MIT Spinoff Liquid Debuts Non-Transformer AI Models and They’re Already State-of-the-Art
Carl Franzen | VentureBeat
“Unlike most others of the present generative AI wave, these models usually are not based across the transformer architecture outlined within the seminal 2017 paper ‘Attention Is All You Need.’ As an alternative, Liquid states that its goal ‘is to explore ways to construct foundation models beyond Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPTs)’ and with the brand new LFMs, specifically constructing from ‘first principles…the identical way engineers built engines, cars, and airplanes.’”
In Medical First, Woman’s Type 1 Diabetes Seemingly Cured by Stem Cells
Ed Cara | Gizmodo
“We’d someday find a way to have substitute insulin-making cells on demand. Scientists in China have presented early clinical trial data suggesting that an individual’s stem cells may be became a gentle supply of the pancreatic cells answerable for producing insulin. If truly successful, such a treatment would essentially cure Type 1 diabetes.”
Meta Unveils Quick AI Video Generator That Adds Sounds
Cade Metz and Mike Isaacs | The Recent York Times
“On Friday, the tech giant Meta unveiled a set of AI tools, called Meta Movie Gen, for mechanically generating videos, immediately editing them, and synchronizing them with AI-generated sound effects, ambient noise, and background music. …The brand new system also let people upload photos of themselves and immediately weave these images to moving videos.”
AI-Generated Images Can Teach Robots Learn how to Act
Rhiannon Williams | MIT Technology Review
“Researchers from Stephen James’s Robot Learning Lab in London are using image-generating AI models for a brand new purpose: creating training data for robots. They’ve developed a brand new system, called Genima, that fine-tunes the image-generating AI model Stable Diffusion to attract robots’ movements, helping guide them each in simulations and in the true world.”
Britain Shuts Down Last Coal Plant, ‘Turning Its Back on Coal Without end’
Somini Sengupta | The Recent York Times
“Britain, the nation that launched a world addiction to coal 150 years ago, is shutting down its last coal-burning power station on Monday. That makes Britain first among the many world’s major, industrialized economies to wean itself off coal—all of the more symbolic since it was also the primary to burn tremendous amounts of it to fuel the Industrial Revolution, inspiring the remainder of the world to follow suit.”
4-Legged Robot Learns to Climb Ladders
Brian Heater | TechCrunch
“The proliferation of robots like Boston Dynamics’ Spot has showcased the flexibility of quadrupeds. These systems have thrived at walking up stairs, traversing small obstacles, and navigating uneven terrain. Ladders, nevertheless, still present a giant issue — especially given how ever present they’re in factories and other industrial environments where the systems are deployed.”
Eight Scientists, a Billion Dollars, and the Moonshot Agency Attempting to Make Britain Great Again
Matt Reynolds | Wired
“The entire point of ARIA is to push researchers beyond their comfort zones and towards ideas the typically risk-averse British science funding system would deem improbable or downright weird. …The plan must be just on the sting of not possible, Gur tells the room. Impactful enough that it’s value a shot, but so ambitious that half of the scientists leave the workshop convinced it’ll never work.”
An ‘iPhone of AI’ Makes No Sense. What Is Jony Ive Really Constructing?
Sophie Charara | Wired
“LoveFrom is working with OpenAI to construct AI devices which can be less ‘socially disruptive’ than the iPhone. Is Ive searching for absolution or a brand new computing soul? …There’s the sense…that LoveFrom has Apple-level talent, as close as it can get to Apple-level money—with plans to lift as much as $1 billion in funding by the top of this yr—and, with Sam Altman involved, Apple-level ambitions.”
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Hidden ‘BopSpotter’ Microphone Is Continually Surveilling San Francisco for Good Music
Jason Koebler | 404 Media
“Bop Spotter is a project by technologist Riley Walz by which he has hidden an Android phone in a box on a pole, rigged it to be solar powered, and has set it to record audio and periodically sends it to Shazam’s API to find out which songs persons are playing in public. Walz describes it as ShotSpotter, but for music. ‘That is culture surveillance. Nobody notices, nobody consents. But it surely’s not about catching criminals,’ Walz’s website reads. ‘It’s about catching vibes.’”
License Plate Readers Are Making a US-Wide Database of More Than Just Cars
Matt Burgess and Dhruv Mehrotra | Wired
“Beyond highlighting the far-reaching nature of LPR technology, which has collected billions of images of license plates, the research also shows how people’s personal political beliefs and their homes may be recorded into vast databases that may be queried. ‘It really reveals the extent to which surveillance is going on on a mass scale within the quiet streets of America,’ says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst on the American Civil Liberties Union.”
Moon Time Is a Thing Now—Here’s Why It Matters
Rebecca Boyle | Atlas Obscura
“Moon time is a meaningful thing to grasp, especially as countries and personal firms are angling to return to the lunar surface this decade. To know why moon time is so strange—and why scientists recently created a brand new and unique time zone only for the moon—we now have to spend a moment with Einstein.”
