Excessive-Pace AI Drone Beats World-Champion Racers for the First Time
Benj Edwards | Ars Technica
“On Wednesday, a crew of researchers from the College of Zürich and Intel introduced that they’ve developed an autonomous drone system named Swift that may beat human champions in first-person view (FPV) drone racing. Whereas AI has beforehand bested people in video games like chess, Go, and even StarCraft, this can be the primary time an AI system has outperformed human pilots in a bodily sport.”
‘Go Catch That Squirrel:’ Google AI Teaches a Robo-Canine Conversational Instructions
Mack DeGeurin | Gizmodo
“What’s extra attention-grabbing, [the researchers] famous, is SayTap’s means to ‘course of unstructured and obscure directions.’ By simply offering the mannequin with a short trace, the researchers had been in a position to efficiently command the robotic canine to leap up and down when it was informed ‘we’re happening a picnic.’ …In perhaps the funniest instance, the canine even slowly backpedaled after being informed to get away from a squirrel. Many actual canine homeowners would beg for that degree of obedience.”
A Biotech Firm Says It Put Dopamine-Making Cells Into Folks’s Brains
Antonio Regalado | MIT Know-how Assessment
“In an necessary take a look at for stem-cell drugs, a biotech firm says implants of lab-made neurons launched into the brains of 12 individuals with Parkinson’s illness look like protected and should have decreased signs for a few of them. …The examine is likely one of the largest and most expensive checks but of embryonic-stem-cell know-how, the controversial and much-hyped method of utilizing stem cells taken from IVF embryos to provide alternative tissue and physique elements.”
Are Self-Driving Vehicles Already Safer Than Human Drivers?
Timothy B. Lee | Ars Technica
“For this story, I learn by means of each crash report Waymo and Cruise filed in California this 12 months, in addition to reviews every firm filed in regards to the efficiency of their driverless automobiles (with no security drivers) previous to 2023. …Human beings drive near 100 million miles between deadly crashes, so it can take a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of driverless miles for one hundred pc certainty on this query. However the proof for better-than-human efficiency is beginning to pile up, particularly for Waymo.”
We Used AI to Write Essays for Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Right here’s How It Went.
Natasha Singer | The New York Occasions
“Whereas the chatbots aren’t but nice at simulating long-form private essays with genuine scholar voices, I puzzled how the AI instruments would do on among the shorter essay questions that elite faculties like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth are requiring highschool candidates to reply this 12 months. So I used a number of free instruments to generate quick essays for some Ivy League functions.”
INNOVATION
AI Startup Buzz Is Dealing with a Actuality Test
Berber Jin | The Wall Avenue Journal
“Founders and enterprise capitalists who flocked to artificial-intelligence startups are studying that turning the chatbot buzz into profitable companies is tougher than it appears. Virtually a 12 months into the increase ignited by the November launch of ChatGPT, some startups that epitomized the zeal for so-called generative AI at the moment are navigating layoffs and decreased person curiosity. Traders are not sure whether or not the brand new crop of AI startups will be capable of survive, particularly as tech giants resembling Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google solidify their dominance over the know-how.”
Quantum Pc Reveals Chemical Response in 100-Billionth-Pace Gradual-Mo
Michael Irving | New Atlas
“Utilizing a trapped-ion quantum pc, the crew mapped the issue onto a reasonably small quantum system, which allowed them to decelerate the method by an astonishing 100 billion instances. …’In nature, the entire course of is over inside femtoseconds,’ stated Vanessa Olaya Agudelo, co-lead creator of the examine. ‘Utilizing our quantum pc, we constructed a system that allowed us to decelerate the chemical dynamics from femtoseconds to milliseconds. This allowed us to make significant observations and measurements. This has by no means been finished earlier than.’i”
OpenAI’s Moonshot: Fixing the AI Alignment Downside
Eliza Strickland | IEEE Spectrum
“In July, OpenAI introduced a brand new analysis program on ‘superalignment.’ This system has the formidable objective of fixing the toughest drawback within the area, referred to as AI alignment, by 2027, an effort to which OpenAI is dedicating 20 % of its complete computing energy. …One of many challenge’s leaders Jan] Leike spoke to IEEE Spectrum in regards to the effort, which has the subgoal of constructing an aligned AI analysis software—to assist clear up the alignment drawback.”
Photo voltaic-Panel-Coated Hybrid Truck Presents 3,000 to six,000 Free Miles a Yr
Mike Hanlon | New Atlas
“The preliminary 560-horsepower plug-in hybrid experimental truck has an 18-meter (59-foot) trailer that’s lined by 100 sq. meters (1,076 sq. toes) of photo voltaic panels, giving it the equal solar-surface space of a median home outfitted with equally highly effective 13.2-kilowatt-peak panels. The truck makes use of new, light-weight tandem photo voltaic cells, which are primarily based on a mix of Midsummer’s photo voltaic cells and new perovskite photo voltaic cells, and generates an estimated 8,000 kWh yearly when operated in Sweden.”
The Finish of the Googleverse
Ryan Broderick | The Verge
“Google formally went on-line…in 1998. It shortly grew to become so inseparable from each the way in which we use the web and, finally, tradition itself, that we virtually lack the language to explain what Google’s affect during the last 25 years has really been. It’s like asking a fish to elucidate what the ocean is. And but, throughout us are indicators that the period of ‘peak Google’ is ending or, presumably, already over.”
Just one,280 Reproductive Human Ancestors As soon as Roamed Earth, Gene Research Suggests
Isaac Schultz | Gizmodo
“An ancestral human species confronted a startling inhabitants bottleneck and teetered on the point of extinction round 800,000 years in the past, in line with new analysis. [In an article commenting on the research, Nick Ashton, an archaeologist at the British Museum, and Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at London’s Natural History Museum] wrote…’the provocative examine of Hu et al. brings the vulnerability of early human populations into focus, with the implication that our evolutionary lineage was almost eradicated.’”
Picture Credit score: Casey Horner / Unsplash