Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: United we stand. It looks like every major bank will get bragging rights for being on U.K. chipmaker Arm’s anticipated IPO. The SoftBank company has gathered 28 underwriters amid a ho-hum market for going public, avoiding a FOMO food fight.

➘ BREAK THINGS: Divided we fall. Taking sides in the U.S.-China rivalry could once again squeeze chipmakers. Beijing blasted a new agreement between the U.S., Japan, and South Korea negotiated at Camp David, putting companies like Samsung in a tough spot.

We usually highlight interesting AI news here. Today we’re flagging what probably wasn’t AI. A Kentucky school district blamed artificial intelligence for a school bus snafu that left some students stranded and caused classes to be canceled for several days. But it sounds like it was due to a combination of user error and a bus driver shortage.

AlphaRoute, a bus routing software company hired by the district, said AI wasn’t used and isn’t to blame. Instead, the firm said school officials added 5,000 stops to the system after the software had created the routes. But the story highlights how artificial intelligence is often misunderstood or misconstrued, largely playing off fear and anxiety over new technology.

Ole Obermann is global head of music development at TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. Part of his job is to make TikTok’s new subscription music streaming service a success.

Q: You recently partnered with other streaming platforms, like Apple Music, which are now your competition. How are you thinking about those relationships?

A: Our philosophy goes back to our incredible passion and focus on discovery. When a user on TikTok discovers a song, whatever the easiest way is for that user to listen to the full song — whether that’s Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music — we want to facilitate that. We will be very neutral in terms of where the user wants to listen. If they’re a Spotify subscriber, then great, they should go listen on Spotify. Converting to full-length listening is the first priority.

Obviously, we’re confident and hopeful that we can build a big audience on our own streaming service. And there’s some really fun things we can do, leveraging what we know about user behavior around music on TikTok and how that’s going to translate into a full streaming service. I think we will be able to create some pretty amazing ties and bridges between the two. But we will still remain open for business with these other platforms as well, if that’s where the users want to listen.

Q: Can you say more about what kinds of integration there will be between TikTok and TikTok Music?

A: The music that gets served up to you in terms of recommendations in TikTok Music will be heavily influenced by what we already know about your musical tastes through TikTok. But we also think about how it’s actually a two-way street. You want fans to discover music on TikTok and then listen to it on TikTok Music. But more and more, especially the young fans, they want to engage with the music beyond just listening full-length. So you could also be in TikTok Music with a playlist of your favorite songs, and then, say, go make a video using a particular song as the soundtrack. So this could become a full loop, where you’re going in both directions between TikTok and TikTok Music.

Q: Another thing that TikTok is working on is this app called Ripple, which allows people to create and edit their own music. Are you envisioning a future where people are uploading music to TikTok Music that was produced with TikTok’s own tools?

A: We want to inspire creativity on the short-form video creation side, but also the audio creation side. Maybe you have a really particular kind of mood or vibe that you want to try to create a piece of music around, because that’s going to then be the perfect soundtrack for the video that you want to create. So the idea with Ripple is that — we are very early-stage — but we are going to be able to allow creators to customize the piece of audio or the song that they then want to sync up or soundtrack their video with.

Q: What’s your favorite song that you heard on TikTok recently, or your favorite artist?

A: There’s this song called Ojapiano. It’s an African song, and there’s a dance trend. It’s got a really fun beat and kind of a tribal flute sound to it. As it stands, the song is already doing some really big numbers and having a lot of success. But my bold prediction is that someone’s going to come along and put some [new] lyrics over it, and remix it to make it more of a pop song. Because right now, it’s almost more like an EDM dance song. I’ve got it stuck in my head right now.

For the full conversation, read here.

Number of items on a new checklist designed to help researchers avoid making errors when using machine learning. Hundreds of studies that relied on ML techniques have failed to replicate in recent years, thanks to issues like data leakage, when a model is evaluated based on its identical or similar training data, making it difficult to test its efficacy. A group of 19 researchers across different disciplines unanimously agreed on the REFORMS framework (Reporting Standards for Machine Learning Based Science) published earlier this week.

There’s some buzz about an article by my former Washington Post colleague and friend, Gerrit De Vynck, headlined “ChatGPT leans liberal, research shows.” It’s worth reading, but I think the debate about the political leanings of large language models is being framed through the wrong lens. The researcher in the article states: “There’s a danger of eroding public trust or maybe even influencing election results.”

I’m skeptical. Are people really asking ChatGPT how they should vote in an election? Partisan divisions have become so deep that a subtle steer in one direction or another is probably meaningless. Even the coordinated disinformation campaigns by foreign governments have had little influence at the ballot box.

If a large language model leans left, it’s probably partly due to the safety measures that muzzle them. Any tiny misstep, and an AI chatbot make headlines. So the response by companies has been to lock them down to avoid insensitive comments that might offend users. If you tell your large language model to walk on eggshells and be careful about everything it says, you’re going to steer it toward the more “liberal” corners of the internet. If you told it to be more “patriotic” and to value “personal liberty,” you’d probably end up with a conservative-leaning chatbot.

The sad truth is that eventually, everybody is probably going to have their own chatbot that reflects their political beliefs and tribal affiliations. And the subtle political leanings of ChatGPT will be long forgotten.

— Reed

We previously covered all the excitement around LK-99, a new substance that Korean researchers claimed was a superconductor. As we said, it was always unlikely that would turn out to be true, and it wasn’t. (If you haven’t followed LK-99, here’s a good recap). But there are a couple of key takeaways from this experience.

First, LK-99 wasn’t a hoax. It’s possible that the scientists were onto something, and that it will take more research to figure out whether that’s the case. It’s good news that the paper was released, because it could inspire ideas in other researchers who may reach a breakthrough faster.

Second, the initial excitement about LK-99 was significant. People are yearning for big scientific breakthroughs. The success of the film Oppenheimer is another data point that reflects the public’s renewed interest in this area.

The end of the Cold War led to a drop in science in the zeitgeist, but there are pressing challenges, like climate change, where scientific breakthroughs may be the only answer. That’s largely because human beings are unwilling to give up modern comforts for the sake of the planet. We’ll continue to keep an eye on this area.

• A new poll finds that Trump’s legal troubles could prove fatal in a general election.
• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is building an ambitious new organization to tackle scientific challenges with the help of AI.
• Northern Nigeria has a key role in neighboring Niger’s coup resolution.