Microsoft leads the AI GPU race, purchasing nearly 500k NVIDIA Hopper GPUs in 2024, while other tech giants also invest heavily in AI.

To assist humans with household chores and other everyday manual tasks, robots should be able to effectively manipulate objects that vary in composition, shape and size. The manipulation skills of robots have improved significantly over the past few years, in part due to the development of increasingly sophisticated cameras and tactile sensors.

Researchers at Columbia University have developed a new system that simultaneously captures both visual and tactile information. The tactile sensor they developed, introduced in a paper presented at the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) 2024 in Munich, could be integrated onto robotic grippers and hands, to further enhance the manipulation skills of robots with varying body structures.

The paper was published on the arXiv preprint server.

The cortex is filled with excitatory local synapses, but we know little about their role in brain function. New experimental tools, along with ideas from artificial intelligence, are poised to change that.

In a new study published in PNAS Nexus, scientists have demonstrated that artificial intelligence can predict different types of human intelligence by analyzing connections in the brain. Using neuroimaging data from hundreds of healthy adults, they found that predictions were most accurate for general intelligence, followed by crystallized intelligence, and then fluid intelligence. The findings shed light on the distributed and dynamic nature of intelligence, demonstrating that it arises from the global interplay of brain networks rather than isolated regions.

While prior research has established that intelligence is not localized to a single brain region but rather involves distributed networks, many studies have relied on traditional methods that focus on isolated brain features. These approaches have offered limited insights into how intelligence arises from the interplay of brain structure and function. By employing machine learning to analyze brain connectivity, the researchers aimed to overcome these limitations.

A key focus of the study was the distinction between three major forms of intelligence: general, fluid, and crystallized. General intelligence, often referred to as “g,” is a broad measure of cognitive ability that encompasses reasoning, problem-solving, and learning across a variety of contexts. It serves as an overarching factor, capturing shared elements between specific cognitive skills.