What I Read This Week…
Scientists have developed an AI model that can detect 11 cancers, four college students built anti-drone tech that outperforms Boeing’s systems, and U.S. output per capita remains the highest globally
Read our Deep Dive: Is India the Next Economic Giant?
Caught My Eye…
Scientists at Harvard Medical School have developed a versatile, ChatGPT-like AI model called CHIEF capable of performing various diagnostic tasks across multiple forms of cancer. What makes CHIEF different from current AI approaches to cancer diagnosis? CHIEF stands out by performing a wide range of tasks across 19 cancer types, maintaining consistent performance regardless of cell sample collection or digitization methods. The model detects cancer cells, predicts tumor origins, forecasts patient survival, and identifies treatment-related genetic patterns, achieving 94% accuracy in cancer detection across 11 of the 19 cancer types. CHIEF was pretrained on 44 terabytes of high-resolution pathology data and validated using 19,491 images from 32 independent sets across 24 international hospitals and cohorts. Through more efficient and accurate cancer evaluations, CHIEF could enable clinicians to better diagnose and treat cancer patients.
Four college students from the University of Toronto developed an anti-drone technology that outperformed systems from major defense companies like Boeing in a competition hosted by the Canadian military. How did they do it? The students built a device that emits high-frequency sound waves to disrupt drones in flight. It works by exploiting materials' resonant frequencies, causing drone components to vibrate and malfunction, similar to how a powerful sound can shatter a wine glass. To create this device, the team first experimented with car speakers in a living room, testing various sound frequencies on drone parts. They then upgraded to more powerful speakers that could produce ultrasound waves beyond human hearing. Through repeated backyard tests, they refined their system to destabilize drones' navigation systems from 50 meters away, making them unstable, veer off course, or crash. This final prototype cost the students about $17,000 to develop.
U.S. output per capita remains the highest in the world, with each worker generating about $171,000 in annual economic output on average. What is driving this? One key driver is the nation's commitment to innovation, with the U.S. investing roughly 3.5% of GDP in research and development—a percentage surpassed only by South Korea and Israel. This investment fuels growth in digital-intensive sectors like tech, finance, law, and consulting, where the U.S. provides high-value products and services to the world. The American economy also thrives on a constant influx of new startups and a flexible labor market which allows workers to easily change jobs or relocate to where they can be most productive. Together, these factors facilitate efficient resource allocation in the economy, driving a 70% increase in labor productivity since 1990.
Other Reading…
Who Will Control the Next Congress? (The Economist)
OpenAI, Bain Expand AI Partnership to Sell ChatGPT to Businesses (WSJ)
AI Startup Perplexity in Funding Talks to More than Double Valuation to $8 Billion (WSJ)
Meta Introduces Spirit LM, An Open Source Model that Rivals ChatGPT 4o (VentureBeat)
Chinese AI groups get creative to drive down cost of models (Financial Times)
Michael Bloomberg: NASA’s $100 Billion Moon Mission Is Going Nowhere (Bloomberg)
Bitcoin Miners Pivoting to AI Data Centers Outperform Hodlers Six Months After Halving (Bloomberg)
Pharmacy Benefit Managers are Driving Local Drugstores Out of Business (NYTimes)
Time: Yes, It's A Dimension, But No, It's Not Like Space (Big Think)
On X…
I have trouble with this app. I love the people on it but I have trouble finding how to be a paid subscriber of you or view live events like Walter/Matt. Please help Substack gets its customer face together. They are making it hard to spend money.