Lifeboat Foundation

The explosive successes of AI in the last decade or so are typically chalked up to lots of data and lots of computing power. But benchmarks also play a crucial role in driving progress—tests that researchers can pit their AI against to see how advanced it is. For example, ImageNet, a public data set of 14 million images, sets a target for image recognition. MNIST did the same for handwriting recognition and GLUE (General Language Understanding Evaluation) for natural-language processing, leading to breakthrough language models like GPT-3.

A fixed target soon gets overtaken. ImageNet is being updated and GLUE has been replaced by SuperGLUE, a set of harder linguistic tasks. Still, sooner or later researchers will report that their AI has reached superhuman levels, outperforming people in this or that challenge. And that’s a problem if we want benchmarks to keep driving progress.

So Facebook is releasing a new kind of test that pits AIs against humans who do their best to trip them up. Called Dynabench, the test will be as hard as people choose to make it.

They’re not just for supervillains anymore.

Scientists in Japan and Germany have made a breakthrough in the field of solar lasers—and they’ve changed the game completely.

🤯 You like badass science. So do we. Let’s nerd out over it together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8egE31KKKz8&feature=youtu.be

The Horizon 2020 EU-funded MOSAR project (MOdular Spacecraft Assembly and Reconfiguration) aims to develop a ground demonstrator for on-orbit modular and reconfigurable satellites.

The project will investigate and demonstrate technologies that enable a fundamental paradigm shift in satellite design and deployment that could potentially impact all future space missions.

Continue reading “MOSAR. A Modular and Reconfigurable Future for Space Missions” »

How do you keep the world’s tiniest soda cold? UCLA scientists may have the answer.

A team led by UCLA physics professor Chris Regan has succeeded in creating thermoelectric coolers that are only 100 nanometers thick—roughly one ten-millionth of a meter—and have developed an innovative new technique for measuring their cooling performance.

“We have made the world’s smallest refrigerator,” said Regan, the lead author of a paper on the research published recently in the journal ACS Nano.

From business to leisure to everything in between, technology can make our lives easier and more enjoyable. Further, tech can also be used to promote the common good and make a positive impact on humanity. When an innovation can do both, it’s something truly special and important that deserves our attention.

As industry leaders, the members of Forbes Technology Council stay on top of current trends and developments, including the most exciting and impactful new technology out there. Below, 15 of them share the coolest products and services they’ve seen that are making a real difference in the world.

Momentum is building to finally tackle a neglected health problem that strikes poor, rural communities.

About 25% of all patents filed by projects supported by Horizon 2020 have come from ERC projects, even though commercialization of research is not the agency’s main aim. Bourguignon and his colleagues rightly argue that many advances in fundamental research ultimately contribute to innovation and benefit society. But that is a hard message to get across at a time of constrained funding and competing priorities.

Europe’s flagship science agency will be crucial to a post-coronavirus world. Slashing its budget will be a senseless act.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is about to carry what will soon become the International Space Station’s first privately-built airlock.

The company has previously built standardized boxes for space-based experiments and tiny satellite deployers, The Verge reports.

The Bishop is shaped like a bell jar and attaches itself to the outside of the space station using a number of clamps and latches.

Continue reading “The ISS Is About to Get Its First Commercial Airlock” »

Chinese state media says the country has safely landed a reusable spacecraft which it claims will provide a “convenient and inexpensive” method of getting to and from space. The craft launched on September 4th and landed on September 6th after spending two days in orbit, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.