Within a tumultuous week of November 21 for OpenAI—a series of uncontrolled outcomes, each with its own significance—one would not have predicted the outcome that was to be the reinstatement of Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI, with a new board in tow —all in five days.
While it’s still unclear the official grounds of Sam Altman’s lack of transparency to the board, and the ultimate distrust that led to his ousting, what was apparent was Microsoft’s complete backing of Altman, and the ensuing lack of support for the original board and its decision. It now leaves everyone to question why a board that had control of the company was unable to effectively oust an executive given its members legitimate safety concerns? And, why was a structure that was put in place to mitigate the risk of unilateral control over artificial general intelligence usurped by an investor—the very entity the structure was designed to guard against?
The explosive growth of generative AI over the last year has been truly phenomenal. Kick-started by the public release of ChatGPT (was it really only a year ago?), it’s now everywhere. Keen to ride the wave, every app from Office to eBay has been adding generative capabilities, and growing numbers of us are finding uses for it in our everyday and professional lives.
Given its nature, it’s not surprising that content creators, in particular, have found it a powerful addition to their toolset. Marketing agencies, advertising creatives, news organizations and social media influencers have been among the most enthusiastic early adopters.
While it brings great opportunities for improving efficiency and automating manual, repetitive elements of creative work, it also throws up significant challenges. Issues around copyright, spam content, hallucination, the formulaic nature of algorithmic creation and bias all need to be considered by professionals planning on adopting it into their workflow.
OpenAI tender offer is on — allowing employees to sell shares, and they have until 1/5 to opt in.
OpenAI is sticking with a plan to let employees sell shares in the company through what’s known as a tender offer, and it’s giving would-be participants an extra month to decide whether to take part, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
OpenAI had been in talks to sell shares in a deal that would value the artificial intelligence pioneer at $86 billion, people with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg in October. But concerns it might not proceed as planned emerged earlier this month amid the turmoil that led to the firing — then quick re-hiring — of Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman.
WATCH: OpenAI will let employees sell shares through a tender offer.
Summary: Researchers developed ‘Anthrobots,’ microscopic biological robots made from human tracheal cells, demonstrating potential in healing and regenerative medicine.
These self-assembling multicellular robots, ranging from hair-width to pencil-point size, show remarkable healing effects, particularly in neuron growth across damaged areas in lab conditions.
Building on earlier Xenobot research, this study reveals that Anthrobots can be created from adult human cells without genetic modification, offering a new approach to patient-specific therapeutic tools.
In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Reuters’ reported earlier this week that Alibaba “cut a quantum computing laboratory and team from its research arm, donating both the lab and related experimental equipment to Zhejiang University.”
Alibaba was a relatively early entrant among giant e-commerce/cloud providers into quantum computing research, placing the effort in its Alibaba’s DAMO Academy research organization. There are reports it had invested on the order of $15 billion in the effort. According to the Reuters report, about 30 employees are being released with and effort under way to find positions for them at Zhejiang.
Rather than being tied to specific issues with the quantum research, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the quantum work was caught in the larger turmoil surrounding Alibaba and its ongoing reorganization. The company said its DAMO organization will deepen its work on AI and machining learning research which may be able to have a nearer-term impact on Alibaba’s business.
The researchers are excited by the potential of how cells cooperate and communicate in the body and how they can be reprogrammed to create new structures and functions.
With the help of Simon Garnier at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, the team characterized the different types of Anthrobots that were produced.
They observed that bots fell into a few discrete categories of shape and movement, ranging in size from 30 to 500 micrometers (from the thickness of a human hair to the point of a sharpened pencil), filling an important niche between nanotechnology and larger engineered devices.
Some were spherical and fully covered in cilia, and some were irregular or football-shaped with more patchy coverage of cilia or just covered with cilia on one side. They traveled in straight lines, moved in tight circles, combined those movements, or just sat around and wiggled.
Multifunctional computer chips have evolved to do more with integrated sensors, processors, memory and other specialized components. However, as chips have expanded, the time required to move information between functional components has also grown.
“Think of it like building a house,” said Sang-Hoon Bae, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. “You build out laterally and up vertically to get more function, more room to do more specialized activities, but then you have to spend more time moving or communicating between rooms.”
To address this challenge, Bae and a team of international collaborators, including researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yonsei University, Inha University, Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Notre Dame, demonstrated monolithic 3D integration of layered 2D material into novel processing hardware for artificial intelligence (AI) computing.
Summary: Researchers used AI to select and generate images for studying brain’s visual processing. Functional MRI (fMRI) recorded heightened brain activity in response to these images, surpassing control images.
The approach enabled tuning visual models to individual responses, enhancing the study of brain’s reaction to visual stimuli. This method, offering an unbiased, systematic view of visual processing, could revolutionize neuroscience and therapeutic approaches.