Lifeboat Foundation

For better or for worse, generative AIs continue to evolve by leaps and bounds with each passing day, a fact that has once again been proven by Google’s DeepMind team with the reveal of Genie, a new AI-powered model capable of creating entire games from just a single image prompt. Trained without any action labels on a large dataset of publicly available Internet videos, Genie can turn any image, whether it’s a real-world photograph, a sketch, an AI-generated image, or a painting, into a simplistic 2D platformer, with the team noting that this approach is versatile and applicable across various domains. Moreover, developers highlight that this new model opens the door for future AI agents to be trained “in a never-ending curriculum of new, generated worlds.”

“God looked upon his world and called it good, but Man was not content. He looked for ways to make it better and built machines to do the work. But in vain we build the world, unless the builder also grows.” Tinged with earthbound authenticity and verbal courtroom sparring straight out of “Perry Mason,” this classic episode finds a robot — Adam Link — on trial for the murder of the scientist who created him. “Star Trek’s” Leonard Nimoy turns in a fine performance as the cock-sure reporter who coaxes a crusty lawyer, Thurman Cutler (Howard Da Silva), out of retirement to defend the accused automaton. Based on the classic “Adam Link” stories first published in 1939’s “Amazing Stories” magazine, “I, Robot” asks the question: In the race for more complex technology, are we creating beneficial machinery…or futuristic Frankenstein monsters? In 1995, Nimoy will return to this story in the revival series of “The Outer Limits,” this time as the District Attorney.

In a recent development at Fudan University, a team of applied mathematicians and AI scientists has unveiled a cutting-edge machine learning framework designed to revolutionize the understanding and prediction of Hamiltonian systems. The paper is published in the journal Physical Review Research.

Named the Hamiltonian Neural Koopman Operator (HNKO), this innovative framework integrates principles of mathematical physics to reconstruct and predict Hamiltonian systems of extremely-high dimension using noisy or partially-observed data.

The HNKO framework, equipped with a unitary Koopman structure, has the remarkable ability to discover new conservation laws solely from observational data. This capability addresses a significant challenge in accurately predicting dynamics in the presence of noise perturbations, marking a major breakthrough in the field of Hamiltonian mechanics.

While Artificial Intelligence (AI) focuses on simulating and surpassing human intelligence, Artificial Life (A-Life) takes a different approach. Instead of replicating cognitive abilities, A-Life seeks to understand and model fundamental biological processes through software, hardware, and even… wetware.

Forget Turing tests and chess games. A-Life scientists don’t care if their creations are “smart” in the traditional sense. Instead, they’re fascinated by the underlying rules that govern life itself. Think of it as rewinding the movie of evolution, watching it unfold again in a digital petri dish.

Turn an image into a playable game with AI.

San Francisco-based startup Magic AI just secured more than $100 million in funding to develop an AI software engineer, which it sees as a milestone along the path to artificial general intelligence (AGI).

The background: Everything we see and do on our devices starts as code, and traditionally, that code was written by trained software engineers. In 2021, OpenAI disrupted this paradigm with CODEX, an AI that can write computer code in response to prompts written in natural language.

Continue reading “AI startup Magic is building a ‘superhuman software engineer’” »

Summary: A new study combines deep learning with neural activity data from mice to unlock the mystery of how they navigate their environment.

By analyzing the firing patterns of “head direction” neurons and “grid cells,” researchers can now accurately predict a mouse’s location and orientation, shedding light on the complex brain functions involved in navigation. This method, developed in collaboration with the US Army Research Laboratory, represents a significant leap forward in understanding spatial awareness and could revolutionize autonomous navigation in AI systems.

The findings highlight the potential for integrating biological insights into artificial intelligence to enhance machine navigation without relying on GPS technology.

Hubert, K.F., Awa, K.N. & Zabelina, D.L. Sci Rep 14, 3,440 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-53303-w.

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The Expedition 66 crew continued preparing today for the first of two spacewalks set to begin next week to continue upgrading the International Space Station’s power system. Vein scans were also on Thursday’s schedule helping scientists understand how living in space affects the human body.

NASA Flight Engineers Kayla Barron and Raja Chari are set to switch their U.S. spacesuits to battery power at 8:05 a.m. EDT on Tuesday and spend six-and-a-half hours installing a modification kit on the space station’s Starboard-4 truss structure. The new hardware will enable the upcoming installation of a third roll-out solar array increasing the station’s power output and augmenting the existing solar arrays.

The duo was joined by fellow station astronauts Tom Marshburn of NASA and Matthias Maurer of ESA (European Space Agency) for a spacewalk procedures review and conference with specialists on the ground. Marshburn and Maurer will assist the spacewalkers in and out of their spacesuits, operate the Canadarm2 robotic arm, and monitor their external activities. Mission managers will talk about the spacewalk, as well as a second one planned for March 23, live on the NASA TV app and the website on Monday at 2 p.m. NASA TV begins its live spacewalk broadcast on Tuesday at 6:30 a.m.