The effective operation of robots from a distance, also known as teleoperation, could allow humans to complete a vast range of manual tasks remotely, including risky and complex procedures. Yet teleoperation could also be used to compile datasets of human motions, which could help to train humanoid robots on new tasks.
Anthropic’s new AI chatbot Claude 3 Opus has already made headlines for its bizarre behavior, like claiming to fear death.
Now, Ars Technica reports, a prompt engineer at the Google-backed company claims that they’ve seen evidence that Claude 3 is self-aware, as it seemingly detected that it was being subjected to a test. Many experts are skeptical, however, further underscoring the controversy of ascribing humanlike characteristics to AI models.
“It did something I have never seen before from an LLM,” the prompt engineer, Alex Albert, posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Posted in biotech/medical, quantum physics, robotics/AI
When looking into the future, there are a number of interesting trends, such as quantum computing, which may save lots of energy, or space travel, which is here to stay and will become more affordable. But what I find interesting is the development of computation with biological cells, and the ability to build computing systems, and robots, not from hard metals but from soft biological matter — mostly cells.
Look around you in “nature”- almost everything you see, all plants and animals are built from a single type of structure, a biological cell. They are all alike. Sure, cells vary as they adapt to their environments, but a cellular organism has the same building plan as any other cell. There’s the cell membrane, there is a nucleus, there are organelles and cytoplasm. There is DNA, RNA, amino acids to build proteins and peptides, lipids and sugars. Put together in predictable ways.
We are learning to use these systems to build anything we want from them. We focus on this because our bodies are made from cells, and we want to remain healthy. That is a strong incentive to study these systems. The convergence will happen when we relegate metal-based computing to the sidelines and focus on biological computing as our main systems. These biological cell systems are, incidentally, quantum computing systems. So the trends I mention — here on earth will converge, and only space travel will require the opposite — the need to shield biological computing from conditions in space.
Posted in robotics/AI
An automated counterflow centrifugation–based technology outperforms manual peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) isolation.
Apple is exploring various “personal robotics” projects in an effort to create its “next big thing,” according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Amazon’s Astro robot
One of these projects is described as a “mobile robot” that would “follow users around their homes,” while another is said to be an “advanced table-top home device that uses robotics to move a display around”:
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A team of Korean researchers has developed a new memory device that can be used to replace existing memory or be used in implementing neuromorphic computing for next-generation artificial intelligence hardware for its low processing costs and its ultra-low–power consumption.
Harvard researchers say they have developed a programmable metafluid they are calling an ‘intelligent liquid’ that contains tunable springiness, adjustable optical properties, variable viscosity, and even the seemingly magical ability to shift between a Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid.
The team’s exact formula is still a secret as they explore potential commercial applications. However, the researchers believe their intelligent liquid could be used in anything from programmable robots to intelligent shock absorbers or even optical devices that can shift between transparent and opaque states.
“We are just scratching the surface of what is possible with this new class of fluid,” said Adel Djellouli, a Research Associate in Materials Science and Mechanical Engineering at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the first author of the paper. “With this one platform, you could do so many different things in so many different fields.”
In a new Nature study, Columbia Engineering researchers have built a photonic chip that is able to produce high-quality, ultra-low-noise microwave signals using only a single laser. The compact device—a chip so small, it could fit on a sharp pencil point—results in the lowest microwave noise ever observed in an integrated photonics platform.
The achievement provides a promising pathway towards small-footprint ultra-low-noise microwave generation for applications such as high-speed communication, atomic clocks, and autonomous vehicles.
The challenge Electronic devices for global navigation, wireless communications, radar, and precision timing need stable microwave sources to serve as clocks and information carriers. A key aspect to increasing the performance of these devices is reducing the noise, or random fluctuations in phase, that is present on the microwave.
