Lifeboat Foundation

A research team at Stanford and Google has created a virtual village for 25 AI agents to live in. They said the goal of this experiment was to create AI capable of believable, human-like behavior. These AI bots can plan parties, discuss elections, and select birthday gifts, the researchers said.

A research team at Stanford and Google has created a virtual village where 25 artificial-intelligence agents lead lives eerily reminiscent of our own.

In the virtual village, AI agents plan parties and discuss elections as part of an experiment to create more human-like bots.

The human brain is the most complex and powerful computer in the world — and, as far as we know, the universe.

Today’s most sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are only just beginning to offer a partial simulation of a very limited number of the brain’s functions. AI is, however, much faster when it comes to certain operations like mathematics and language.

This means it comes as no surprise that a great deal of thought and research has gone into combining the two. The idea is to use AI to better understand the workings of the brain and eventually create more accurate simulations of it. One day, it may also help us to create systems with the complexity and diversity of… More.

Continue reading “AI’s Next Frontier: Are Brain-Computer Interfaces The Future Of Communication?” »

The permission was given by California Public Utilities Commission after a 3–1 vote.

In a massive win for driverless cars in the United States, California has permitted Cruise and Waymo to conduct full-fledged commercial passenger service using driverless vehicles in San Francisco.

The permission granted by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) allows both firms to charge fees for journeys at any time of day. The approval comes after a disputed six-hour hearing on the matter that included residents voicing their concerns about autonomous vehicles (AVs) roaming their roads. Hearing all the arguments, the commission voted 3-to-1 to allow the two businesses to run their cars across San Francisco at any time of the day.

Scientists have developed a way to recycle plastic waste by transforming it into soap.

For the first time, researchers have used plastics to create soap. To achieve this goal, a team led by Virginia Tech scientists devised a novel approach.

As per the official release, this innovative method allowed them to upcycle plastics into chemicals known as surfactants, which are widely used in making soap and detergent.

Continue reading “Soap made from discarded plastics? This is upcycling at its best” »

They use a process called DNA origami.

This is according to a press release by the institution published on Friday.

TV screens equipped with quantum rods have the ability to generate 3D images for virtual reality devices. Now, MIT engineers have conceived of a way to precisely assemble arrays of quantum rods in the devices using scaffolds made of folded DNA that allow depth and dimensionality to be added to virtual scenes.

Continue reading “MIT scientists conceive of quantum rods for 3D screens” »

These waves can reach heights comparable to stacking three suns on top of each other.

Astronomers have discovered a strange star system with “monster” tidal waves breaking on one of its stars. Astrophysicists from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) developed new computer models to better understand the impact of huge surface waves.

The new models reveal “titanic waves” created by the tides of a smaller companion star to be repeatedly crashing on the colossal star in the system. This phenomenon has never been detected on a star, making it a significant discovery.

Continue reading “ESA’s Gaia satellite spots ‘retired stars’ passing through young star-forming area” »

Simple lifestyle changes can help you control three common diseases of the older eye: glaucoma, cataracts and age-related macular degeneration.

A zigzag arrangement that appears spontaneously in a collection of magnetic particles and some other colloids is explained by the fluid flow around each particle.

Irradiating a uniaxial magnetic system with a specific sequence of microwave pulses can induce in the system quantum oscillations that cause the material’s spins to flip back and forth.

To make higher-density magnetic data systems, researchers are looking to crystalline materials that have switchable magnetic orientations. But for some of these materials, switching the magnetization direction—for example from spin-up to spin-down—requires overcoming a large energy barrier. Now Seiji Miyashita at the University of Tokyo and Bernard Barbara of the Institut Néel, CNRS Grenoble, France, predict that experimentalists could reverse a material’s magnetization by applying to it a specific sequence of microwave or optical-frequency pulses [1]. The approach could find applications in quantum information storage.

To reverse the spin of a magnetic material, researchers can apply high temperatures or high magnetic fields to push the system over the potential energy barrier that separates its spin states. Another option is to induce resonant quantum tunneling to move electrons through the barrier. Miyashita and Barbara propose a further method that bypasses the constraints associated with the application of intense magnetic fields in these previous methods.