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Category: robotics/AI – Page 797

Three things to know about the White House’s executive order on AI

The goal of the order, according to the White House, is to improve “AI safety and security.” It also includes a requirement that developers share safety test results for new AI models with the US government if the tests show that the technology could pose a risk to national security. This is a surprising move that invokes the Defense Production Act, typically used during times of national emergency.

The executive order advances the voluntary requirements for AI policy that the White House set back in August, though it lacks specifics on how the rules will be enforced. Executive orders are also vulnerable to being overturned at any time by a future president, and they lack the legitimacy of congressional legislation on AI, which looks unlikely in the short term.

“The Congress is deeply polarized and even dysfunctional to the extent that it is very unlikely to produce any meaningful AI legislation in the near future,” says Anu Bradford, a law professor at Columbia University who specializes in digital regulation.

IBM Research Shows Off New NorthPole Neural Accelerator

IBM Research recently disclosed details about its NorthPole neural accelerator. This isn’t the first time IBM has discussed the part; IBM researcher Dr. Dharmendra Modha gave a presentation last month at Hot Chips that delved into some of its technical underpinnings.

Let’s take a high-level look at what IBM announced.

IBM NorthPole is an advanced AI chip from IBM Research that integrates processing units and memory on a single chip, significantly improving energy efficiency and processing speed for artificial intelligence tasks. It is designed for low-precision operations, making it suitable for a wide range of AI applications while eliminating the need for bulky cooling systems.

Human arm dynamics can help robots assemble satellites

The researchers built a dynamic data acquisition platform to capture human arm motion during assembly tasks.

A team of researchers from the Beijing Institute of Technology has developed a new method to control robots that can assemble satellites in space. The technique is inspired by the human arm, which can adjust its damping to perform different tasks with precision and stability. The researchers published their findings in Cyborg and Bionic Systems.

Space operations with robots and challenges

Space operations require robots to interact with objects in complex and dynamic environments. However, traditional robot control methods have limitations in adapting to diverse and uncertain situations and are prone to vibration, which can cause assembly failure. To overcome these challenges, the researchers proposed a human-like variable admittance control method based on the variable damping characteristics of the human arm.

ChatGPT app revenue shows no signs of slowing, but some other AI apps top it

ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot from OpenAI, far outpaces all other AI chatbot apps on mobile devices in terms of downloads and is a market leader by revenue, as well. However, it’s surprisingly not the top AI app by revenue — several photo AI apps and even other AI chatbots are actually making more money than ChatGPT, despite the latter having become a household name for an AI chat experience.

Since its launch on mobile devices in May of this year, ChatGPT’s downloads and revenue have continued to grow. In its first month, when the app was available on iOS only, it topped 3.9 million downloads, which grew to 15.1 million by June, according to an analysis of the AI app market by Apptopia. Then, following a slight dip in July, ChatGPT grew again to top 23 million downloads as of September 2023.

In addition, ChatGPT’s usage on mobile devices has similarly grown from just over 1.34 million monthly active users in May to now 38.88 million as of September.

Joy Buolamwini: “We’re giving AI companies a free pass”

The pioneering AI researcher and activist shares her personal journey in a new book, and explains her concerns about today’s AI systems.

Joy Buolamwini, the renowned AI researcher and activist, appears on the Zoom screen from home in Boston, wearing her signature thick-rimmed glasses.

As an MIT grad, she seems genuinely interested in seeing old covers of MIT Technology Review that hang in our London office. An edition of the magazine from 1961 asks: “Will your son get into college?”

Will AI help Europe catch up with US tech titans like Google, Apple?

While European nations are ahead on dimensions like equality, social progress, and climate change redressal, they lack technological advancements in comparison to the United States. The European region, including the UK, still lacks the investment and culture necessary for a startup ecosystem prevalent in California’s Silicon Valley.

The Valley is a globally recognized hub for technology and innovation. Many of the world’s leading technology companies, like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon, are based there. However, Europe also has notable… More.

Silicon Valley overshadows the EU in tech, but with the advent of new-age artificial intelligence, Europe’s leading entrepreneurs think it could offer the Euro startup ecosystem to be a key player in the race.

Clear holographic imaging in turbulent environments

Holographic imaging has always been challenged by unpredictable distortions in dynamic environments. Traditional deep learning methods often struggle to adapt to diverse scenes due to their reliance on specific data conditions.

To tackle this problem, researchers at Zhejiang University delved into the intersection of optics and , uncovering the key role of physical priors in ensuring the alignment of data and pre-trained models.

They explored the impact of spatial and on holographic imaging and proposed an innovative method, TWC-Swin, to restore high-quality holographic images in the presence of these disturbances. Their research, titled “Harnessing the magic of light: spatial coherence instructed swin transformer for universal holographic imaging,” is reported in the journal Advanced Photonics.

An AI approach to treating diabetes

Startup Twin Health is developing a program that uses sensor data to construct a replica of a person’s metabolism and then simulate virtual interventions on the body. The simulations suggest non-drug recommendations that help reverse metabolic disorders such as diabetes.

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Decoding how the brain understands sentences in real-time

🧠📖🔍

Researchers examine how the brain processes language by using intracranial recordings in epilepsy patients during reading tasks, revealing the neural networks responsible for semantic integration and distinguishing between semantic coherence and task-based referentiality. The study pinpoints specific brain regions activated during sentence processing and offers new insights into the spatiotemporal dynamics of language understanding.

Inspired by the human brain — how IBM’s latest AI chip could be 25 times more efficient than GPUs by being more integrated — but neither Nvidia nor AMD have to worry just yet

The NorthPole processor embeds a small amount of memory into each of its 256 cores, which are connected together in a way similar to the way parts of the brain are connected together with white matter. This means the chip mitigates the bottleneck entirely.

IBM’s NorthPole is more of a proof of concept than a fully functioning chip that can compete with the likes of AMD and Nvidia. It only includes 224MB of RAM, for example, which is nowhere near enough the scale required for AI or to run large language models (LLMs).

The chip can also just run pre-programed neural networks trained on separate systems. But its unique architecture means the real standout is the energy efficiency it can boast. The researchers claim that if NorthPole was created today with state-of-the-art manufacturing standards, it would be 25 times more efficienct than the best GPUs and best CPUs.