Mark Zuckerberg's new goal is to develop artificial general intelligence
Alex Heath | The Verge
“The generative AI craze is fueled by the belief that the technology industry is on the path to achieving superhuman, god-like intelligence. Demis Hassabis, head of Google's AI efforts, has the same goal. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now in the race.”
Why everyone is excited about home robots again
melissa heikkilaArchive page | MIT Technology Review
“Robotics is at a tipping point, says Chelsea Finn, assistant professor and former robotics consultant at Stanford University.” [Mobile ALOHA] project. Until now, researchers have been limited by the amount of data they can train robots with. There is now even more data available, and studies like Mobile Her ALOHA show that using neural networks and more data, robots can learn complex tasks fairly quickly and easily. ” she says.
Global emissions could peak sooner than expected
hannah richie wired
“Every November, the Global Carbon Project releases the global CO2 figure for that year.2 emissions. That's never good news. At a time when the world needs to reduce emissions, that number continues to rise. But while emissions are moving in the wrong direction, many of the fundamental economic forces driving emissions are moving in the right direction. This year could be the year in which these various forces push together so strongly that they ultimately tip the balance. ”
Introducing ReTro, the first cloned rhesus macaque to reach adulthood.
Miriam Nadav | Nature Magazine
“The first cloned rhesus macaque (macaw) live to adulthood, and have so far survived for more than 2 years.description of feat [this week] in nature communications, marking the first successful cloning of this kind. This was achieved using a slightly different approach than previous techniques used to clone mammals such as sheep and long-tailed macaques.cynomolgus monkey), the first primate to be cloned. ”
I literally talked to NPCs in Nvidia's AI-powered video games
sean hollister the verge
“What if you could talk to video game characters? Instead of choosing from preset phrases, why not ask your own questions in your own voice? Last May, Nvidia and its partners One Convai showed off a rather unconvincing canned demo of such a system, but in January of this year I was able to try out a fully interactive version myself at CES 2024. I walked away feeling confident that we were going to see something like this in future games.”
What does Ukraine's 1 million drone army mean for the future of war?
David Hambling | New Scientist
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has pledged that his country's military will deploy one million unmanned aircraft by 2024. His country already has hundreds of thousands of small drones, but this is a major It's a change, a transition to an army that has more drones than soldiers. What does that mean for the future of warfare?”
Japan reaches the moon, but fate of precision lander remains unclear
Jonathan O'Callaghan | Scientific American
“…JAXA officials say that while SLIM is communicating with mission controllers and responding accurately to commands, the lander’s solar panels are not generating power and data collected onboard the spacecraft is Many have not yet been returned to Earth. Therefore, the mission is powered by batteries, and the batteries have the ability to power several hours of operation. Although operations will cease, the spacecraft may be able to wake up again if the solar energy supply can be restored.”
NASA unveils X-59 plane for supersonic flight test over US cities
matthew sparks new scientist
“The Concorde's sound would have been like thunder overhead or a balloon popping right next to us. Ours, on the other hand, would have been more like thumps and rumblings, distant thunder or the sound of a street. “It's more in line with the sound of your neighbor's car door closing,” Baum says. “I think it blends more into the background of everyday life than the Concorde.”
NASA's robotic self-assembling structures could be the next step in space construction
Devin Caldway | TechCrunch
“Bad news for people who want to move to the Moon or Mars. Finding housing is a bit difficult. Fortunately, NASA is thinking ahead (as always) and is just starting to move beyond Earth.” We just showed off a self-assembling robot structure that could be an important part of …the basic idea of a self-assembling structure is to use building materials (cubo-octahedral frames called voxels) and two types of materials to assemble them. It's all about smart synergies between robots.”
Image credit: ZENG YILI / Unsplash
