AI won’t just mimic human thought. It could access a “universal” source that exists all around us, he says.
Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.
It’s Ethics. Not Tech Ethics
Every startup now has an “AI breakthrough.” Often a blockchain one, too.
Then I noticed a second fad growing just as fast: the ethicists. AI ethicists. Blockchain ethicists. Startup ethicists. VC ethicists. Unicorn ethicists. Someone called them “ethics natives.”
So back in 2024 I wrote a short, blunt piece arguing something that still gets me in trouble:
There is no such thing as tech There is only
And one other thing, which I’ll let the piece name for itself.
This isn’t a word game. Most of the #AIEthics I see starts with the trolley problem and works outward from edge cases. I think that’s backward, and in the piece I explain why it may do more harm than good.
Thursday, September 17th
‘It’s open source so it’s basically American now’
This site displays a prototype of a “Web 2.0” version of the daily Federal Register. It is not an official legal edition of the Federal Register, and does not replace the official print version or the official electronic version on GPO’s govinfo.gov.
The documents posted on this site are XML renditions of published Federal Register documents. Each document posted on the site includes a link to the corresponding official PDF file on govinfo.gov. This prototype edition of the daily Federal Register on FederalRegister.gov will remain an unofficial informational resource until the Administrative Committee of the Federal Register (ACFR) issues a regulation granting it official legal status. For complete information about, and access to, our official publications and services, go to About the Federal Register on NARA’s archives.gov.
The OFR/GPO partnership is committed to presenting accurate and reliable regulatory information on FederalRegister.gov with the objective of establishing the XML-based Federal Register as an ACFR-sanctioned publication in the future. While every effort has been made to ensure that the material on FederalRegister.gov is accurately displayed, consistent with the official SGML-based PDF version on govinfo.gov, those relying on it for legal research should verify their results against an official edition of the Federal Register. Until the ACFR grants it official status, the XML rendition of the daily Federal Register on FederalRegister.gov does not provide legal notice to the public or judicial notice to the courts.
Bypassing the Speed Limit for Thermally Driven Demagnetization
Contrary to expectations, the magnetization dynamics of a ferromagnet can be accelerated by increasing temperature, laser excitation, or magnetic field—a behavior that holds promise for high-speed spintronics.
The ability to control the spins of electrons has given rise to the field of spintronics, opening the door to faster, more energy-efficient electronics exploiting the spin degree of freedom of electrons rather than their electrical charge. However, controlling spin in real devices is still slower than controlling charge in conventional electronics. In the past 30 years, femtosecond light pulses have emerged as a promising means of rapid control in spin-based electronics. A magnetic material responds to external excitation most strongly when the system nears its phase-transition temperature. Unfortunately, that’s also where the response decelerates drastically—a phenomenon known as critical slowing down [1–3].
Stable frontal signals, flexible hippocampal ones: How the brain preserves context as goals change
While humans are completing a task, they can temporarily store information in their minds while also manipulating and adapting it based on changing circumstances. To support this capability, known as working memory, the brain needs to hold onto important context about a task, updating it when rules, goals or circumstances change.
Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the University of Toronto and other institutions recently carried out a study aimed at better understanding how neurons preserve context over time as the goals of an ongoing task change. Their findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, suggest that the brain can represent the same information through different patterns of neuronal activity that vary in stability and flexibility.
“We were inspired by the remarkable ability of an individual to relentlessly pursue a goal over long periods of time, while still remaining flexible and encoding information about a changing environment,” Hristos S. Courellis, first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress.
New simulations link unusual particle diffusion to yielding in soft jammed matter
Soft materials such as colloidal suspensions, emulsions, foams and gels often display complex and unusual behaviors compared with ordinary solids or liquids. From a mechanical point of view, for instance, they can resist deformation like solids, but they can also start to flow like liquids when a sufficiently strong external drive is applied. This transition from solid-like to liquid-like behavior, known as “yielding,” is central to the physics of soft amorphous materials and to many industrial and biological processes.
Some of these systems are also athermal: They are made of particles large enough that thermal motion plays no role in their dynamics. Their microscopic motion is therefore governed mainly by mechanical driving and interactions with neighboring particles, making their behavior even more unusual and intriguing.
A new study published in Communications Physics, establishes a connection between the mechanical yielding of soft athermal matter and a distinctive form of microscopic dynamics: Fickian yet non-Gaussian diffusion (FnGD). This phenomenon, also referred to as Brownian yet non-Gaussian diffusion, was first reported in 2009 and has since been identified in a variety of molecular systems, as well as in thermal and active soft matter, especially for particles moving in heterogeneous environments.
Dual findings reveal how to control coherence in plasmonic nanolasers
Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland have uncovered two complementary mechanisms that govern coherence in miniaturized lasers composed of metallic nanoparticle arrays incorporated into an optical gain material, also known as plasmonic lattice lasers.
In one study, published in Laser & Photonics Reviews, they showed that these nanostructures can generate phase-locked ultrafast laser pulse modulation through the synchronization of multiple lasing modes. In a second study, published in ACS Nano, they demonstrated that structures supporting lasing modes with different topologies and polarizations can sustain independent channels without mutual coherence.
Together, these findings establish a unified physical picture of coherence formation in plasmonic lasers and provide new design principles for nanoscale photonic devices.
Sliding droplets point to charging mechanism beyond mobile ions
Whether on a windowpane at home or during the industrial cleaning of computer chips: droplets sliding over solid surfaces become electrically charged. Yet the physical mechanism behind this charging remains a subject of debate. This charging is usually attributed to the exchange of charged particles (ions) at the interface between the droplet and the surface.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have now investigated two different types of liquids—so-called polar and nonpolar liquids—in both their liquid and frozen states. The researchers discovered that there is apparently at least one additional effect behind droplet charging. The findings are published in the journal Nature Physics.
When droplets glide across surfaces, they usually become positively charged and leave a negatively charged trail on the surface. This process is known as slide electrification. The resulting electric charges influence the movement of droplets on various surfaces. On a windowpane, for example, this contributes to droplets occasionally getting stuck. During the cleaning of computer chips in industrial manufacturing processes, this can even damage sensitive components. Therefore, understanding which fundamental processes contribute to droplet charging is of great interest.