshot around the moon, NASA revealed an even grander space travel plan. By the end of 2028, the agency aims to fly a nuclear reactor-powered interplanetary spacecraft to Mars. A successful mission would herald a new era in spaceflight—and might just give the US the edge in the race against China. But the project remains shrouded in mystery. MIT Technology Review picked the brains of nuclear power and propulsion experts to find out how the nuclear-powered spacecraft might work. Here’s what we discovered. —Robin George Andrews NASA 正在建造第一艘核反应堆驱动的行星际航天器。它将如何工作？ 就在“阿耳忒弥斯 2 号”（Artemis II）开始其历史性的绕月飞行之前，NASA 透露了一个更宏大的太空旅行计划。该机构的目标是在 2028 年底前，将一艘核反应堆驱动的行星际航天器送往火星。任务的成功将预示着航天飞行新时代的到来，并可能使美国在与中国的竞争中占据优势。但该项目仍然笼罩在神秘之中。《麻省理工科技评论》采访了核能和推进专家，以了解这艘核动力航天器可能的工作原理。以下是我们发现的内容。——Robin George Andrews

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We can still have nice things

我们依然可以拥有美好事物

A place for comfort, fun, and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line.) 一个为您提供舒适、乐趣和消遣，点亮您一天的地方。（有什么想法吗？给我写信。）

• Atlas Obscura has mapped out the oldest living things on Earth.
• Brain scans show that dogs understand our emotions better than we thought.
• Step into Springfield in miniature with this astonishing model featuring 76 locations from The Simpsons.
• Minnesota’s State Fair has unleashed a crop of gloriously weird new foods, from Pickle pie to mustache pretzels.
• Atlas Obscura 绘制了地球上最古老生物的地图。
• 脑部扫描显示，狗比我们想象中更了解人类的情绪。
• 通过这个令人惊叹的模型走进微缩版的斯普林菲尔德，它包含了《辛普森一家》中的 76 个地点。
• 明尼苏达州博览会推出了一批奇奇怪怪的新美食，从酸黄瓜派到胡子椒盐卷饼，应有尽有。