DTN 020: Satellite Beams Power to Earth for First Time

Satellite beams solar power down to Earth, in first-of-a-kind demonstration

“Researchers have taken a small but necessary step toward realizing a long-standing dream: harvesting solar energy in space and beaming it down to Earth. A satellite launched in January has steered power in a microwave beam onto targets in space, and even sent some of that power to a detector on Earth. The transmitted power was small, just 200 milliwatts, less than that of a cellphone camera light. But the team was still able to steer the beam toward Earth and detect it with a receiver at Caltech. ““No one has done this before,” says space scientist Sanjay Vijendran at the European Space Agency.” (Science)

U.S. Congress to consider two new bills on artificial intelligence

“U.S. senators on Thursday introduced two separate bipartisan artificial intelligence bills amid growing interest in addressing issues surrounding the technology. One would require the U.S. government to be transparent when using AI to interact with people and another would establish an office to determine if the United States is remaining competitive in the latest technologies. The bill also requires agencies to create a way for people to appeal any decisions made by AI.” (Reuters)

Why AI Will Save the World

“The most validated core conclusion of social science across many decades and thousands of studies is that human intelligence makes a very broad range of life outcomes better. What AI offers us is the opportunity to profoundly augment human intelligence to make all of these outcomes of intelligence – and many others, from the creation of new medicines to ways to solve climate change to technologies to reach the stars – much, much better from here. AI augmentation of human intelligence has already started – AI is already around us in the form of computer control systems of many kinds, is now rapidly escalating with AI Large Language Models like ChatGPT, and will accelerate very quickly from here – if we let it.” (a16z)