The Download: AI agent infrastructure, and OpenAI’s ambitions

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 OpenAI is adding mental health guardrails to ChatGPT
It’s set to give less direct advice, and encourage users to take breaks from lengthy chats. (NBC)
+ What happens when doctors fail to spot AI’s mistakes? (The Verge)
+ OpenAI has released its first research into how using ChatGPT affects people’s emotional well-being. (MIT Technology Review)

2 The US wants to build a nuclear reactor on the moon
And it hopes to do that before Russia and China, who are planning to do exactly the same. (Politico)
+ NASA’s latest mission to the moon just failed. (Engadget)
+ Nokia is putting the first cellular network on the moon. (MIT Technology Review)

3 How to live forever (or at least get rich trying) 👴🤑
Love them or hate them, the people behind the explosion in longevity research are a fascinating bunch. (New Yorker $)
+ Longevity clinics around the world are selling unproven treatments. (MIT Technology Review)

4 Welcome to Silicon Valley’s ‘hard tech’ era
Goodbye, consumer software. Hello, massive military contracts. (NYT $)
+ Phase two of military AI has arrived. (MIT Technology Review)

5 There’s a big problem with the Gulf’s trillion-dollar AI dream
Building data centers in a region that already has water scarcity issues seems...unwise. (Rest of Water)
+ There’s a data center boom in the US desert too. (MIT Technology Review)
+ Google has promised to scale back its energy usage during certain times to reduce stress on the grid. (Quartz $)

6 Tesla’s board awarded about $30 billion of shares to Elon Musk
“Retaining Elon is more important than ever before,” they wrote in a letter to shareholders yesterday. (FT $)
+ Tech CEOs pay packets are reaching stratospheric new records. (WSJ $)

7 What happens if you respond to those scam job texts?
You get exploited, obviously—but you’d be surprised just how weird it can get along the way. (Slate)

8 Why there’s so much uproar over Vogue’s AI-generated ad
It’s the latest flashpoint in the war over when AI should (and shouldn’t) be used. (TechCrunch)

9 Earth’s core seems to be up and leaking out of Earth’s surface 🌋
It’s a finding that’s forcing geoscientists to rethink some long-held assumptions. (Quanta $)
+ How a volcanic eruption turned a human brain into glass. (MIT Technology Review)

10 Could lasers help us see inside people’s heads?
It seems possible, but big hurdles remain to this new method being adopted in clinical settings. (IEEE Spectrum)

Quote of the day

"Hate it! Don't want anything to do with it."

—Weezy Simes, a 27-year-old florist, sums up her feelings about AI to Business Insider.