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Scientists have been trying to find ways to predict an epileptic seizure for decades, with little success. They are almost always unpredictable. The best techniques we have now — machine learning and self-awareness — give us only minutes notice ahead of the seizure.

Now, for the first time, a study has shown that brain activity could be used to forecast the onset of epileptic seizures several days in advance.

A New Hope

A team of researchers looked into data from brain implants designed to monitor and prevent seizures. Buried in the data, they found patterns of brain activity that predicted seizure risk a day or more in advance. The researchers say this could be used to create an epileptic seizure forecasting tool — giving new hope to patients with epilepsy.

With the help of robotics specialists, we can separate the truth from the hype.

Elon Musk has announced his plans for a new Tesla humanoid robot that will excel at “mundane tasks,” but he’s making some common robotics mistakes with his grand plans.

What does the future of a Tesla robot look like? With the help of a couple of robotics specialists, we can separate the truth from the hype in Musk’s claims.

What can we expect from a true humanoid robot?

In social deduction games, groups of players attempt to decipher each others’ hidden roles. They need to observe the other players’ actions to deduce their roles while still hiding their roles. Essentially, to succeed in the game, the player needs to learn about the other agent through various sources while remaining anonymous. This needs players to cooperatively work against the other team.

Hidden Agenda

DeepMind and Harvard’s Hidden Agenda is a social deduction game to train multiple players in two fundamental groups. These teams are ‘Crewmates’ and ‘Imposters’. Crewmates have a numerical advantage with the goal to refuel their ship using energy cells scattered around, and Imposters have an informational advantage with the goal of halting the Crewmates. This means the Crewmates are unaware of the roles of the other players, but the Imposers have this knowledge. An environment is created where each player is randomly assigned a role and colour for their avatar at the start of each episode and initialised to a location on the game map.

Circa 2019


On February 28, at “New National Theater” in Tokyo, Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro of Osaka University announced the new model of the android “Alter” 「オルタ3」. The robot performed a fragment of the “Scary Beauty” android opera by Keiichiro Shibuya.

Alter 3 is part of a new Artificial Life (Alife) research project. The goal is to explore the future of human communication, and new forms of entertainment. Mixi Corporation, Tokyo National University, Osaka University, and Warner Music Japan Co. Ltd are behind the project.

The more the enterprise transitions from a mere digital organization to a fully intelligent one, the more data executives will come to realize that traditional monitoring and management of complex systems and processes is not enough.

What’s needed is a new, more expansive form of oversight – which lately has come to be known as “data observability.”

The distinction between observability and monitoring is subtle but significant. As VentureBeat writer John Paul Titlow explained in a recent piece, monitoring allows technicians to view past and current data environments according to predefined metrics or logs. Observability, on the other hand, provides insight into why systems are changing over time, and may detect conditions that have not previously been considered. In short, monitoring tells you what is happening, while observability tells you why it’s happening.

Originally published on Towards AI the World’s Leading AI and Technology News and Media Company. If you are building an AI-related product or service, we invite you to consider becoming an AI sponsor. At Towards AI, we help scale AI and technology startups. Let us help you unleash your technology to the masses.

Is GPT-3 available for free? The answer is Yes, and it is now available to all.

OpenAI recently ann ounced the expansion of its cloud-based OpenAI API service, which allows developers to create apps based on the research group’s powerful GPT-3 artificial intelligence model. Previously, developers had to sign up for a waitlist, and there was limited capacity.

“Data science is also absolutely key to our research at the Quadram Institute into the gut microbiome and its influence on human health, all of which is mediated by the complex interactions of micro-organisms, the food we eat, and the environment of the gastro-intestinal tract itself.”

E[datascientist] leverages AI and network science in order to surface scientific connections and explore multi-causal relationships, for example to better understand the microbiome. The platform also improves the digitisation, and reduces the siloisation, of legacy scientific R&D systems, which can be used in tandem with datasets from publicly available databases, all in a standardised format. In this way e[datascientist] supports the entire R&D workflow, accelerating the generation of novel insights and ultimately reducing time to market.

Eagle Genomics plans to continue to be engaged in discussions with a range of other organisations to ensure that its platform continues to become a burgeoning global life sciences knowledge discovery hub.

Is artificial superintelligence (ASI) imminent? Adam Ford will assess the evidence and ethical importance of artificial intelligence; its opportunities and risks. Drawing on the history of progress in AI and how today it surpasses peak human capability in some domains, he will present forecasts about further progress.

“Progress in AI will likely be explosive; even more significant than both the agricultural and industrial revolutions” — Adam will explore the notion of intelligence and what aspects are missing in AI now and how ‘understanding’ arises in biological intelligence and how it could be realised in AI over the next decade or two. He will conclude with takes on ideal AI outcomes and some recommendations for increasing the likelihood of achieving them.

BIO: Adam Ford (Masters of IT at RMIT) is an IEET Affiliate Scholar, a futurologist and works as a data/information architect, a data analyst and data engineer. He co-organised a variety of conferences in Australia, USA and China. Adam also convenes the global effort of ‘Future Day’ seeking to ritualize focus on the future to a specific day. He is a grass roots journalist, having interviewed many experts on the future, and is currently working on a documentary project focusing on preparing for the future of artificial intelligence.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have reported a potentially significant advance with the development of microdrones, equipped with wings powered by artificial muscles in the form of elastomer-based actuators.

The development, claims MIT, could pave the way for futuristic applications, for example, swarms of the insect-sized robots that pollinate fields of crops or search for survivors buried in collapsed buildings.

Key to the innovation is a novel fabrication technique that builds actuators with a hugely extended component lifespan and increases the robot’s performance and payload compared to existing models.