Artificial Intelligence
Self-Improving Language Models Are Becoming Reality With MIT’s Updated SEAL TechniqueCarl Franzen | VentureBeat
“Researchers at [MIT] are gaining renewed consideration for creating and open sourcing a way that enables massive language fashions (LLMs)—like these underpinning ChatGPT and most trendy AI chatbots—to enhance themselves by producing artificial information to fine-tune upon.”
Biotechnology
95% of Kids With ‘Bubble Boy’ Disease Cured by One-Time Gene TherapyPaul McClure | New Atlas
“The researchers adopted these sufferers for a median of seven.5 years, totaling 474 patient-years. …The research was the most important and longest follow-up of a gene remedy of this sort so far. Importantly, all 62 kids survived to the top of the trial. Of the 62 members, 59 of them—that’s 95%—had been efficiently handled.”
Computing
Paralyzed Man Can Feel Objects Through Another Person’s HandCarissa Wong | New Scientist ($)
“Keith Thomas, a person in his 40s with no sensation or motion in his palms, is ready to really feel and transfer objects by controlling one other individual’s hand by way of a mind implant. The method may in the future even enable us to expertise one other individual’s physique over lengthy distances.”
Computing
Why Signal’s Post-Quantum Makeover Is an Amazing Engineering AchievementDan Goodin | Ars Technica
“Eleven days in the past, the nonprofit entity that develops the protocol, Sign Messenger LLC, revealed a 5,900-word write-up describing its newest updates that make Sign totally quantum-resistant. The complexity and problem-solving required for making the Sign Protocol quantum secure are as daunting as nearly any in modern-day engineering.”
Tech
AI Economics Are Brutal. Demand Is the Variable to Watch.Steven Rosenbush | The Wall Road Journal ($)
“Even the almost definitely eventual winners in AI are dropping billions of {dollars} proper now. It’s exhausting to foretell how this may play out within the monetary markets, however right here’s a clue. Keep watch over demand for AI, measured in models of information processed. It’s hovering proper now. Your complete AI guess could activate how far and quick it ramps from right here.”
Future
California Becomes First State to Regulate AI Companion ChatbotsRebecca Bellan | TechCrunch
“The legislation, SB 243, is designed to guard kids and weak customers from a number of the harms related to AI companion chatbot use. It holds corporations—from the large labs like Meta and OpenAI to extra targeted companion startups like Character AI and Replika—legally accountable if their chatbots fail to satisfy the legislation’s requirements.”
Future
Meet the Man Building a Starter Kit for CivilizationTiffany Ng | MIT Expertise Evaluate ($)
“[The Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) is] a set of fifty machines—every part from a tractor to an oven to a circuit maker—which can be able to constructing civilization from scratch and might be reconfigured nonetheless you see match.”
Robotics
Waymo Plans to Launch a Robotaxi Service in London in 2026Kirsten Korosec | TechCrunch
“Waymo will begin with human security drivers behind the wheel earlier than it launches driverless testing and ultimately invitations the general public to hail its robotaxis, a technique that it has utilized in different industrial markets resembling Phoenix and San Francisco.”
Computing
Nvidia Sells Tiny New Computer That Puts Big AI on Your DesktopBenj Edwards | Ars Technica
“On Tuesday, Nvidia introduced it’ll start taking orders for the DGX Spark, a $4,000 desktop AI pc that wraps one petaflop of computing efficiency and 128GB of unified reminiscence right into a kind issue sufficiently small to take a seat on a desk. Its greatest promoting level is probably going its massive built-in reminiscence that may run bigger AI fashions than shopper GPUs.”
Artificial Intelligence
The AI Industry’s Scaling Obsession Is Headed for a CliffWill Knight | Wired ($)
“By mapping scaling legal guidelines in opposition to continued enhancements in mannequin effectivity, the researchers discovered that it may turn out to be more durable to wring leaps in efficiency from large fashions whereas effectivity beneficial properties may make fashions operating on extra modest {hardware} more and more succesful over the following decade.”
Energy
In Austin, This 100% Geothermal Neighborhood Is Designed to Shrink Utility BillsAdele Peters | Quick Firm
“Warmth pumps in every home connect with pipes that loop a whole lot of toes underground, making use of the earth’s regular temperature for heating and cooling. The homes are additionally constructed to make use of as little power as attainable, with options like deep eaves that shade the inside and scale back the necessity for air-conditioning. Photo voltaic shingles on the roofs produce sufficient energy to match every residence’s anticipated electrical energy use.”
Tech
Rise of the Cursor Resistance: Why Some Techies Want to Ignore AI Coding ToolsRocket Drew | The Info ($)
“The expertise has certainly turn out to be an inescapable a part of Silicon Valley, however the rush to undertake it has introduced a backlash amongst programmers. Partly that’s as a result of the AI coding instruments have some apparent technical limitations—typically producing error-ridden code, amongst different issues—and partly it’s as a result of human coders fear any type of adoption of the instruments will hasten their very own obsolescence.”
Artificial Intelligence
Why AI Startups Are Taking Data Into Their Own HandsRussell Brandom | TechCrunch
“The place coaching units had been as soon as scraped freely from the online or collected from low-paid annotators, corporations are actually paying high greenback for rigorously curated information. With the uncooked energy of AI already established, corporations wish to proprietary coaching information as a aggressive benefit. And as an alternative of farming out the duty to contractors, they’re typically taking up the work themselves.”
Future
From Slop to Sotheby’s? AI Art Enters a New PhaseGrace Huckins | MIT Expertise Evaluate ($)
“Amid all of the muck, there are folks utilizing AI instruments with actual consideration and intent. A few of them are discovering notable success as AI artists: They’re gaining enormous on-line followings, promoting their work at public sale, and even having it exhibited in galleries and museums.”
Long-Lived Gamma Ray Burst Could Signal a New Kind of Cosmic CatastropheDaniel Clery | Science
“Some theorists [are considering] maybe essentially the most uncommon situation of all: a black gap ripping up one other star from inside. This mannequin begins with a stellar-mass black gap and a big star orbiting one another. When the star has burned up all its hydrogen gasoline, it’s left with a dense helium core and an outer envelope that swells up. That envelope can drag on the black gap, inflicting it to spiral in and finally fall into the helium core.”
