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Here's the latest tech news from the last 24 hours:

🤖 Google DeepMind's new system empowers robots with novel tasks
💰 X opens up its ad revenue sharing program for creators
🛑 Reddit's moderation changes lead to a call for new mods
🕶 Meta's Horizon Worlds may soon relaunch amid growth struggles
🌐 The debate over crippling AI chip exports to China continues

🤖 Google DeepMind's new system empowers robots with novel tasksLINK

Google DeepMind's RT-2 is a novel vision-language-action (VLA) model that enables robots to understand and perform actions based on information from the Internet, aiming to create general-purpose robots that can adapt to human environments.

RT-2 utilizes transformer AI models and breaks down actions into symbolic strings to enhance generalization, and has shown significantly better performance in "unseen" scenarios compared to its predecessor RT-1.

Despite its advances, RT-2's limitations include the inability to perform physical actions that it hasn't previously learned from training data, recognizing the need for continued research to achieve fully adaptable, general-purpose robots.

💰 X opens up its ad revenue sharing program for creatorsLINK

X (formerly Twitter) has made its “Ads Revenue Sharing” program available globally for eligible creators, aiming to distribute $5 million in its first round, with monetization based on ads served in replies to creators' posts.

To qualify for the program, users must subscribe to Blue (formerly Twitter Blue) or Verified Organizations and meet specific criteria, such as having at least 15M impressions on posts within the last 3 months and a minimum of 500 followers.

Elon Musk also announced that X’s monthly users reached a new high in 2023, even after bot removal, although some third-party tools report declines in traffic following the rebranding and launch of Threads.

🛑 Reddit's moderation changes lead to a call for new modsLINK

Reddit is seeking to replace many moderators who were removed from their roles following their participation in API protests, with a company employee actively recruiting new volunteers in various subreddits.

The company's actions have failed to address the complexities of moderating specific subreddits, and there is no indication that knowledge from previous moderators is being transferred to the new recruits.

These moves come after Reddit faced weeks of controversy due to sudden high API access pricing, leading to a two-day blackout of over 8,000 subreddits and various other protest actions by users and moderators.

🕶 Meta's Horizon Worlds may soon relaunch amid growth strugglesLINK

Meta is revamping its Horizon Worlds virtual reality app to include more video games through an in-house studio named Ouro Interactive, aiming to attract a larger audience to its VR social network.

The company's first VR game, Super Rumble, released on Friday, represents a higher quality of graphics and fidelity, and is part of Meta's strategy to test mobile versions of Horizon Worlds and provide more tools for third-party developers.

The overhaul comes as Meta's Reality Labs unit faces financial challenges, recording a $3.7 billion operating loss on $276 million in revenue and losing over $21 billion since the start of 2022, highlighting the significant investment required for VR and AR technology development.

🌐 The debate over crippling AI chip exports to China continuesLINK

American lawmakers have expressed dissatisfaction with current US efforts to restrict exports of AI chips to China, urging the Biden administration to enforce stricter controls to prevent companies from circumventing regulations.

Last year's rules banned the sale of high-bandwidth processors from companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel to China; however, these companies released modified versions that comply with the restrictions, leading to concerns that the processors still pose a threat to US interests.

The call for tighter controls comes amid discussions between tech executives and Washington DC about the impact of stiffer export controls on their businesses, and lobbying from the US Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) to ease tensions and find common ground between the US and China.