Microsoft’s new MDASH AI system found 16 Windows vulnerabilities fixed in this month’s Patch Tuesday, including 2 RCE flaws in IKEv2 and TCP/IP.
Category: robotics/AI – Page 4
AI Can Now Make Copies of Itself—And Scientists Are in Panic Mode!
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These computer voices sound human enough to mislead, but one layer of speech still breaks the illusion
We are surrounded by computer-generated voices these days, from navigation systems and voice assistants to automated announcements. But how human do these voices actually sound? A recent study by the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, published in the journal Speech Communication, shows that our perception is affected by three things: how something is said, what is being said, and whether we understand the language.
In two consecutive experiments, the researchers investigated how people perceive the difference between real and synthetic voices. They created 16 short German sentences, such as: “The boy gave his father a hat.” The team then manipulated the sentences in three different ways by changing the word order, replacing words with similar-sounding pseudowords, and combining both changes. This resulted in four versions of each sentence. All versions were recorded by eight human speakers and eight computer-generated text-to-speech (TTS) voices.
In the first experiment, 40 German-speaking participants rated how human the voices sounded. Overall, the computer-generated voices were perceived as less human than the human voices. An analysis of the voices’ acoustic characteristics revealed objectively measurable differences in sound between human and TTS-generated voices.
Helix-02 humanoid robot handles full 8-hour factory work shifts
Figure AI says its humanoid robots can now run full eight-hour shifts autonomously using its Helix-02 AI system, marking one of the company’s strongest claims yet around human-scale robotic labor in real-world environments.
In a post on X, the California-based robotics startup wrote: “Watch a team of humanoid robots running a full 8-hr shift at human performance levels. This is fully autonomous running Helix-02.”
Engineered brain ‘bypass’ that rewires specific circuits could boost resilience to stress
Broken or disrupted circuits in the brain contribute to many neurological disorders. A new custom-built biological “wire” developed at Duke University School of Medicine points the way toward a new treatment approach—bypassing broken brain connections, rather than relying on long-term medication or external stimulation.
Researchers led by Kafui Dzirasa, MD, Ph.D., have developed a technology called LinCx that allows scientists to create new electrical connections between carefully chosen neurons. Unlike existing tools that often influence many cells at once, this approach enables selective, long-lasting changes in how defined brain circuits function. The study is published in Nature.
“By introducing a way to plug in new electrical connections with cellular-level precision, our study marks a major step forward in the ability to edit brain circuitry and understand how neural networks give rise to behavior,” said Dzirasa, the A. Eugene and Marie Washington Presidential Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Behavioral Medicine & Neurosciences.
AI is the Great Filter
Artificial intelligence is now finding planets human astronomers missed and scanning for alien signals 600 times faster than ever before.
Yet the more powerful our search tools become, the louder the silence from the cosmos grows.
This video explores why the same technology helping us look for extraterrestrial life may also explain why we cannot find any.
We examine the Great Filter hypothesis, the mathematics of self-replicating probes, and the growing consensus that any aliens out there would be machines, not biological beings.
From Matrioshka brains to the aestivation hypothesis to the Dark Forest, the universe may be hiding minds we cannot recognise, or warning us about a test every civilisation faces.
Chapters.
00:00 — Intro.