In this week’s edition of The Prototype, we look at Blue Origin’s successful Mars mission, learning new languages from AI, why voting is good for you, and more. To get The Prototype in your inbox, sign up here.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket lifts off from launch pad 36 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, carrying NASA’s ESCAPADE mission to Mars.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
On Thursday, Jeff Bezos-founded space company Blue Origin launched its New Glenn rocket—which it plans to use for missions to the Moon and beyond—for the second time. The company also successfully landed the rocket’s booster back on Earth so it can be re-used. The success ramps up the company’s rivalry with Elon Musk’s space company, as the New Glenn can carry twice the payload of SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket.
On board the rocket were two NASA spacecraft designed by L.A.-based Rocket Lab called the Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers—Escapade for short. The two spacecraft will explore how radiation from the Sun impacts the magnetic environment of the red planet, which scientists hypothesize is why Mars’ atmosphere was slowly stripped away.
This is unusual timing for a Mars mission, but one that NASA hopes could open up more exploration opportunities. Typically, spacecraft are launched to Mars every 26 months or so, when the two planets are optimally aligned to keep the trip as short as possible (about nine months). But right now the two planets are much further apart. The Escapade spacecraft are testing a different trajectory, which will use Earth’s gravity as a slingshot to speed up the journey. If successful, it could pave the way for travel to Mars virtually anytime instead of waiting to go every two years.
This Startup Is Racing Duolingo To Replace Human Language Tutors With AI
On a trip to Seoul in 2018, Connor Zwick drove past what looked like normal skyscrapers. But he soon learned they were filled with classrooms, dedicated to teaching English, and ads for such classes were plastered across taxi tops and billboards. It hit him: The biggest market for his then-nascent language learning app Speak was here, not in Silicon Valley, where his headquarters were located. “English language learning there was like an obsession,” he recalls. “There was such latent demand.”
But the language training on offer was often ineffective. Students spent hours learning the basics from textbooks and pre-recorded videos, overseen by instructors who lacked fluency. The antiquated methods emphasized learning grammar and vocabulary over actually speaking out loud. “Everything was so academic and there was this fear of making mistakes,” Zwick said.
For Zwick, Seoul’s bustling downtown and its endless demand for English language instruction was both inspiration and opportunity—to build a true AI tutor that could replace the human language tutor and offer a judgement-free space for learners to make and correct mistakes while speaking another language. The promise: “No one’s going to know if you said something embarrassing,” he said.
Today, Speak has a voice-based AI coach that role plays scenarios like ordering drinks at a restaurant, asking for directions to a tourist spot or making small talk with a classmate to help practice speaking a new language in real world situations. Built primarily on OpenAI’s models, the goal is to encourage users to practice enunciating commonly used words and phrases out loud. Learners can also create their own situations from scratch by prompting its AI software. Features like leaderboards and streaks that track daily usage help with consistency. And it’s not just for English-learners. Speak offers its role plays and lesson plans for five other languages: Korean, Spanish, Japanese, French and Italian.
Today some 15 million people have downloaded Speak to practice conversing with its interactive AI tutor and become more fluent and confident speaking in a foreign tongue. That traction has helped the $1 billion-valued startup reach a recent milestone—the San Francisco-based company announced this week that it has more than $100 million in annualized revenue.
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DISCOVERY OF THE WEEK: LIGHTSPEED AI
Underpinning all of modern AI is a type of mathematics called tensor operations, which today are carried out on GPUs and other types of chips. That puts a fundamental limitation on AI’s speed, as electricity travels along the copper in the chips at less than 1% of the speed of light. That may soon change. Researchers at Finland’s Aalto University successfully performed tensor operations using light waves—which opens up the potential for optical chips that could perform AI functions significantly faster than conventional ones.
WHAT ELSE I WROTE THIS WEEK
In my other newsletter, InnovationRx, Amy Feldman and I looked at what the deal to reopen the government means for Obamacare subsidies, diagnostic company BillionToOne’s IPO, China’s biotech power couple and Lilly’s latest gene therapy deal.
SCIENCE AND TECH TIDBITS
Research advocates are asking Congress to reconsider proposed legislation that would enact a sweeping ban on federal funding for collaborations with Chinese scientists.
IonQ will deploy a dedicated quantum computer and network at the University of Chicago as part of an agreement that includes funding for research to develop new quantum technologies.
Biotech startup Gate Bioscience raised a $65 million investment round to develop medicine for diseases like Alzheimer’s or diabetes by building “molecular gates” that trap harmful proteins in cells.
Scientists figured out why the human body rejects gene-edited pig organs and developed a method that may stop it, which could make this type of transplant more viable for patients who need it.
Congress released new documents from Jeffrey Epstein that include significant correspondence with prominent scientists and researchers such as astronomer Lawrence Krauss and linguistics researcher Noam Chomsky.
PRO SCIENCE TIP: WANT TO LIVE LONGER? VOTE!
Doing your civic duty by voting can help you lead a longer life, according to a new study, which examined electoral participation in Finland’s parliamentary elections by those ages 30 and up. They found that not voting was associated with a 73% higher risk of death in the intervening years for men and 63% for women. This association was stronger than any other known risk factor, though the study wasn’t equipped to prove cause and effect. However, it is known that social participation and ties with other people do directly impact health, and the researchers suggest that voting encourages people to involve themselves in their community in other ways, too, ratcheting up the health benefits.
WHAT’S ENTERTAINING ME THIS WEEK
I’m about halfway through the book Impossible Histories by Hal Johnson, which explores how small changes in history might have had big ripple effects on the course of events. There’s no shortage of books like this, to be sure—I devour both fictional and non-fictional takes on alternate history on the regular—but what makes this book stand out is Johnson’s incredibly breezy writing, which is a joy to read. Not to mention that he mostly deviates from obvious questions like “What if the South won the Civil War?” in favor of more interesting questions like “What if Freud had been obsessed with a different Sophocles play about killing your dad and marrying your mom?” (Yes, Sophocles did this more than once.) If you’re an alternate history junkie like me, give it a read.