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Category: law – Page 12

Could artificial intelligence (AI) systems become conscious? A trio of consciousness scientists says that, at the moment, no one knows — and they are expressing concern about the lack of inquiry into the question.

In comments to the United Nations, three leaders of the Association for Mathematical Consciousness Science (AMCS) call for more funding to support research on consciousness and AI. They say that scientific investigations of the boundaries between conscious and unconscious systems are urgently needed, and they cite ethical, legal and safety issues that make it crucial to understand AI consciousness. For example, if AI develops consciousness, should people be allowed to simply switch it off after use?

Such concerns have been mostly absent from recent discussions about AI safety, such as the high-profile AI Safety Summit in the United Kingdom, says AMCS board member Jonathan Mason, a mathematician based in Oxford, UK and one of the authors of the comments. Nor did US President Joe Biden’s executive order seeking responsible development of AI technology address issues raised by conscious AI systems, Mason notes.

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At its Quantum Summit 2023, IBM took the stage with an interesting spirit: one of almost awe at having things go their way. But the quantum of today – the one that’s changing IBM’s roadmap so deeply on the back of breakthroughs upon breakthroughs – was hard enough to consolidate. As IBM sees it, the future of quantum computing will hardly be more permissive, and further improvements to the cutting-edge devices it announced at the event, the 133-qubit Heron Quantum Processing Unit (QPU), which is the company’s first utility-scale quantum processor, and the self-contained Quantum System Two, a quantum-specific supercomputing architecture, are ultimately required.

But each breakthrough that afterward becomes obsolete is another accelerational bump against what we might call quantum’s “plateau of understanding.” We’ve already been through this plateau with semiconductors, so much so that our latest CPUs and GPUs are reaching practical, fundamental design limits where quantum effects start ruining our math. Conquering the plateau means that utility and understanding are now enough for research and development to be somewhat self-sustainable – at least for a Moore’s-law-esque while.

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Welcome to the ARC Conference 2023! This was the opening speech at the ARC Conference, from day 1 of the ARC Conference. Baroness Philippa Stroud is co-founder and CEO of ARC and Member of the House of Lords. Previously, she was CEO of the Legatum Institute and the Centre for Social Justice, and served as Special Advisor for both the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Prime Minister David Cameron.

Find out more about the ARC here and subscribe the our newsletter for our latest updates: https://www.arcforum.com.

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If you think Tesla’s next generation bot, TeslaBot, looks good for no reason, then think again! Dr. Scott Walter and I go into the reasons that the way the new Optimus robot looks matter so much to the way it functions—and it’s pretty cool! Plus, Scott rants about the fraudulent copyright claims Univision laid on all TeslaBot videos!

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A recent study published in JAMA Network Open investigates the level of usage of hemp-derived cannabinoids, including cannabinol (CBN), cannabigerol (CBG), Delta 8-THC, and cannabidiol (CBD). The reason hemp-derived cannabinoids were chosen for the study was due to passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, which removed hemp from the definition of marijuana previously outlined in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). However, THC is still classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning it’s still illegal under federal law, and despite the “de-scheduling” of hemp, there is presently no data regarding the estimated usage of hemp-derived cannabinoids.

“While the de-scheduling of hemp products initially opened up the market for CBD products, it also applies to the 100-plus cannabinoids also found in the plant,” said Dr. Kevin Boehnke, who is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan, and a co-author on the study. “That means, as with CBD, all of them can follow that same path and be sold in gas stations, as ingredients in cosmetics, as well as in dispensaries—there will likely be substantial proliferation of some of these compounds.”

For the study, the researchers conducted a cross-sectional survey study of individuals aged 18 and up inquiring about past-year use of hemp-derived cannabinoids. Of the 6,666 participants who received the survey, only 1,169 completed it. Of those 1,169 participants, the researchers found that 71.7 percent had heard of CBD compared to 41.2 percent, 18.4 percent, and 16.8 percent for Delta 8-THC, CBG, and CBN, respectively. Additionally, 21.2 percent of the participants reported using CBD within the past year compared to 11.9 percent, 5.2 percent, and 4.4 percent for Delta 8-THC, CBG, and CBN, respectively, with 25.5 percent of participants reporting using some type of emerging cannabinoid within the last year, as well.

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Google has released a new Pro model of its latest AI, Gemini, and company sources say it has outperformed GPT-3.5 (the free version of ChatGPT) in widespread testing. According to performance reports, Gemini Ultra exceeds current state-of-the-art results on 30 of the 32 widely-used academic benchmarks used in large language model (LLM) research and development. Google has been accused of lagging behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT, widely regarded as the most popular and powerful in the AI space. Google says Gemini was trained to be multimodal, meaning it can process different types of media such as text, pictures, video, and audio.

Insider also reports that, with a score of 90.0%, Gemini Ultra is the first model to outperform human experts on MMLU (massive multitask language understanding), which uses a combination of 57 subjects such as math, physics, history, law, medicine and ethics for testing both world knowledge and problem-solving abilities.

The Google-based AI comes in three sizes, or stages, for the Gemini platform: Ultra, which is the flagship model, Pro and Nano (designed for mobile devices). According to reports from TechCrunch, the company says it’s making Gemini Pro available to enterprise customers through its Vertex AI program, and for developers in AI Studio, on December 13. Reports indicate that the Pro version can also be accessed via Bard, the company’s chatbot interface.

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In 2001, Gina Arata was in her final semester of college, planning to apply to law school, when she suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. The injury so compromised her ability to focus she struggled in a job sorting mail.

“I couldn’t remember anything,” said Arata, who lives in Modesto with her parents. “My dropped, so I’d trip over things all the time. I was always in car accidents. And I had no filter—I’d get pissed off really easily.”

Her parents learned about research being conducted at Stanford Medicine and reached out; Arata was accepted as a participant. In 2018, physicians surgically implanted a device deep inside her brain, then carefully calibrated the device’s electrical activity to stimulate the networks the had subdued. The results of the clinical trial were published Dec. 4 in Nature Medicine.

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LONDON (AP) — European Union negotiators clinched a deal Friday on the world’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence rules, paving the way for legal oversight of technology used in popular generative AI services like ChatGPT that has promised to transform everyday life and spurred warnings of existential dangers to humanity.

Negotiators from the European Parliament and the bloc’s 27 member countries overcame big differences on controversial points including generative AI and police use of facial recognition surveillance to sign a tentative political agreement for the Artificial Intelligence Act.

“Deal!” tweeted European Commissioner Thierry Breton, just before midnight. “The EU becomes the very first continent to set clear rules for the use of AI.”

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A new technique using deep brain stimulation tailored to each patient exceeded researchers’ expectations in treating the cognitive impairments from moderate to severe traumatic brain injury.

In 2001, Gina Arata was in her final semester of college, planning to apply to law school, when she suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. The injury so compromised her ability to focus she struggled in a job sorting mail.

“I couldn’t remember anything,” said Arata, who lives in Modesto with her parents. “My left foot dropped, so I’d trip over things all the time. I was always in car accidents. And I had no filter — I’d get pissed off really easily.”

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