Scientists at Boston University recently created in a lab a new Covid virus that had the transmissibility of the Omicron variant and was also more likely to cause severe disease.  They called it the Omicron S-bearing virus.  The study found that the engineered virus had a mortality rate of 80%.  The experiment has once again called into question the purpose of so-called “gain of function” research and also oversight on such projects.  Kelsey Piper, senior writer at Vox’s Future Perfect, joins us for why labs keep making dangerous viruses.

 

Next, AI art generators have just been unleashed on the public.  These new text-to-image generators let you type in almost any phrase, and it will return you an image in various art styles.  Dall-E 2 by OpenAI and DreamStudio by Stability AI are now open for anyone to use and the result is a lot of fun!  The artificial intelligence interprets your words and creates fully original images, but there are still a lot of questions over how it works, copyright and who owns the images?  Then there are concerns about real artists and graphic designers.  Joanna Stern, senior personal tech columnist at the WSJ, joins us for what the future of AI art may hold.

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