Lifeboat Foundation

It turns out robots have a ‘U-shaped’ effect on profits.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have found that investment in robots can cause a firm’s profits to first decline before rising again, resulting in a so-called ‘U-shaped’ effect on profits.

This is according to a report by TechXplore published on Thursday.

Continue reading “Adopting robots will cause a business’s profits to decline at first” »

The machines have been tested and found more than competent.

China will soon allow intelligent robotic systems and platforms to provide maintenance services for the nation’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), dubbed as the ‘China Sky Eye’ and known as the world’s largest single-dish radio telescope, the China Media Group (CMG)

The news was reported by CGTN after the robotic systems passed several tests ensuring they were ready for this lofty task.

A new robotic headgear allows mice to move freely while being attached to heavy and cumbersome brain-recording machinery, allowing scientists to track their brain activity in motion, according to a new report by Spectrum published on Thursday. The development could have major implications in neuropathy and other sciences of the brain.

Under normal circumstances, researchers analyze brain activity in an awake mouse by fixing the animal’s head in a stiff unmovable position beneath a microscope. This however severely limits the mouse’s range of motion and therefore does not produce accurate results.

As Ted Abel, chair of neuroscience and pharmacology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who was not involved in the study, explained to Spectrum, this approach is not conducive to usable outcomes.

Automation is taking hold at more companies, and businesses building the robots are looking for workers.

Automation is many things, but apparently, it is not gender-neutral.

We could soon see AI-powered robots taking over several jobs in Canadian grocery stores. Richard Southern with how a labour strike in one part of the country could have nationwide implications.

Computational imaging holds the promise of revolutionizing optical imaging with its wide field of view and high-resolution capabilities. Through the joint reconstruction of amplitude and phase — a technique known as “coherent imaging or holographic imaging” — the throughput of an optical system can expand to billions of optically resolvable spots. This breakthrough empowers researchers to gain crucial insights into cellular and molecular structures, making a significant impact on biomedical research.

Despite the potential, existing large-scale coherent imaging techniques face challenges hindering their widespread clinical use. Many of these techniques require multiple scanning or modulation processes, resulting in long data collection times to achieve a high resolution and signal-to-noise ratio. This slows down imaging and limits its feasibility in clinical settings due to tradeoffs between speed, resolution, and quality.

The crushing demand for AI has also revealed the limits of the global supply chain for powerful chips used to develop and field AI models.

The continuing chip crunch has affected businesses large and small, including some of the AI industry’s leading platforms and may not meaningfully improve for at least a year or more, according to industry analysts.

The latest sign of a potentially extended shortage in AI chips came in Microsoft’s annual report recently. The report identifies, for the first time, the availability of graphics processing units (GPUs) as a possible risk factor for investors.

On Wednesday, Meta announced it is open-sourcing AudioCraft, a suite of generative AI tools for creating music and audio from text prompts. With the tools, content creators can input simple text descriptions to generate complex audio landscapes, compose melodies, or even simulate entire virtual orchestras.

AudioCraft consists of three core components: AudioGen, a tool for generating various audio effects and soundscapes; MusicGen, which can create musical compositions and melodies from descriptions; and EnCodec, a neural network-based audio compression codec.