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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,034

Can we control superintelligence? With Yoshua Bengio #artificialinteligence

Azeem speaks with Professor Yoshua Bengio. In 2018, Yoshua, Geoff Hinton and Yann LeCun were awarded the Turing Award for advancing the field of AI, in particular for their groundbreaking conceptual and engineering research in deep learning. This earnt them the moniker the Three Musketeers of Deep Learning. I think Bengio might be Aramis: intellectual, somewhat pensive, with aspirations beyond combat, and yet skilled with the blade.

With 750,000 citations to his scientific research, Yoshua has turned to the humanistic dimension of AI, in particular, the questions of safety, democracy, and climate change. Yoshua and I sit on the OECD’s Expert Group on AI Futures.

NASA’s new balloon-borne telescope was designed with AI

NASA is using an AI-powered technique called “generative design” to dramatically speed up the process of designing hardware for upcoming missions — and one of the first AI-designed missions will use a massive balloon to lift a telescope to the stratosphere.

The need: Weight is one of the most important considerations when NASA engineers are designing parts for new spacecraft — the heavier the final object is, the more fuel will be needed to launch it, and the more expensive the mission will be.

However, engineers can’t sacrifice strength in the name of keeping weight down — if a part breaks once it’s in space, replacing or repairing it typically isn’t an option.

Bill Gates isn’t too scared about AI

Like Gates, Leslie doesn’t dismiss doomer scenarios outright. “Bad actors can take advantage of these technologies and cause catastrophic harms,” he says. “You don’t need to buy into superintelligence, apocalyptic robots, or AGI speculation to understand that.”

“But I agree that our immediate concerns should be in addressing the existing risks that derive from the rapid commercialization of generative AI,” says Leslie. “It serves a positive purpose to sort of zoom our lens in and say, ‘Okay, well, what are the immediate concerns?’”

In his post, Gates notes that AI is already a threat in many fundamental areas of society, from elections to education to employment. Of course, such concerns aren’t news. What Gates wants to tell us is that although these threats are serious, we’ve got this: “The best reason to believe that we can manage the risks is that we have done it before.”

Meta plans launch of new AI language model Llama 3 in July, The Information reports

Meta researchers are trying to “loosen up” the model so that it could at least provide context to a query it deems controversial.

Meta Platforms is planning to release the newest version of its artificial-intelligence large language model Llama 3 in July which would give better responses to contentious questions posed by users, The Information reported on Wednesday.

The New York Times allegedly paid someone to “hack” OpenAI’s models via prompting

OpenAI is accusing the New York Times of “hacking” its products in the ongoing copyright dispute.

In a legal filing, OpenAI claims that an individual paid by the Times used “deceptive prompts” to create copies of NYT articles. These prompts would violate OpenAI’s terms of service.

The NYT demonstrated that OpenAI’s GPT models could generate copies of NYT articles when it filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement.

Central Texas aerospace company expands to prepare for new space age

BRIGGS, Texas (KXAN) — More rockets will soon be built in the Austin area. Firefly Aerospace, an end-to-end space transportation company, think space truckers, is unveiling its newest Rocket Ranch facility Wednesday.

The expanded facility will allow the company to produce and assemble new rockets, as well as test engines with 230,000 pounds of thrust. A new 100-foot test stand is part of the facility.

In addition, the facility will give the company access to a new automated fiber placement machine, allowing them to build rocket components at a faster pace as well as a new robotic powermill. This device will allow the company to rotate rockets with an 18-foot diameter.

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