This Could Be the Start of Amazon’s Next Robot Revolution
Will Knight | Wired
“In 2012, Amazon quietly acquired a robotics startup referred to as Kiva Programs, a transfer that dramatically improved the effectivity of its ecommerce operations and kickstarted a wider revolution in warehouse automation. Final week, the ecommerce large introduced one other deal that would show equally profound, agreeing to rent the founders of Covariant, a startup that has been testing methods for AI to automate extra of the choosing and dealing with of a variety of bodily objects.”
Sutskever Strikes AI Gold With Billion-Dollar Backing for Superintelligent AI
Benj Edwards | Ars Technica
“Protected Superintelligence (SSI), newly co-founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised $1 billion in money to assist develop protected synthetic intelligence techniques that far surpass human capabilities, firm executives instructed Reuters. SSI, which at the moment has 10 workers, plans to make use of the funds to amass computing energy and rent prime expertise. It’ll deal with constructing a small extremely trusted staff of researchers and engineers cut up between Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv, Israel.”
What to Know About the Quantum Network Buried Under New York City
Isaac Schultz | Gizmodo
“For 15 days final December, a fancy quantum operation happened deep underneath New York Metropolis. Photons of sunshine streamed round an space stretching from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Corona, Queens, forming a 21-mile-long (34-kilometer-long) quantum community beneath the metropolis. …[The project] despatched half one million photon pairs per second by means of the cable infrastructure, that means 648 billion photon pairs had been shot by means of the system over the course of the 15-day experiment.”
Roblox Is Launching a Generative AI That Builds 3D Environments in a Snap
Scott J. Mulligan | MIT Expertise Overview
“Roblox plans to roll out a generative AI instrument that can let creators make entire 3D scenes simply utilizing textual content prompts, it introduced as we speak. As soon as it’s up and operating, builders on the vastly widespread on-line recreation platform will be capable to merely write “Generate a race observe within the desert,” for instance, and the AI will spin one up. Customers will even be capable to modify scenes or broaden their scope—say, to vary a daytime scene to nighttime or change the desert for a forest.”
Colossal 20-MW Wind Turbine Is the Largest on the Planet (For Now)
Abhimanyu Ghoshal | New Atlas
“With its large wind rotor diameter of 260-292 m (853-958 ft), it has a most wind sweeping space of 66,966 sq m—that’s greater than 12 NFL soccer fields. The corporate has a historical past of constructing the most important generators our oceans have ever seen, and notes that with an annual common wind pace of 8.5m/s, its new turbine can generate 80 million kWh of electrical energy; that’s stated to be sufficient to energy housing for 96,000 residents yearly.”
Waymo Thinks It Can Overcome Robotaxi Skepticism With Lots of Safety Data
Andrew J. Hawkins | The Verge
“The corporate’s totally driverless automobiles have pushed 22.2 million miles throughout 4 cities. It says they’re safer than human drivers in nearly each class. …With the introduction of this new security hub, Waymo can also be making its methodologies out there for obtain, so extra exterior researchers can take a look at the uncooked numbers.”
ETHICS
AI’s Impact on Elections Is Being Overblown
Felix M. Simon, Keegan McBride, and Sacha Altay | MIT Expertise Overview
“The web is stuffed with doom-laden tales proclaiming that AI-generated deepfakes will mislead and affect voters, in addition to enabling new types of personalised and focused political promoting. Although such claims are regarding, it’s crucial to have a look at the proof. With a considerable variety of this yr’s elections concluded, it’s a good time to ask how correct these assessments have been thus far. The preliminary reply appears to be not very; early alarmist claims about AI and elections seem to have been blown out of proportion.”
Elon Musk Has the ‘Off’ Switch
Marina Koren | The Atlantic
“This explicit feud has crystallized an unsettling fact that’s rising extra obvious every day: Musk is changing into an web god. Area-based web and social media are a potent mixture, and their management by a single particular person is sort of unprecedented—and alarming in the identical method as a federal authorities limiting on-line speech through sweeping decree.”
GADGETS
The Remarkable Paper Pro Is as Outrageous as It is Luxurious
Alex Cranz | The Verge
“You in all probability don’t want the Exceptional Paper Professional. It’s too luxurious. You realize these sports activities vehicles that appear to be spaceships however will drive right into a streetlamp when you sneeze? That’s the form of luxurious I’m speaking about. That is the hypercar of E Ink note-taking units. It’s bought a entrance mild! It’s bought shade! It’s bought an 11.8-inch show! It’s bought the perfect keyboard case out there as we speak! And it’s bought a completely audacious alternative of a show.”
Picture Credit score: Shubham Dhage / Unsplash
