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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,033

AI Reconstructs ‘High-Quality’ Video Directly from Brain Readings in Study

Researchers have used generative AI to reconstruct “high-quality” video from brain activity, a new study reports.

Researchers Jiaxin Qing, Zijiao Chen, and Juan Helen Zhou from the National University of Singapore and The Chinese University of Hong Kong used fMRI data and the text-to-image AI model Stable Diffusion to create a model called MinD-Video that generates video from the brain readings. Their paper describing the work was posted to the arXiv preprint server last week.

Their demonstration on the paper’s corresponding website shows a parallel between videos that were shown to subjects and the AI-generated videos created based on their brain activity. The differences between the two videos are slight and for the most part, contain similar subjects and color palettes.

The End of Screens?

Believe it or not, one of the most important technology announcements of the past few months had nothing to do with artificial intelligence. While critics and boosters continue to stir and fret over the latest capabilities of ChatGPT, a largely unknown 60-person start-up, based out of Tel Aviv, quietly began demoing a product that might foretell an equally impactful economic disruption.

The company is named Sightful and their new offering is Spacetop: “the world’s first augmented reality laptop.” Spacetop consists of a standard computer keyboard tethered to pair of goggles, styled like an unusually chunky pair of sport sunglasses. When you put on the goggles, the Spacetop technology inserts multiple large virtual computer screens into your visual field, floating above the keyboard as if you were using a computer connected to large external monitors.

As oppose to virtual reality technology, which places you into an entirely artificial setting, Spacetop is an example of augmented reality (AR), which places virtual elements into the real world. The goggles are transparent: when you put them on at your table in Starbucks you still see the coffee shop all around you. The difference is now there are also virtual computer screens floating above your macchiato.

ChatGPT is giving therapy. A mental health revolution may be next

face_with_colon_three This new gold rush with AI will bring new jobs for even Psychiatry and Therapists which is already leading to new bots with human like therapists in texts. This could lead to even better mental health for the global population.

“Psychotherapy is very expensive and even in places like Canada, where I’m from, and other countries, it’s super expensive, the waiting lists are really long,” Ashley Andreou, a medical student focusing on psychiatry at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera.

“People don’t have access to something that augments medication and is evidence-based treatment for mental health issues, and so I think that we need to increase access, and I do think that generative AI with a certified health professional will increase efficiency.”

The prospect of AI augmenting, or even leading, mental health treatment raises a myriad of ethical and practical concerns. These range from how to protect personal information and medical records, to questions about whether a computer programme will ever be truly capable of empathising with a patient or recognising warning signs such as the risk of self-harm.

ChatGPT is not “true AI.” A computer scientist explains why

AI is one of humanity’s oldest dreams. It goes back at least to classical Greece and the myth of Hephaestus, blacksmith to the gods, who had the power to bring metal creatures to life. Variations on the theme have appeared in myth and fiction ever since then. But it was only with the invention of the computer in the late 1940s that AI began to seem plausible.

Computers are machines that follow instructions. The programs that we give them are nothing more than finely detailed instructions — recipes that the computer dutifully follows. Your web browser, your email client, and your word processor all boil down to these incredibly detailed lists of instructions. So, if “true AI” is possible — the dream of having computers that are as capable as humans — then it too will amount to such a recipe. All we must do to make AI a reality is find the right recipe. But what might such a recipe look like? And given recent excitement about ChatGPT, GPT-4, and BARD — large language models (LLMs), to give them their proper name — have we now finally found the recipe for true AI?

Microsoft announces Windows Copilot, an AI “personal assistant” for Windows 11

Move over, Cortana. Copilot is the new assistant in Windows town.

Microsoft is adding a Copilot AI assistant to Windows 11. Much like the Copilot sidebars we’ve seen in Edge, Office apps, and even GitHub, Windows Copilot will be integrated directly into Windows 11 and available to open and use from the taskbar across all apps and programs.

“Once open, the Windows Copilot side bar stays consistent across your apps, programs, and windows, always available to act as your personal assistant,” explains Panos Panay, Microsoft’s head of Windows and devices. “It makes every user a power user, helping you take action, customize your settings, and seamlessly connect across your favorite apps.

Windows Copilot takes over Cortana’s place on the taskbar.

Spotify may use AI to make host-read podcast ads that sound like real people

With Spotify’s AI DJ, the company trained an AI on a real person’s voice — that of its head of Cultural Partnerships and podcast host, Xavier “X” Jernigan. Now, the streamer may turn that same technology to advertising, it seems. According to statements made by The Ringer founder Bill Simmons, the streaming service is developing AI technology that will be able to use a podcast host’s voice to make host-read ads — without the host actually having to read and record the ad copy.

Simmons made the statements on a recent episode of “The Bill Simmons Podcast,” saying, “There is going to be a way to use my voice for the ads. You have to obviously give the approval for the voice, but it opens up, from an advertising standpoint, all these different great possibilities for you.”

He said these ads could open up new opportunities for podcasters because they could geo-target ads — like tickets for a local event in the listener’s city — or even create ads in different languages, with the host’s permission.

Generative AI Is Stoking Medical Malpractice Concerns For Medical Doctors In These Unexpected Ways, Says AI Ethics And AI Law

In today’s column, I will be examining how the latest in generative AI is stoking medical malpractice concerns for medical doctors, doing so in perhaps unexpected or surprising ways. We all pretty much realize that medical doctors need to know about medicine, and it turns out that they also need to know about or at least be sufficiently aware of the intertwining of AI and the law during their illustrious medical careers.

Here’s why.

Is generative AI a blessing or a curse when it comes to medical doctors and the role of medical malpractice lawsuits.