Lifeboat Foundation

This podcast features the CEO of a company that makes metalenses.

Bacteria most commonly associated with acne may not be all bad for skin health.

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ElevenLabs, a year-old startup that is leveraging the power of machine learning for voice cloning and synthesis, today announced the expansion of its platform with a new text-to-speech model that supports 30 languages.

The expansion marks the platform’s official exit from the beta phase, making it ready to use for enterprises and individuals looking to customize their content for audiences worldwide. It comes more than a month after ElevenLabs’ $19 million series A round that valued the company at nearly $100M.

Head over to our on-demand library to view sessions from VB Transform 2023. Register Here

Microsegmentation is table stakes for CISOs looking to gain the speed, scale and time-to-market advantages that multicloud tech stacks provide digital-first business initiatives.

Gartner predicts that through 2023, at least 99% of cloud security failures will be the user’s fault. Getting microsegmentation right in multicloud configurations can make or break any zero-trust initiative. Ninety percent of enterprises migrating to the cloud are adopting zero trust, but just 22% are confident their organization will capitalize on its many benefits and transform their business. Zscaler’s The State of Zero Trust Transformation 2023 Report says secure cloud transformation is impossible with legacy network security infrastructure such as firewalls and VPNs.

A research team headed by investigators at Brigham and Women’s Hospital reported on the results of a study in which they used stem cells from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients to identify a potential mechanism by which a gene known as SORL1 may impact the risk for the neurodegenerative disorder. Their work found that loss of normal SORL1 function leads to a reduction in two key proteins, APOE and CLU, which are known to be involved in AD, and which play an essential role in the neurons of healthy individuals. The study findings suggest a potential new strategy for AD treatment, especially for patients not responsive to existing therapies.

“Understanding the subtypes of AD is relatively new in the field of neurology research,” said Tracy Young-Pearse, PhD, of the Ann Romney Center for Neurological Diseases. “This is getting at a precision neurology approach, with which we can better predict which patients may be responsive to Alzheimer’s treatment strategies that attack specific genes or target the problems they cause.” Young-Pearse is corresponding author of the team’s published paper in Cell Reports, which is titled, “ Cell-type-specific regulation of APOE and CLU levels in human neurons by the Alzheimer’s disease risk gene SORL1,” in which they concluded, “Taken together, we demonstrate that AD-relevant SORL1 loss of function results in neuron-specific reduction in APOE and CLU and dysregulated lipid homeostasis.”

AD varies widely in its age of onset, presentation, and severity. Key neurological features of AD, including the accumulation of amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques in the brain, also vary across individuals. The anti-amyloid therapies, aducanumab and lecanemab, have received FDA accelerated and traditional approval, respectively, but not all patients respond to these drugs, warranting other treatment options.

Excerpts from the Red Folder.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is a term for Artificial Intelligence systems that meet or exceed human performance on the broad range of tasks that humans are capable of performing. There are benefits and downsides to AGI. On the upside, AGIs can do most of the labor that consume a vast amount of humanity’s time and energy. AGI can herald a utopia where no one has wants that cannot be fulfilled. AGI can also result in an unbalanced situation where one (or a few) companies dominate the economy, exacerbating the existing dichotomy between the top 1% and the rest of humankind. Beyond that, the argument goes, a super-intelligent AGI could find it beneficial to enslave humans for its own purposes, or exterminate humans so as to not compete for resources. One hypothetical scenario is that an AGI that is smarter than humans can simply design a better AGI, which can, in turn, design an even better AGI, leading to something called hard take-off and the singularity.

I do not know of any theory that claims that AGI or the singularity is impossible. However, I am generally skeptical of arguments that Large Language Models such the GPT series (GPT-2, GPT-3, GPT-4, GPT-X) are on the pathway to AGI. This article will attempt to explain why I believe that to be the case, and what I think is missing should humanity (or members of the human race) so choose to try to achieve AGI. I will also try to convey a sense for why it is easy to talk about the so-called “recipe for AGI” in the abstract but why physics itself will prevent any sudden and unexpected leap from where we are now to AGI or super-AGI.

To achieve AGI it seems likely we will need one or more of the following:

Waterborne illness is one of the leading causes of infectious disease outbreaks in refugee and internally displaced persons (IDP) settlements, but a team led by York University has developed a new technique to keep drinking water safe using machine learning, and it could be a game changer. The research is published in the journal PLOS Water.

As drinking water is not piped into homes in most settlements, residents instead collect it from public tap stands using storage containers.

“When water is stored in a container in a dwelling it is at high risk of being exposed to contaminants, so it’s imperative there is enough free residual chlorine to kill any pathogens,” says Lassonde School of Engineering Ph.D. student Michael De Santi, who is part of York’s Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, and who led the research.

Finally, offering additional benefits such as child care, wellness programs and flexible working hours can play a decisive role in securing top tech talent. We have an internal communication channel dedicated to well-being, where the team shares recommendations, and we also hold a monthly “well-binar” to keep this conversation strong. These benefits not only serve to attract talent but also ensure the well-being and satisfaction of current team members, increasing their productivity and willingness to stick with us in the long run.

For remote workers, building genuine relationships with their co-workers can be difficult. That is why we have the Global Ambassador Program. This is a company-hosted event in which participants partake in fun team-building activities, such as escape room adventures, to build connections and have the irreplaceable experience of meeting colleagues in person.

As the competition for tech talent intensifies, innovation in hiring strategies becomes a necessity, not a choice. The examples shared here hopefully provide a starting point for organizations looking to navigate this new landscape successfully.