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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1048

Ray Kurzweil on the Law of accelerating returns:

Ray Kurzweil: Acceleration of technology is the implication of what I call the law of accelerating returns. The nature of technological progress is exponential. If I count linearly 30 steps: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… I get to 30. If I count exponentially: 2, 4, 8, 16… 30 steps later I’m at a billion. It makes a dramatic difference.

TRANSCENDENT MAN chronicles the life and ideas of Ray Kurzweil, the inventor and futurist known for his bold vision of the Singularity, a point in the near future when technology will be changing so rapidly, that we will have to enhance ourselves with artificial intelligence to keep up. Ray predicts this will be the dawning of a new civilization in which we will no longer be dependent on our physical bodies, we will be billions of times more intelligent and there will be no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality.

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AI is being used to generate everything from images to text to artificial proteins, and now another thing has been added to the list: speech. Last week researchers from Microsoft released a paper on a new AI called VALL-E that can accurately simulate anyone’s voice based on a sample just three seconds long. VALL-E isn’t the first speech simulator to be created, but it’s built in a different way than its predecessors—and could carry a greater risk for potential misuse.

Most existing text-to-speech models use waveforms (graphical representations of sound waves as they move through a medium over time) to create fake voices, tweaking characteristics like tone or pitch to approximate a given voice. VALL-E, though, takes a sample of someone’s voice and breaks it down into components called tokens, then uses those tokens to create new sounds based on the “rules” it already learned about this voice. If a voice is particularly deep, or a speaker pronounces their A’s in a nasal-y way, or they’re more monotone than average, these are all traits the AI would pick up on and be able to replicate.

The model is based on a technology called EnCodec by Meta, which was just released this part October. The tool uses a three-part system to compress audio to 10 times smaller than MP3s with no loss in quality; its creators meant for one of its uses to be improving the quality of voice and music on calls made over low-bandwidth connections.

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In 2020 I joined the private beta test of Open AI’s Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3), which is an earlier version of ChatGPT. When ChatGPT was released in November 2022, I started experimenting with it. For over two years I’ve been exploring the strengths and limits of this technology and assessing how this tool could be useful to me. I’m also interested how this new technology is being utilized by scientists and academics to make meaningful contributions to academic work and education.

A recent study demonstrated that ChatGPT was able to pass the US Medical Licensing Exam without any special training prior to the exam and was able to demonstrate a high level of insight in its explanations. The results suggest that ChatGPT may be able to assist with medical education.

I published the first article about my experiments with ChatGPT last week. The article entitled How The Evolution Of AI In Healthcare Aligns With Thomas Kuhn’s Structure has been viewed over 13,000 times, and has received and

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Despite its recent blowback, Web 3.0 offers a more interconnected and productive society.

The next significant development for the internet and all it governs is Web 3.0. To improve user experience, it will make use of artificial intelligence. In addition, blockchain technology will enable the service to be backed by decentralized networks since Web 3.0 is the fundamental framework for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. This will be a revolutionary move that might significantly influence businesses and how they function, as well as individual users. For instance, site owners won’t have to rely on larger businesses like Amazon (AWS) and Google to buy server space.

Web 2.0 – the current version of the internet – has grown overly centralized, with a small number of large technology businesses and government organizations controlling the industry. Web 3.0, which promises a decentralized online ecosystem built on the still-emerging blockchain, will be the third iteration of the internet. Web 3.0 was first coined in 2014 by a computer scientist named Gavin Wood also helped create Ethereum, the decentralized blockchain system that powers the ether coin.

The main problem with Web 2.0, according to Wood, is trusting the people who run the services. “We’ve managed to build ourselves into this fairly dystopian picture of what the world could be,” he said in a podcast with CNBC. This is why many believe Web 3.0 – with its focus on decentralization – will provide a more democratic and dispersed view of the internet. Additionally, it’s touted as an essential component of the emerging metaverse, an immersive online universe. While some are skeptical and refer to Web 3.0 and the metaverse as primarily a marketing project and even as a pyramid scheme, other venture investors are pouring billions of dollars into this futuristic vision. However, the idea is reportedly also opposed by many in the tech world, including Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter.

Continue reading “Explained: Will Web 3.0 live up to its hype?” | >

Summary: Combining new wearable technology and artificial intelligence, researchers are better able to track motion and monitor the progression of movement disorders.

Source: Imperial College London.

A multi-disciplinary team of researchers has developed a way to monitor the progression of movement disorders using motion capture technology and AI.

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New York Senior Rabbi Josh Franklin, of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, surprised his congregation earlier this week by delivering a sermon written entirely by Artificial Intelligence (AI.)

The rabbi used the ChatGPT chatbot, a free-to-access AI program launched in November of last year.

After reading the AI-written piece, Rabbi Franklin asked his congregation to guess who had written the sermon. In response, the congregation incorrectly guessed that Rabbi Jonathan Sacks had written the piece.

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It seems Google is feeling the heat from OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The artificial intelligence-powered chatbot has taken the tech world by storm over the last couple months, as it can provide users with information they’re looking for in an easy-to-understand format. Google sees ChatGPT as a threat to its search business and has shifted plans accordingly over the last several weeks, according to The New York Times.

The report claims CEO Sundar Pichai has declared a “code red” and accelerated AI development. Google is reportedly preparing to show off at least 20 AI-powered products and a chatbot for its search engine this year, with at least some set to debut at its I/O conference in May.

According to a slide deck viewed by the Times, among the AI projects Google is working on are an image generation tool, an upgraded version of AI Test Kitchen (an app used to test prototypes), a TikTok-style green screen mode for YouTube and a tool that can generate videos to summarize other clips. Also in the pipeline are a feature titled Shopping Try-on (perhaps akin to one Amazon has been developing), a wallpaper creator for Pixel phones and AI-driven tools that could make it easier for developers to create Android apps.

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