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Empowering Aging Minds and Cognitive Health with AI
AI offers promising solutions to address age-related cognitive decline, a natural process that can affect memory, attention, and processing speed starting as early as our 30s. AI as a cognitive assistant: AI-powered tools can support aging individuals in various ways: Digital assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa can serve as external memory aids, providing reminders for important tasks and schedules. Complex decision-making can be supported by AI systems that analyze data and provide summarized insights. Speech-to-text tools can transcribe and summarize conversations in real-time, helping individuals keep track of important points. Personalized brain-training apps can target specific cognitive domains...
read Jul 19, 2024WIRED Journalists Recount Their Harrowing AI-Led City Tour
Two journalists embarked on an AI-generated city tour, with chaotic and unexpected results that highlight the current limitations of AI travel planning. The AI tour guide: The writers used Littlefoot, an AI-powered local discovery chatbot, to plan their respective tours in London and New York, each with a $100 budget and specific preferences. Despite Littlefoot's claims of using advanced AI models and information sources, the itineraries generated were often impractical, with recommendations that were either too niche, too vague, or not feasible due to time, location, or budget constraints. The AI struggled with basic details like restaurant opening hours, distances...
read Jul 19, 2024China’s AI Ambitions Stifled by Censorship, Giving U.S. an Edge
China's efforts to lead in generative AI are being hampered by the government's need to control political speech, potentially giving the U.S. an advantage in the global AI race. Regulatory hurdles: The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) is imposing stringent requirements on Chinese tech companies developing AI models: AI companies must collect thousands of sensitive keywords and questions that violate "core socialist values" and prepare datasets of questions the models will decline to answer, many of which relate to political ideology and criticism of the Communist Party. Chatbots are designed to refuse answering politically controversial queries and must end conversations...
read Jul 19, 2024Women Eager to Embrace AI, but Barriers Persist, Survey Reveals
The rise of generative AI has sparked significant interest among women, yet they remain underrepresented in the field, according to a new survey from Women Go Tech. The findings highlight the eagerness of women to adopt and learn about AI tools, while also revealing the persistent challenges of discrimination, bias, and lack of confidence that hinder their full engagement with the technology. Women's interest and adoption of AI tools: The survey found that a majority of women have used at least one AI tool, with ChatGPT being the most popular choice: 68% of female respondents have used at least one...
read Jul 19, 2024California AI Bill Sparks Debate and Industry Pushback
California's landmark AI safety bill sparks debate and industry pushback Key points and reactions: The introduction of California's SB 1047 bill, which requires safety testing and shutdown capabilities for large AI models, has generated strong reactions and debates: The bill passed the state senate with bipartisan support (32-1) and has 77% public approval in California according to polls, but has faced fierce opposition from the tech industry, particularly in Silicon Valley. Tech heavyweights like Andreessen-Horowitz and Y Combinator have publicly condemned the bill, arguing it will stifle innovation and push companies out of California. However, the bill's author Sen. Scott...
read Jul 19, 2024Astronomers’ Galaxy-Studying Techniques Are Helping To Identify AI-Generated Deepfakes
The discovery that AI-generated deepfakes can be identified by analyzing the reflections in people's eyes, similar to how astronomers study galaxies, has significant implications for combating the spread of misinformation. Key findings: Researchers at the University of Hull have developed a method to detect AI-generated deepfakes by examining the consistency of light reflections in a person's eyeballs: In real images, the reflections in both eyeballs are generally consistent, while in deepfakes, the reflections often lack consistency between the left and right eyes. By employing techniques used in astronomy to quantify the reflections and check for consistency, the team found that...
read Jul 19, 2024OpenAI Pursues Custom AI Chips, Threatening Nvidia’s Dominance in the Market
OpenAI, the leading artificial intelligence company, is exploring the development of its own AI chips to bolster its supply chain and reduce reliance on Nvidia. Discussions with chip designers: OpenAI is in talks with Broadcom and other semiconductor designers about creating a custom AI chip: The company aims to address shortages in its supply chain and decrease dependency on Nvidia, which has been a key supplier of AI chips for OpenAI's advanced language models. OpenAI has also hired former Google chip staffers to support its chip development efforts, signaling a serious commitment to pursuing this initiative. Previous plans for chip...
read Jul 19, 2024The AI Boom and Global Temperature Increases Are Fueling Unprecedented Electricity Usage
A surge in global electricity demand, fueled by rising temperatures, economic growth, and the AI boom, is set to reach its fastest pace in nearly two decades, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency. Record-breaking demand growth: The IEA forecasts that global electricity demand will grow by approximately 4% in 2024 and 2025, the highest annual growth rate since 2007, excluding exceptional rebound years following the global financial crisis and COVID-19 pandemic. Intense heatwaves in the first half of 2024 have already boosted demand and strained electricity systems, with increasing use of air conditioning expected to be...
read Jul 19, 2024AI is Making Poker More Mathematically Solvable Than Ever Before
The optimal poker strategy known as the Nash equilibrium isn't always employed by expert players, as they often adapt their play to exploit opponents' suboptimal moves. Key Takeaways: While game theory proves an optimal strategy exists for poker, rapid AI advances have only recently made this strategy accessible to players: Game theory pioneers John von Neumann and John Nash mathematically showed that even complex games like poker have an optimal strategy, or Nash equilibrium. In the past few years, AI "solvers" have given elite players the ability to study and memorize optimal play for common situations in Texas Hold'em. These...
read Jul 19, 2024How AI Is Shaping the Future of Aerial Combat
The rise of AI in aerial combat is offering a glimpse into the future of dogfights, with both the US and UK developing AI co-pilots that can outmaneuver human pilots in simulated battles. Key developments in AI dogfighting: The US Air Force and BAE Systems have made significant strides in creating AI pilots capable of engaging in aerial combat: The US Air Force demonstrated an AI flying an F-16 jet in combat maneuvers in 2023, the culmination of years of work aimed at developing an AI that could outperform human pilots. BAE Systems commissioned Turkish aerospace engineers to develop an...
read Jul 19, 2024Figma’s AI Design Tool Temporarily Removed After Inadvertently Including Copyrighted Assets
Figma's AI design tool mistakenly included copyrighted assets, leading to its temporary removal for additional quality control measures. Key issues with Figma's AI tool: The "Make Designs" feature, launched as part of Figma's Config event, generated outputs suspiciously similar to Apple's weather app when given certain prompts: A user discovered that asking the AI to design a weather app would produce designs closely resembling Apple's own app, potentially exposing users to legal issues. This finding suggested that Figma may have inadvertently trained the AI model on Apple's proprietary designs, despite CEO Dylan Field's initial statement denying the tool was trained...
read Jul 19, 2024Groq’s Open-Source AI Model Outperforms Tech Giants, Signaling Shift Towards Accessibility and Transparency
Groq's open-source Llama AI models have outperformed industry giants like OpenAI and Google in specialized tool use capabilities, signaling a potential shift in the AI landscape towards more accessible and transparent development. Open-source models take the lead: Groq's Llama-3-Groq-70B-Tool-Use model has claimed the top spot on the Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL), surpassing proprietary offerings from major tech companies: The 70B parameter version achieved a 90.76% overall accuracy on the BFCL, while the smaller 8B model ranked third with 89.06%, demonstrating the competitive performance of open-source models in specific tasks. Groq developed these models in collaboration with AI research company...
read Jul 19, 2024SheerLuxe’s AI “Team Member” Sparks Backlash Over Diversity and Ethics Concerns
The short-form fashion and lifestyle publication SheerLuxe has come under fire for introducing an AI-powered "team member" named Reem, modeled after an Arab woman, raising questions about the ethics and implications of AI in the media industry. Backlash over AI replacing human roles and lack of diversity: SheerLuxe's decision to "hire" an AI bot as a fashion and lifestyle editor has sparked widespread criticism, with many accusing the publication of taking jobs away from human journalists, particularly women of color who are already underrepresented in the media landscape: Critics argue that the move puts the jobs of young creatives and...
read Jul 19, 2024AI Arms Race Intensifies as Endpoints Emerge as Critical Battleground for Cybersecurity
The AI arms race between cybersecurity firms and attackers is intensifying, with endpoints emerging as a critical battleground for AI companies' valuable intellectual property, financials, and future R&D plans. Malware-free attacks on the rise: Adversaries are increasingly using legitimate tools and fileless execution techniques to breach endpoints undetected, making AI companies a prime target: CrowdStrike reports that 71% of detections were malware-free, and the use of remote monitoring and management tools for malware-free attacks skyrocketed by 312% year-over-year in 2023. Attackers exploit gaps such as outdated endpoint patches, lack of multi-factor authentication, and privilege escalation to launch sophisticated intrusion attempts....
read Jul 19, 2024Generative AI and The Future of Intellectual Property
The rapid advancement of generative AI is raising complex questions about the future of intellectual property rights in an AI-driven world. As AI systems become more adept at generating creative outputs that blur the lines between original works and reproductions, traditional concepts of copyright, trademark, and patent protection are being challenged: IP concerns with generative AI training data: Many of the datasets used to train generative AI systems contain copyrighted, trademarked, or otherwise protected materials, often used without explicit consent from IP owners: The process of indiscriminately scraping the web for training data frequently incorporates copyrighted works, leading to potential...
read Jul 19, 2024Tech Giants Unite to Tackle AI Security Risks and Promote Responsible Development
The major tech companies are teaming up to promote AI security through shared best practices and tools, highlighting the growing importance of addressing risks as AI becomes more prevalent. Key players join forces: Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Intel, and others are forming the Coalition for Secure AI (CoSAI) to collaborate on AI security: The initiative aims to provide open-source methodologies, frameworks, and tools to address the "fragmented landscape of AI security." Other notable members include IBM, PayPal, Cisco, and Anthropic, demonstrating the broad industry support for this effort. Addressing AI challenges: CoSAI will focus on three initial goals to...
read Jul 18, 2024AI Chip Shortage to Persist Until 2025-2026 Despite Doubling Production, Says TSMC
The global shortage of AI chips is expected to persist until 2025 or 2026 due to surging demand, according to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Despite doubling production, TSMC is struggling to keep pace with the high-performance computing chips now accounting for over half its business. Unprecedented demand for AI chips: TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, has seen an explosion in orders for advanced processors used in AI applications: Much of the demand is driven by Nvidia, whose AI-focused GPUs are in high demand from companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Tesla for powering next-generation AI systems. TSMC originally hoped...
read Jul 18, 2024Google Pixel 9 Pro Is Built for the AI-Powered “Gemini Era”
Google unveils official Pixel 9 Pro teasers ahead of August 13 launch event, highlighting the phone's AI-focused design for the "Gemini era". Key details from teaser images and videos: Google's teaser materials provide the first official look at the Pixel 9 Pro and emphasize its integration with the Gemini AI chatbot: In a video, the Pixel 9 Pro is shown using Gemini to generate a break-up letter to the user's previous smartphone, demonstrating the phone's AI capabilities. Images reveal a rounded camera array design that departs from the rectangular edges of last year's Pixel 8 series. Google describes the phone...
read Jul 18, 2024VR Wunderkind Turned AI Weapons Magnate: Palmer Luckey’s Anduril Shakes Up Defense Industry
Palmer Luckey, a tech prodigy who made his first billion in his early 20s selling Oculus VR to Facebook, has now turned his attention to developing AI weapons through his new company Anduril Industries. Key takeaways: Anduril is shaking up the defense industry with its AI-powered drones and submarines: Luckey founded Anduril based on his belief that traditional defense contractors lacked the right talent and incentives to invest in cutting-edge AI, autonomy and robotics, while tech giants like Google and Apple were unwilling to work with the U.S. military. Anduril's pitch is that it can deliver AI weapons faster and...
read Jul 18, 2024A Short History of AI, As Told By MIT
Despite its widespread use, there is little consensus on what artificial intelligence actually is, with opinions ranging from it being akin to magic to simply complex mathematics. Historical context and competing definitions: The very term "artificial intelligence" was controversial from the start, with many of John McCarthy's colleagues in 1955 preferring alternative names like "automata studies" or "complex information processing": AI has since attracted zealous fandoms and detractors, with camps often talking past each other and engaging in heated debates with significant real-world consequences. How AI is defined and explained by industry leaders and scientists to policymakers and the public...
read Jul 18, 2024A New AI System Called Live2Diff Enables Real-Time Stylization of Live Video Streams
A groundbreaking AI system, Live2Diff, developed by an international team of researchers, enables real-time stylization of live video streams, opening up new possibilities in entertainment, social media, and beyond. Real-time video transformation: Live2Diff overcomes the limitations of current video AI models by employing uni-directional temporal attention, allowing it to process live video streams at 16 frames per second on high-end consumer hardware: The system maintains temporal consistency by correlating each frame with its predecessors and a few initial warmup frames, eliminating the need for future frame data. Live2Diff outperformed existing methods in temporal smoothness and efficiency, as demonstrated by transforming...
read Jul 18, 2024AWS Unveils AI Innovations, Security Focus, and Low-Code App Builder at NYC Summit
Amazon Web Services showcased new AI tools and focused on data security at its recent AWS Summit in New York, while the introduction of a prompt-based low-code app builder called AWS App Studio headlined the event. AI security takes center stage: Much of the conversation at the summit dealt with making people comfortable with the results they get from generative AI and ensuring data privacy: AWS VP for AI Products Matt Wood emphasized that AWS doesn't use customer data to improve its underlying models and doesn't have humans reviewing information inside a customer's virtual environment. Wood noted that firms in...
read Jul 18, 2024Hallucinations Plague Large Language Models, But New Training Approaches Offer Hope
Large language models (LLMs) have significant limitations despite their recent popularity and hype, including hallucinations, lack of confidence estimates, and absence of citations. Overcoming these challenges is crucial for developing more reliable and trustworthy LLM-based applications. Hallucinations: The core challenge: LLMs can generate content that appears convincing but is actually inaccurate or entirely false, known as hallucinations: Hallucinations are the most difficult issue to address, and their negative impact is only slightly mitigated by confidence estimates and citations. Contradictions in the training data contribute to the problem, as LLMs cannot self-inspect their training data for logical inconsistencies. Bootstrapping consistent LLMs:...
read Jul 18, 2024AI Startup Tackles Deepfake Threat Ahead of US Elections
The AI startup ElevenLabs is partnering with a deepfake detection company to address concerns about the potential misuse of its voice cloning technology, particularly in the context of the upcoming US elections. Key details of the partnership: ElevenLabs is collaborating with Reality Defender, a US-based company specializing in deepfake detection for governments, officials, and enterprises: This partnership is part of ElevenLabs' efforts to enhance safety measures on its platform and prevent the misuse of its AI-powered voice cloning technology. The move comes after researchers raised concerns earlier this year about ElevenLabs' technology being used to create deepfake audio of US...
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