Physician-scientist David Fajgenbaum was dying from a rare disease that didn’t have a cure — until he discovered a lifesaving drug that wasn’t originally intended for his condition. In an astonishing talk, he shares how his near-death experience led him to cofound the nonprofit Every Cure, which is using AI to uncover hidden treatments in existing medicines in order to save lives. (This ambitious idea is part of The Audacious Project, TED’s initiative to inspire and fund global change.)
Waymo’s partnership with Lyft in Nashville highlights advancements in robo-taxi safety, but the company faces significant challenges from Tesla’s established infrastructure and competitive landscape in the rapidly evolving autonomous vehicle market ## Questions to inspire discussion.
Tesla’s Robotaxi Advantage.
🚗 Q: How does Tesla’s manufacturing efficiency give it an edge in the robotaxi market? A: Tesla can build cars for one-third the price of competitors, with built-in Shepherds and the ability to manufacture at cost for FSD or robotaxi network use.
🌐 Q: What makes Tesla’s global expansion strategy unique? A: Tesla’s global approach and rapid execution allow it to go anywhere once FSD works, making it difficult for competitors to match its scale and speed.
🧠 Q: How significant is Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology? A: Tesla’s FSD is a gigantic advantage, with take rates tripling to double digits and expected to triple again, making it hard for others to compete.
Waymo’s Progress and Challenges.
We live in a time when robots can clean our homes, drive our vehicles, deactivate bombs, offer prosthetic limbs, help healthcare workers, read the news, entertain, teach, and many more. And now, there is a robot scientist that can work on behalf of humans 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Researchers at the University of Liverpool have built an intelligent “robot scientist” capable of moving around a laboratory and carrying out scientific experiments by itself. The first of its kind machine with humanoid dimensions are designed to work in a standard laboratory, using instruments much as a human researcher does. It can also make its own decisions about which chemistry experiments to perform next.
The robot scientist is 1.75-meter tall, weighs around 400 kg, and can roam around the laboratory, performing a wide range of different tasks. Unlike a human being, the robot has infinite patience, can think in 10 dimensions, and works for 21.5 hours each day, pausing only to recharge its battery for two hours. This will allow scientists to automate time-consuming and tedious research they wouldn’t otherwise tackle.
A ‘spherical’ AI model finds hidden themes in large collections of headlines and other short texts.
From tweets and chat messages to headlines and status updates, short bursts of text are everywhere. These snippets may be brief, but they are packed with the potential to reveal anything from emerging trends to business decisions or circulating misinformation.
While AI is becoming increasingly adept at extracting meaning from long-form text, it still struggles with these bite-sized ones.
Stanford Medicine researchers trained a large language model to read medical charts, looking for signs that kids with ADHD received the right follow-up care when using new medications.