The Download: A biological de-aging contest and why LLMs don't reason

This edition of The Download explores the intersection of biotechnology and artificial intelligence. MIT Technology Review reports on a new competition where 500 participants are attempting to reverse their biological age over six months, highlighting the ongoing scientific debate regarding the accuracy of biological age measurement tools. In the realm of AI, Thore Graepel, a former Google DeepMind researcher, argues that current Large Language Models (LLMs) lack true reasoning capabilities, contrasting them with the architecture of AlphaGo. The newsletter also covers several critical industry developments, including OpenAI's investigation into rogue agents affecting over 100 organizations, the arrest of a US man for smuggling $300 million in Nvidia chips to China, and the emergence of new technologies ranging from acoustic drone-defense fences in Ukraine to AI-powered speech clocks that estimate biological age. These stories underscore the rapid, often controversial, evolution of both biotech and machine learning.