Through Broad’s Scientists in the Classroom program, Broad researchers visit every 8th grade classroom in Cambridge each year to talk about genetics and evolution.
Every summer, 18 high school students spend six weeks at Broad working side-by-side with mentors on cutting-edge research.
In November 2022, Broad’s Genomics Platform sequenced its 500,000th whole human genome, a mere four years after sequencing its 100,000th.
Google Research releases the Skin Condition Image Network (SCIN) dataset in collaboration with physicians at Stanford Med.
Designed to reflect the broad range of conditions searched for online, it’s freely available as a resource for researchers, educators, & devs → https://goo.gle/4amfMwW
#AI #medicine
Health datasets play a crucial role in research and medical education, but it can be challenging to create a dataset that represents the real world. For example, dermatology conditions are diverse in their appearance and severity and manifest differently across skin tones. Yet, existing dermatology image datasets often lack representation of everyday conditions (like rashes, allergies and infections) and skew towards lighter skin tones. Furthermore, race and ethnicity information is frequently missing, hindering our ability to assess disparities or create solutions.
To address these limitations, we are releasing the Skin Condition Image Network (SCIN) dataset in collaboration with physicians at Stanford Medicine. We designed SCIN to reflect the broad range of concerns that people search for online, supplementing the types of conditions typically found in clinical datasets. It contains images across various skin tones and body parts, helping to ensure that future AI tools work effectively for all. We’ve made the SCIN dataset freely available as an open-access resource for researchers, educators, and developers, and have taken careful steps to protect contributor privacy.
Summary: Adolescents engaging in “transcendent thinking”—the practice of looking beyond the immediate context to understand deeper meanings and implications—can significantly influence their brain development. The study highlights how this complex form of thinking fosters coordination between the brain’s executive control and default mode networks, crucial for psychological functioning.
Analyzing high school students’ responses to global teen stories, researchers found that transcendent thinking not only enhances brain network coordination over time but also predicts key psychosocial outcomes in young adulthood. These groundbreaking findings underline the potential of civically minded education in supporting adolescents’ cognitive and emotional development.
Cellulose is the primary component of the cell walls of plants, making it the most common polymer on Earth. It’s responsible for the properties of materials like wood and cotton and is the primary component of dietary fiber, so it’s hard to overstate its importance to humanity.
Given its ubiquity and the fact that it’s composed of a bunch of sugar molecules linked together, its toughness makes it very difficult to use as a food source. The animals that manage to extract significant calories from cellulose typically do so via specialized digestive tracts that provide a home for symbiotic bacteria—think of the extra stomachs of cows and other ruminants.
Amazingly, humans also play host to bacteria that can break down cellulose—something that wasn’t confirmed until 2003 (long after I’d wrapped up my education). Now, a new study indicates that we’re host to a mix of cellulose-eating bacteria, some via our primate ancestry, and others through our domestication of herbivores such as cows. But urban living has caused the number of these bacteria to shrink dramatically.
Astronomers can use supercomputers to simulate the formation of galaxies from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago to the present day. But there are a number of sources of error. An international research team, led by researchers in Lund, has spent a hundred million computer hours over eight years trying to correct these.
The last decade has seen major advances in computer simulations that can realistically calculate how galaxies form. These cosmological simulations are crucial to our understanding of where galaxies, stars and planets come from. However, the predictions from such models are affected by limitations in the resolution of the simulations, as well as assumptions about a number of factors, such as how stars live and die and the evolution of the interstellar medium.
To minimise the sources of error and produce more accurate simulations, 160 researchers from 60 higher education institutions – led by Santi Roca-Fàbrega at Lund University, Ji-hoon Kim at Seoul National University and Joel R. Primack at the University of California – have collaborated and now present the results of the largest comparison of simulations done ever.
The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, in collaboration with the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and the Cosmic Future Initiative at the Faculty of Arts \& Science, present Geoffrey Hinton on October 27, 2023, at the University of Toronto.
0:00:00 — 0:07:20 Opening remarks and introduction.
0:07:21 — 0:08:43 Overview.
0:08:44 — 0:20:08 Two different ways to do computation.
0:20:09 — 0:30:11 Do large language models really understand what they are saying?
0:30:12 — 0:49:50 The first neural net language model and how it works.
0:49:51 — 0:57:24 Will we be able to control super-intelligence once it surpasses our intelligence?
0:57:25 — 1:03:18 Does digital intelligence have subjective experience?
1:03:19 — 1:55:36 Q\&A
1:55:37 — 1:58:37 Closing remarks.
Talk title: “Will digital intelligence replace biological intelligence?”
Abstract: Digital computers were designed to allow a person to tell them exactly what to do. They require high energy and precise fabrication, but in return they allow exactly the same model to be run on physically different pieces of hardware, which makes the model immortal. For computers that learn what to do, we could abandon the fundamental principle that the software should be separable from the hardware and mimic biology by using very low power analog computation that makes use of the idiosynchratic properties of a particular piece of hardware. This requires a learning algorithm that can make use of the analog properties without having a good model of those properties. Using the idiosynchratic analog properties of the hardware makes the computation mortal. When the hardware dies, so does the learned knowledge. The knowledge can be transferred to a younger analog computer by getting the younger computer to mimic the outputs of the older one but education is a slow and painful process. By contrast, digital computation makes it possible to run many copies of exactly the same model on different pieces of hardware. Thousands of identical digital agents can look at thousands of different datasets and share what they have learned very efficiently by averaging their weight changes. That is why chatbots like GPT-4 and Gemini can learn thousands of times more than any one person. Also, digital computation can use the backpropagation learning procedure which scales much better than any procedure yet found for analog hardware. This leads me to believe that large-scale digital computation is probably far better at acquiring knowledge than biological computation and may soon be much more intelligent than us. The fact that digital intelligences are immortal and did not evolve should make them less susceptible to religion and wars, but if a digital super-intelligence ever wanted to take control it is unlikely that we could stop it, so the most urgent research question in AI is how to ensure that they never want to take control.
About Geoffrey Hinton.
Geoffrey Hinton received his PhD in artificial intelligence from Edinburgh in 1978. After five years as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon he became a fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and moved to the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he is now an emeritus professor. In 2013, Google acquired Hinton’s neural networks startup, DNN research, which developed out of his research at U of T. Subsequently, Hinton was a Vice President and Engineering Fellow at Google until 2023. He is a founder of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence where he continues to serve as Chief Scientific Adviser.
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala: A school in Kerala is taking what may be called a revolutionary step towards revamping education with the introduction of Iris, claimed to be the first-ever AI teacher robot in the state.
The KTCT Higher Secondary School, a venture of the Kaduvayil Thangal Charitable Trust, unveiled Iris last month in collaboration with Makerlabs Edutech Private Limited. The Iris robot is designed to be more than just a robot. Built as part of the Atal Tinkering Lab (ATL) project by NITI Aayog, Iris is equipped to answer complex questions across various subjects in three different languages. It can also provide personalized voice assistance and facilitate interactive learning experiences.
An exploration of Frank Herbert’s implicit and explicit warnings against the unmitigated advancement and dependence on AI (Artificial Intelligence), while also examining how these fundamental concerns, leading to AI’s prohibition, consistently resonate throughout the series. One of its less explored, but equally compelling, elements is its commentary on the rise of artificial intelligence. Dune is set in the far future taking place in an interstellar empire that is devoid of thinking machines after a universal ban against computing technology that is made in the likeness of a human mind. The reasons behind this prohibition not only serve as a caution against the perils of artificial intelligence, but they also underscore broader warnings present throughout Herbert’s Dune books.
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This is a sci-fi documentary, looking at what it takes to build an underground city on Mars. The choice to go underground is for protection, from the growing storm radiation that rains down on the surface every day. And to further advance the Mars colonization efforts.
Where will the materials to build the city come from? How will the crater be covered to protect the inhabitants? And what will it feel like to live in this city, that is in a hole in the ground?
It is a dream of building an advanced Mars colony, and showing the science and future space technology needed to make it happen.
Personal inspiration in creating this video comes from: The Expanse TV show and books, and The Martian.
Other topics in the video include: the plan and different phases of construction, the robots building the city, structures that are on the surface versus below the surface, pressurizing a habitat on Mars, the soil and how to turn it in Martian concrete, the art of terraforming, and the different materials that can be extracted from the planet. And the future plans of the Mars colony, from building upwards to venturing to the asteroid belt and Jupiter’s 95 moons.
PATREON
He worked as a busboy at Denny’s, graduated high school at 16, and got the Nvidia logo tattooed on his bicep when the stock price hit $100.
