The music you listen to creates specific brain patterns that AI can use to generate that same sound. Here’s how.
Category: robotics/AI – Page 774
An intriguing new artificial intelligence project called “The Simulation” is exploring the possibility of autonomously creating new episodes of the hit animated series South Park. Researchers from Fable Studios have published a paper detailing their approach, which combines multi-agent simulations, large language models, and custom visual generation systems.
The goal is to develop an AI “showrunner” agent that can generate high-quality, customized story content aligned with the style, characters, and sensibilities of South Park. The system would allow users to essentially “program” their own new episodes by providing high-level prompts and guidance.
Key to the approach is the use of a simulated South Park world, populated by digital versions of characters like Cartman, Kyle, and Stan. This provides context and backstory to seed the creative process. Users can influence events and character behaviors within the simulation to set up storylines.
In the shade of a coconut palm, Chandrika tilts her smartphone screen to avoid the sun’s glare. It is early morning in Alahalli village in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, but the heat and humidity are rising fast. As Chandrika scrolls, she clicks on several audio clips in succession, demonstrating the simplicity of the app she recently started using. At each tap, the sound of her voice speaking her mother tongue emerges from the phone.
Before she started using this app, 30-year-old Chandrika (who, like many South Indians, uses the first letter of her father’s name, K., instead of a last name) had just 184 rupees ($2.25) in her bank account. But in return for around six hours of work spread over several days in late April, she received 2,570 rupees ($31.30). That’s roughly the same amount she makes in a month of working as a teacher at a distant school, after the cost of the three buses it takes her to get there and back. Unlike her day job, the app doesn’t make her wait until the end of the month for payment; money lands in her bank account in just a few hours. Just by reading text aloud in her native language of Kannada, spoken by around 60 million people mostly in central and southern India, Chandrika has used this app to earn an hourly wage of about $5, nearly 20 times the Indian minimum. And in a few days, more money will arrive—a 50% bonus, awarded once the voice clips are validated as accurate.
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Ever dreamed of creating your perfect partner? Now you can with AI, thanks to a new project from prominent VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
The Silicon Valley heavyweight has uploaded a tutorial to GitHub outlining how to create customizable “AI companions” with configurable personalities and backstories.
While looking into artificial intelligence “behavior,” researchers affirmed that yes, OpenAI’s GPT-4 appeared to be getting dumber.
Electronics that can bend, stretch and repair themselves could potentially work in applications ranging from tougher robots to smart clothes.
Our sneak peek into Google’s new robotics model, RT-2, which melds artificial intelligence technology with robots.
Eukaryotes organize cellular contents into membrane-bound organelles and membrane-less condensates, for example, protein aggregates. An unsolved question is why the ubiquitously distributed proteins throughout the cytosol give rise to spatially localized protein aggregates on the organellar surface, like mitochondria. We report that the mitochondrial import receptor Tom70 is involved in the localized condensation of protein aggregates in budding yeast and human cells. This is because misfolded cytosolic proteins do not autonomously aggregate in vivo; instead, they are recruited to the condensation sites initiated by Tom70’s substrates (nascent mitochondrial proteins) on the organellar membrane using multivalent hydrophobic interactions. Knocking out Tom70 partially impairs, while overexpressing Tom70 increases the formation and association between cytosolic protein aggregates and mitochondria. In addition, ectopic targeting Tom70 and its substrates to the vacuole surface is able to redirect the localized aggregation from mitochondria to the vacuolar surface. Although other redundant mechanisms may exist, this nascent mitochondrial proteins-based initiation of protein aggregation likely explains the localized condensation of otherwise ubiquitously distributed molecules on the mitochondria. Disrupting the mitochondrial association of aggregates impairs their asymmetric retention during mitosis and reduces the mitochondrial import of misfolded proteins, suggesting a proteostasis role of the organelle-condensate interactions.
Artificial intelligence has created job fears since its inception. Find out the likelihood that your career could be threatened by the new technology.
New research published in Telematics and Informatics provides evidence that the fulfillment of basic psychological needs through technology use is linked to changes in attitudes towards artificial intelligence over time. The findings indicate that self-determination, particularly feelings of competence and relatedness, plays a crucial role in shaping both negative and positive attitudes towards this emerging technology.
“We live in a world where artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more common and accessible than ever. People’s attitudes towards AI will most certainly have a huge effect on how fast and widely AI can spread in society and how the development of AI will turn out,” said study author Jenna Bergdahl, a researcher at the Emerging Technologies Lab at Tampere University.
“As a researcher, I work in the Emerging Technologies Lab at Tampere University, where we are particularly interested in the new technological forms of life that constantly challenge and transform human and post-human living. Two projects from the Emerging Technologies Lab, called UrbanAI and Self & Technology, are focusing especially on artificial intelligence in society and conducting cross-national social psychological research on human-technology interaction.”