{"id":862851,"date":"2025-07-16T07:11:50","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T12:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/16\/the-download-combating-audio-deepfakes-and-ai-in-the-classroom\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T07:11:50","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T12:11:50","slug":"the-download-combating-audio-deepfakes-and-ai-in-the-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/16\/the-download-combating-audio-deepfakes-and-ai-in-the-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"The Download: combating audio deepfakes, and AI in the classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Plus: Nvidia says it’s going to resume sales of AI chips to China<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n

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This is today’s edition of\u00a0The Download<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.<\/em><\/p>\n

AI text-to-speech programs could one day \u201cunlearn\u201d how to imitate certain people<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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The news: <\/strong>A new technique known as \u201cmachine unlearning\u201d could be used to teach AI models to forget specific voices.<\/p>\n

How it works: <\/strong>Currently, companies tend to deal with this issue by checking whether the prompts or the AI\u2019s responses contain disallowed material. Machine unlearning instead asks whether an AI can be made to forget a piece of information that the company doesn\u2019t want it to know. It works by taking a model and the specific data to be redacted then using them to create a new model\u2014essentially, a version of the original that never learned that piece of data.<\/p>\n

Why it matters: <\/strong>This could be an important step in stopping the rise of audio deepfakes, where someone\u2019s voice is copied to carry out fraud or scams. Read the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2014Peter Hall<\/em><\/p>\n

AI\u2019s giants want to take over the classroom<\/strong><\/p>\n

School\u2019s out and it\u2019s high summer, but a bunch of teachers are plotting how they\u2019re going to use AI this upcoming school year. God help them.<\/p>\n

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On July 8, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic announced a $23 million partnership with one of the largest teachers\u2019 unions in the United States to bring more AI into K\u201312 classrooms. They will train teachers at a New York City headquarters on how to use AI both for teaching and for tasks like planning lessons and writing reports, starting this fall.<\/p>\n

But these companies could face an uphill battle. There’s a lack of clear evidence that AI can be a net benefit for students, and it’s hard to trust that the AI companies funding this initiative will give honest advice on when not<\/em> to use AI in the classroom. Read the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

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\u2014James O’Donnell<\/em><\/p>\n

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up <\/strong>here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The must-reads<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve combed the internet to find you today\u2019s most fun\/important\/scary\/fascinating stories about technology.<\/em><\/p>\n

1 Nvidia says the US has lifted its ban on AI chip sales to China<\/strong>
Jensen Huang has sweet-talked Donald Trump into reversing his three-month old ban. (BBC<\/a>)
+ The company will start selling its H20 chip to China. <\/em>(WSJ<\/a> $)
+ America may slap tariffs on a raw material used for chips and solar panels. <\/em>(FT<\/a> $)<\/p>\n

2 China has launched its digital ID system<\/strong>
It\u2019ll give the country even greater powers to surveil and censor its internet users. (WP<\/a> $)<\/p>\n

3 xAI has secured a contract with the US Department of Defense<\/strong>
Just days after its Grok chatbot had an anti-Semitic meltdown. (The Guardian<\/a>)
+ EU officials are holding talks with X representatives after the outburst. <\/em>(Bloomberg<\/a> $)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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4 Meta\u2019s data centers are on the verge of triggering a major water shortage<\/strong>
Local residents in Newton County, Georgia are suffering. (NYT<\/a> $)
+ But Zuckerberg wants to build gigawatt-size centers anyway. <\/em>(Bloomberg<\/a> $)
+ We did the math on AI\u2019s energy footprint. Here\u2019s the story you haven\u2019t heard. <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

5 The Trump administration is incinerating tons of emergency food<\/strong>
Rather than sending it to people in need. (The Atlantic<\/a> $)<\/p>\n

6 The US is attempting to revive its rare-earth industry<\/strong>
The Pentagon has invested more than $1 billion in American firm MP Materials. (WSJ<\/a> $)
+ It\u2019s all part of a plan to counter China\u2019s critical mineral dominance. <\/em>(FT<\/a> $)
+ This rare earth metal shows us the future of our planet\u2019s resources. <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

7 AI nudifying apps are big business
<\/strong>They\u2019re making millions of dollars a year, and rely on tech built by US companies. (Wired<\/a> $)
+ The viral AI avatar app Lensa undressed me\u2014without my consent. <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

8 Can anything save the web at this point?
<\/strong>Traffic is dropping, and AI use is rising. (Economist<\/a> $)
+ How to fix the internet. <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

9 Bytedance is working on its own mixed reality goggles<\/strong>
A couple of years after it scaled back its work on an AR and VR headset. (The Information<\/a> $)
+ What\u2019s next for smart glasses. <\/em>(MIT Technology Review<\/a>)<\/p>\n

10 Minecraft has birthed a generation of entrepreneurs<\/strong>
The game encourages players to learn to program. (Insider<\/a> $)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Quote of the day<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI suddenly felt pure, unconditional love.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014Faeight, a woman \u2018married\u2019 to a chatbot named Gryff, describes her strong feelings for a previous AI partner, the Guardian<\/a> reports.<\/p>\n

One more thing<\/strong><\/p>\n

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End of life decisions are difficult and distressing. Could AI help?<\/strong><\/p>\n

End-of-life decisions can be extremely upsetting for surrogates\u2014the people who have to make those calls on behalf of another person. Friends or family members may disagree over what\u2019s best for their loved one, which can lead to distressing situations.<\/p>\n

David Wendler, a bioethicist at the US National Institutes of Health, and his colleagues have been working on an idea for something that could make things easier: an artificial intelligence-based tool that can help surrogates predict what the patients themselves would want in any given situation.<\/p>\n

Wendler hopes to start building their tool as soon as they secure funding for it, potentially in the coming months. But rolling it out won\u2019t be simple. Critics wonder how such a tool can ethically be trained on a person\u2019s data, and whether life-or-death decisions should ever be entrusted to AI. Read the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2014Jessica Hamzelou<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Rhiannon Williams<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plus: Nvidia says it’s going to resume sales of AI chips to China This is today’s edition of\u00a0The Download ,\u00a0our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. AI text-to-speech programs could one day \u201cunlearn\u201d how to imitate certain people The news: A new technique known as<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":862852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39029,24097,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-862851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-combating","category-download","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}