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Category: robotics/AI – Page 36
To study how chips really work, MIT researchers built their own operating system
When security researchers want to understand what a modern processor is really doing with the kind of detail that determines whether attacks like Spectre and Meltdown are possible, they usually run their experiments on top of an operating system that was never built for the job. They open up macOS or Linux, patch the kernel by hand, and hope the modifications hold. The approach is unstable, hard to reproduce, and on Apple’s platforms, slated for deprecation.
A team at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) decided to build something different. Fractal, a new operating system kernel written from the ground up, treats the hardware itself as the object of study. Its first major use, a deep look at the branch predictors (CPU’s way of guessing what code to run next before it knows for certain), so it doesn’t have to waste time waiting to find out) inside Apple’s M1 processor, has already turned up findings that prior work missed, including the first evidence that a class of speculative attack known as “Phantom” affects Apple Silicon.
“We’re using hardware in ways it wasn’t designed for,” says Joseph Ravichandran, the MIT PhD student who led the project. “It’s not even obvious that this is a possible thing you could do with the hardware. But we found a way to pull all these different primitives off. It’s like a microscope. If you’ve got a hand magnifying glass, you can see a little bit. But if you had an electron microscope, now we’re really talking. That’s what Fractal is. The electron microscope of operating systems.”
The Cognitive Scientist Who Says You Don’t Exist | Joscha Bach
The AI theorist who thinks consciousness is a software agent — and that God, AGI, and the apocalypse are all pointing at the same thing.
What you call \.
Is materialism holding science back? | Adam Frank, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Michael Levin
Lisa Feldman Barrett, Michael Levin and Adam Frank discuss whether science should abandon its materialist framework.
Could a different metaphysics help science to progress further?
With a free trial, you can watch the full debate NOW at https://iai.tv/video/science-beyond-t… centuries, we’ve assumed that science has banished the transcendent and established that reality is entirely physical. But critics argue there are signs that a rigorous materialism might be holding science back. Increasingly, “emergence” is used to account for everything from consciousness to spacetime – a convenient placeholder for what materialist science may be unable to explain. Physicists like Heisenberg and Hawking concluded that science gives us models of reality, rather than final descriptions of its true nature, while there are scientists working in everything from biology to computer science who suggest that dualism is a productive metaphysical framework for their research. Materialism may have enabled science to reach beyond the dogmas of religion, but there are now those who are restlessly probing the limits of materialism itself. Does science need to assume a materialist account of the world or might this have fundamental limitations? Could a different metaphysics help science make progress on key questions, from the origin of life to the mysteries of quantum gravity? Or would abandoning materialism risk returning us to the myths of superstition and religion? #science #materialism #metaphysics Lisa Feldman Barrett is among the most cited scientists in the world for her research on the psychology and neuroscience of emotions. Adam Frank is an astrophysicist who explores the origins of stars, civilizations and consciousness, and is a leading figure in astrobiology and the search for alien life. Michael Levin is a synthetic biologist whose pioneering work in regenerative biology involves building biological robots to probe the nature of life, intelligence and evolution. Güneş Taylor hosts. The Institute of Art and Ideas features videos and articles from cutting edge thinkers discussing the ideas that are shaping the world, from metaphysics to string theory, technology to democracy, aesthetics to genetics. Subscribe today! https://iai.tv/subscribe?utm_source=Y… 0:00 Intro 1:34 Science cannot reveal objective reality 5:28 — History shows that materialism is one of many philosophies of science 8:59 There are some mathematical facts which are discovered, not chosen 12:14 Does materialism prevent mythical and superstitious views of reality? 14:56 There is no 3rd person view of the universe 18:05 Is science truly reproducible? For debates and talks: https://iai.tv For articles: https://iai.tv/articles For courses: https://iai.tv/iai-academy/courses.
For centuries, we’ve assumed that science has banished the transcendent and established that reality is entirely physical. But critics argue there are signs that a rigorous materialism might be holding science back. Increasingly, “emergence” is used to account for everything from consciousness to spacetime – a convenient placeholder for what materialist science may be unable to explain. Physicists like Heisenberg and Hawking concluded that science gives us models of reality, rather than final descriptions of its true nature, while there are scientists working in everything from biology to computer science who suggest that dualism is a productive metaphysical framework for their research. Materialism may have enabled science to reach beyond the dogmas of religion, but there are now those who are restlessly probing the limits of materialism itself.
Does science need to assume a materialist account of the world or might this have fundamental limitations? Could a different metaphysics help science make progress on key questions, from the origin of life to the mysteries of quantum gravity? Or would abandoning materialism risk returning us to the myths of superstition and religion?
#science #materialism #metaphysics.
Stelarc on Transhumanism: We Are in a Time of Circulating Flesh!
“We are in a time of circulating flesh.”
Stelarc said that to me 13 years ago. In 2026, it reads less like art criticism and more like a status report.
He had grown an ear on his arm. He had hung himself from hooks 25 times. He had let strangers on the internet choreograph his muscles through electrical stimulation, his body remote-controlled across continents.
Most people called it spectacle. I think it was inquiry.
Because long before deepfakes, before voice cloning, before AI agents wearing our faces, was already asking the question we now cannot avoid:
Where does the body end and the network begin?
Say Goodbye to the Generative AI Buffet Line
Remember the early days of AI when a single monthly fee seemed like the ultimate golden ticket? It felt like having a limitless digital brain at our fingertips—until the dreaded usage limit pop-up appeared right in the middle of a critical project. Suddenly, that all-access pass felt more like a restrictive tether, leaving many of us frustrated by hidden caps and invisible throttles just when we needed peak performance the most.
It turns out, we were looking at AI pricing all wrong. Instead of a standard software subscription, artificial intelligence is much more like a utility—a highly measurable resource that actually makes more sense on a pay-as-you-go basis. Imagine a single, centralized workspace where you can seamlessly switch between the biggest powerhouse models on the market for your heavy-duty coding or reasoning, and then route simple summaries to lightning-fast, budget-friendly models.
No more juggling five different logins, and no more getting cut off; just total transparency and control over exactly what you spend.
We are finally entering an era where users hold the reins, and the chaotic days of unpredictable quotas are fading fast. I just published a new piece diving deep into how this shift toward unified, ledger-based AI platforms is completely changing the game for creators, developers, and everyday users alike.
Check out the full article at the link below to explore how this new approach works and why it is exactly the upgrade we have all been waiting for!
Remember late 2022 and early 2023? In tech years, it feels like a lifetime ago. That was when generative AI first exploded onto the scene, and the pricing was brilliantly, beautifully simple. You signed up for a basic flat subscription—usually around $20 a month—and you had the magic of the universe at your fingertips. If you were an enterprise team, maybe you stepped up to a specialized tier. But overall, the premise was the same.
Alien AI And The Von Neumann Data Collector
An exploration of human AI versus alien AI and the idea of a galaxy wide data collection network operating at light speed to transfer information on the biology within it.
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US federal funds awarded to spur SMR deployment
In October 2024, the US Department of Energy (DOE) — under the Joe Biden administration — opened applications for funding to support the initial domestic deployment of Generation III+ small modular reactor (SMR) technologies, with up to USD800 million to go to two “first-mover” teams, with an additional USD100 million to address so-called gaps that have hindered plant deployments. According to the solicitation documentation, a Gen III+ SMR is defined as a nuclear fission reactor that uses light water as a coolant and low-enriched uranium fuel, with a single-unit net electrical power output of 50–350 MWe, that maximises factory fabrication approaches, and the same or improved safety, security, and environmental benefits compared with current large nuclear power plant designs.
The solicitation was re-issued by the DOE in March 2025 to better align with President Donald Trump’s agenda on unleashing American energy and AI dominance.
In December last year, the DOE selected Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and Holtec Government Services to each receive USD400 million in federal cost-shared funding to support early deployments of advanced light-water small modular reactors in the USA. TVA’s application was selected for funding to accelerate the deployment of a GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 at its Clinch River site in East Tennessee. Holtec plans to deploy two SMR-300 reactors — named Pioneer 1 and 2 — at the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station site in Michigan.
Physics-based weather models more accurate than AI at predicting extreme weather
Weather forecasting is another aspect of modern life that artificial intelligence is transforming. Models like GraphCast, Pangu-Weather, and Fuxi are already better than traditional physics-based climate models at predicting some daily weather conditions. However, they are far from perfect. A new study published in the journal Science Advances reports that AI often fails to predict record-breaking extreme weather events.
Thanks to our changing climate, extremes such as record heat waves and windstorms are becoming more frequent. Accurate warnings are vital to help protect lives, property, and infrastructure. However, the unprecedented nature of these events poses a problem for AI.
To understand why, scientists pitted leading AI models against HRES (High Resolution Forecast), considered one of the world’s leading physics-based weather prediction systems. They first built a large database of record-breaking heat, cold, and wind events from 2018 and 2020. The researchers then checked the forecasts that HRES and the AI models had already made for those years to see which system got closest to the real-world outcomes.