Lifeboat Foundation

The chaos at OpenAI reveals contradictions in the way we think about the technology.

At times it felt less like Succession than Fawlty Towers, not so much Shakespearean tragedy as Laurel and Hardy farce.

In today’s column, I am going to walk you through a prominent AI-mystery that has caused quite a stir leading to an incessant buzz across much of social media and garnering outsized headlines in the mass media.

I make use of detective work to try and figure out what the alleged AI breakthrough was at OpenAI and has been claimed to be called Q*, leading supposedly toward AGI.

Wikipedia’s founder Jimmy Wales tells Euronews Next about the ‘terrible’ early stage of ChatGPT, the lesson for OpenAI and about his open-source social media platform.

Inflection claims that its new language model, Inflection-2, outperforms direct competitors such as Google PaLM-2 and Claude 2, and is second only to GPT-4.

The new model is said to be significantly more powerful than its predecessor, Inflection-1, and, according to the startup, demonstrates improved factual knowledge, better style control, and significantly improved reasoning.

Inflection-1 was released in July. It was roughly on par with GPT-3.5 and PaLM-540B. Inflection-2 should now catch up with GPT-4, the company claims.

“While there is so much we’ve come to understand, so much remains unknown in our Ocean–and we are thrilled to continue exploring.”

Ocean explorers from the Schmidt Ocean Institute have unveiled a colossal underwater mountain, challenging our perceptions of the ocean’s mysterious depths.

Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Continue reading “Expedition reveals enormous ocean mountain twice as high as Burj Khalifa” »

Noise-canceling headphones are designed to block out the ambient noise and let you focus on what you want to hear.

Wirestock, photoschmidt via iStock.

This feature used to be a niche product for a select group of users, primarily frequent air travelers. But now, with technology being more affordable, it has become more vividly seen in many of the current market offerings. Take Apple’s AirPods Pro or AirPods Max, for example, or Sony’s WH 1,000 XM5 or WF 1,000 XM5 series or, say, the Bose Quite Comfort series. There are many options, from affordable to expensive ones, and the ANC performance varies across the price range.

Continue reading “How do noise-canceling headphones work and why are they so popular?” »

The technique represents an important step in engineering skin grafts, drug testing. A team led by scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has 3D-printed hair follicles in human skin tissue cultured in the lab. This marks the first time researchers have used the technology to generate hair follicles, which play an important role in skin healing and function.

The finding, published in the journal Science Advances, has potential applications in regenerative medicine and drug testing, though engineering skin grafts that grow hair are still several years away.

“Our work is a proof-of-concept that hair follicle structures can be created in a highly precise, reproducible way using 3D-bioprinting. This kind of automated process is needed to make future biomanufacturing of skin possible,” said Pankaj Karande, Ph.D., an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering and a member of Rensselaer’s Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D. Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, who led the study.

An AI tool that can predict 10-year risk of deadly heart attacks, could transform treatment for patients who undergo CT scans to investigate chest pain, according to British Heart Foundation-funded research presented today at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions in Philadelphia.

In the first real-world trial of the AI tool, it was found to improve treatment for up to 45 per cent of patients. The AI technology could potentially save the lives of thousands with chest pain, who may not have been identified as at risk of a heart attack, and therefore may not have received appropriate treatment to lower their risk. With the technology also found to be cost-effective, the researchers hope it could change the management of patients who are referred for chest pain investigations, across the NHS.

Every year in the UK around 350,000 people have a cardiac CT scan – the standard test to identify any narrowings or blockages in the coronary arteries. In around three quarters of cases, there is no clear sign of significant narrowings, so patients are often reassured and discharged. Unfortunately, many of these people will die from a heart attack in future, because small, undetectable narrowings may break up if they are inflamed, blocking the arteries. Until recently, it was not possible to identify these patients at risk.

Polyphosphoesters, molecules containing phosphorus as the central element, are easily traceable without the need for contrast agents, thanks to developments by researchers from the University of Twente (UT). Normally, these molecules display a similar molecular composition to our DNA, leading to considerable “noise” in the image.

The UT researchers provided a solution and developed unique polymers that are traceable with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Dr. Olga Koshkina, Project Leader in the Sustainable Polymer Chemistry Group, published this new concept of traceable polymers in Communications Chemistry.

The researchers adjusted the properties of polyphosphoesters (special polymers with a molecular structure inspired by DNA and RNA). As a result, the polymers acquired a different “MRI color,” making them more distinguishable from the natural background. Additionally, they exhibit other physical MRI characteristics suitable for imaging.