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Category: robotics/AI – Page 171

Mercor, An Artificial Intelligence Recruiting Startup Founded By 21-Year-Olds, Raises $100 Million At $2 Billion Valuation

In today’s AI news, Mercor, the AI recruiting startup founded by three 21-year-old Thiel Fellows, has raised $100 million in a Series B round, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Menlo Park-based Felicis led the round, valuing Mercor at $2 billion — eight times its previous valuation. Existing investors Benchmark and General Catalyst, as well as DST Global and Menlo Ventures participated.

In other advancements, GPT-4.5 could arrive as soon as next week, as Microsoft gets ready to host OpenAI’s latest artificial intelligence models.

Microsoft engineers are currently readying server capacity for OpenAI’s upcoming GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 models. While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged recently that GPT-4.5 will launch within a matter of weeks.

Then, OpenAI’s astounding growth rate potential is luring possible investors as questions loom over whether the startup will go public. “In terms of a multiple to pay for stock like ours, there’s incredible interest at the moment,” finance chief Sarah Friar told CNBC’s David Faber on Thursday. Its future growth potential has also enabled OpenAI to “achieve valuations that are on par with the growth rate of the scale” it is reaching.

S internal testing, it could mark a meaningful step forward for an all-purpose multimodal AI that can operate interactively in both real and digital spaces. + In videos, Figure is introducing Helix, a generalist Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model that unifies perception, language understanding, and learned control to overcome multiple longstanding challenges in robotics. A detailed report on Helix can be found in text accompanying the video.

Then, in this episode of Moonshots Peter Diamandis is joined by a panel of leaders in the session Transforming Business with AI: Opportunity or Overload? at Miami FII. Panelists include: Prem Akkaraju, CEO, Stability AI Ramin Hasani, Co-Founder & CEO, Liquid AI Jack Hidary, CEO, SandboxAQ Jim Keller, CEO, Tenstorrent Alexander Sukharevsky, Senior Partner & Managing Partner, QuantumBlack, AI, McKinsey & Company.

Meanwhile, AI is evolving into a mysterious new form of intelligence — powerful yet flawed, capable of remarkable feats but still far from human-like reasoning and efficiency. To truly understand it and unlock its potential, we need a new science of intelligence that combines neuroscience, AI and physics, says neuroscientist and Stanford professor Surya Ganguli.

Continue reading “Mercor, An Artificial Intelligence Recruiting Startup Founded By 21-Year-Olds, Raises 0 Million At Billion Valuation” | >

First two-way adaptive brain-computer interface enhances communication efficiency

Joint research demonstrating the ability to readout superconducting qubits with an optical transducer was published in Nature Physics.

Quantum computing has the potential to drive transformative breakthroughs in fields such as advanced material design, artificial intelligence, and drug discovery. Of the quantum computing modalities, superconducting qubits are a leading platform towards realizing a practical quantum computer given their fast gate speeds and ability to leverage existing semiconductor industry manufacturing techniques.

However, fault-tolerant quantum computing will likely require 10,000 to a million physical qubits. The sheer amount of wiring, amplifiers and microwave components required to operate such large numbers of qubits far exceeds the capacity of modern-day dilution refrigerators, a core component of a superconducting quantum computing system, in terms of both space and passive heat load.

The World’s First Faceless, Synthetic ‘Human’ Is Straight-Up Nightmare Fuel

We knew this day would come. For years now, scientists have been trying to make Westworld a reality with their advances in android robots.

From lab-grown muscle tissue to robots with bones, ligaments and tendons, android robots have rapidly been getting more and more lifelike.

Now, a company named Clone Robotics has created something they are calling the Protoclone – a “faceless, anatomically accurate, synthetic human with over 200 degrees of freedom, over 1,000 Myofibers, and over 200 sensors.” Sound terrifying? Just wait until you see video of it twitching and spasming its way into action.

Introducing Helix

Simply outstanding progress with humanoid bots. I really like Figure — they seem to be making really good progress.

We’re introducing Helix, a generalist Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model that unifies perception, language understanding, and learned control to overcome multiple longstanding challenges in robotics.

Here’s a detailed report on Helix: https://www.figure.ai/news/helix

Incyte, Genesis Therapeutics Partner on AI-Based Small Molecule Collaboration

Incyte will partner with Genesis Therapeutics to research, discover, and develop small molecule treatments through a collaboration that could generate at least up to $620 million for Genesis, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based drug developer.

The companies have agreed to discover and optimize at least two initial small molecule programs through Genesis’s AI platform, Genesis Exploration of Molecular Space (GEMS). GEMS is designed to generate and optimize molecules for complex targets by integrating proprietary AI methods that include language models, diffusion models, and physical machine learning (ML) simulations.

Incyte has been granted exclusive rights for potential clinical development and commercialization of the products to be developed through the collaboration.

Metropolis: 1927 Depiction of the Year 2026

The pioneering scifi film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang in 1927, depicts a dystopian future in 2026 with society sharply divided between wealthy elitists and the working poor. Gustav Fröhlich is Freder, the wealthy son of city ruler who discovers the grim conditions of the workers when he ventures into the city’s depths. After meeting Maria and her robotic double, both played by Brigitte Helm, he becomes determined to bridge the social divide. The story unfolds with dramatic visuals of towering skyscrapers and massive factories. The world of Metropolis is full of technological wonder and social turmoil. The film’s depiction of large-scale automation and robotics aligns with current trends in manufacturing, though fully sentient robots are unlikely to materialize by 2026. #silentfilm #silentfilms #manufacturing #industry40 #metropolis #fritzlang #sciencefiction #scifi #movies #filmanalysis #robotics #robots #industrialautomation …

Designing Resilient Soft Robots Using Controlled Failure Mechanisms

How can programmed failure protocols help improve sheet-based fluidic devices, the latter of which have become a cornerstone in enhancing soft robotics worldwide? This is what a recent study published in Cell Reports Physical Science hopes to address as an international team of researchers have developed a method for overcoming common failures of sheet-based systems, specifically due to their lightweight and flexible characteristics. This study has the potential to help engineers develop more efficient sheet-based devices, resulting in improved soft robotics designs.

For the study, the researchers examined how pressure changes could damage heat-sealable textiles that are used in sheet-based devices. Once they determined specific failure thresholds, the team incorporated programmed failures into the design, enabling the device to determine specific failure points and prevent further damage.

“Put simply, we are making soft, flexible machines smarter by designing their internal components to fail intentionally in a well-understood manner,” said Dr. Daniel J. Preston, who is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Rice University and a co-author on the study. “In doing so, the resulting systems can recover from pressure surges and even complete multiple tasks using a single control input.” Going forward, the team hopes their research will lead to improved sheet-based fluidic systems, which, as noted, have become a cornerstone of soft robotics.