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Category: robotics/AI – Page 410

Talk about the call coming from inside the house!

In an interview with The Financial Times, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassibis likened the frothiness shrouding the AI gold rush to that of the crypto industry’s high-dollar funding race, saying that the many billions being funneled into AI companies and projects brings a “bunch of hype and maybe some grifting and some other things that you see in other hyped-up areas, crypto or whatever.”

“Some of that has now spilled over into AI,” the CEO added, “which I think is a bit unfortunate.”

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A Boston Dynamic’s SPOT robotic dog has officially become the first of its kind to become a police dog hero. The robodog in question, a Massachusetts State Police SPOT unit, was shot in the line of duty.

According to the police department, the robodog’s actions may have saved human lives. Called “Roscoe,” the robot dog was involved in a police action to deal with a person barricaded in their home.

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Tesla seems to be making some serious headway with its Full Self-Driving (FSD) suite with the release of V12.3. But while FSD is currently the company’s flagship advanced driver-assist system, basic Autopilot still plays a huge role in Tesla’s electric cars. With this in mind, Tesla seems to be doubling down on educating drivers about the proper use of basic Autopilot, as well as the system’s limitations.

As could be seen in the company’s Tesla Tutorials channel on YouTube, the company has released a thorough tutorial focused on basic Autopilot’s features and proper use. The video is over four minutes long, and all throughout its duration, Tesla highlighted that the features of basic Autopilot does not make vehicles autonomous. The company also emphasized that basic Autopilot is designed to work with a fully attentive driver.

The video fully discussed the capabilities and limitations of basic Autopilot’s two main features, Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) and Autosteer (Beta). The Tesla Tutorial video discussed how to engage both features, how to set their specific parameters, and how they are disengaged. Overall, it is quite encouraging to see Tesla publishing a tutorial that’s purely focused on basic Autopilot.

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A recently tenured faculty member in MIT’s departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, Kim has made numerous discoveries about the nanostructure of materials and is funneling them directly into the advancement of next-generation electronics.

His research aims to push electronics past the inherent limits of silicon — a material that has reliably powered transistors and most other electronic elements but is reaching a performance limit as more computing power is packed into ever smaller devices.

Today, Kim and his students at MIT are exploring materials, devices, and systems that could take over where silicon leaves off. Kim is applying his insights to design next-generation devices, including low-power, high-performance transistors and memory devices, artificial intelligence chips, ultra-high-definition micro-LED displays, and flexible electronic “skin.” Ultimately, he envisions such beyond-silicon devices could be built into supercomputers small enough to fit in your pocket.

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Salk scientists unveil RNA capabilities that enable Darwinian evolution at a molecular scale, and bring researchers closer to producing autonomous RNA life in the laboratory.

Charles Darwin described evolution as “descent with modification.” Genetic information in the form of DNA sequences is copied and passed down from one generation to the next. But this process must also be somewhat flexible, allowing slight variations of genes to arise over time and introduce new traits into the population.

But how did all of this begin? In the origins of life, long before cells and proteins and DNA, could a similar sort of evolution have taken place on a simpler scale? Scientists in the 1960s, including Salk Fellow Leslie Orgel, proposed that life began with the “RNA World,” a hypothetical era in which small, stringy RNA molecules ruled the early Earth and established the dynamics of Darwinian evolution.

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