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May 15, 2023

Why Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Is Betting Big On The $1T US Bioeconomy

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, internet

After being at the helm for over a decade of internet juggernaut Google, former CEO Eric Schmidt has switched gears and one of his latest activities is being an advocate for the fast-growing US bioeconomy, which is valued at over $1T. During his keynote at the 2022 SynBioBeta conference in Oakland, CA last year, he passed along advice for the next generation of biotechnologists, detailing what is needed from different stakeholders to fulfill the potential of the global bioeconomy to solve the world’s biggest problems. I caught up with Schmidt again recently, a year since his talk, to see what progress has been made. You can see the full Q&A here.

I think it’s time.

May 15, 2023

Generative AI Breaks The Data Center: Data Center Infrastructure And Operating Costs Projected To Increase To Over $76 Billion By 2028

Posted by in categories: business, information science, mobile phones, physics, robotics/AI

Update: The image for the ChatGPT 3.5 and vicuna-13B comparison has been updated for readability.

With the launch of Large Language Models (LLMs) for Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), the world has become both enamored and concerned with the potential for AI. The ability to hold a conversation, pass a test, develop a research paper, or write software code are tremendous feats of AI, but they are only the beginning to what GenAI will be able to accomplish over the next few years. All this innovative capability comes at a high cost in terms of processing performance and power consumption. So, while the potential for AI may be limitless, physics and costs may ultimately be the boundaries.

Tirias Research forecasts that on the current course, generative AI data center server infrastructure plus operating costs will exceed $76 billion by 2028, with growth challenging the business models and profitability of emergent services such as search, content creation, and business automation incorporating GenAI. For perspective, this cost is more than twice the estimated annual operating cost of Amazon’s cloud service AWS, which today holds one third of the cloud infrastructure services market according to Tirias Research estimates. This forecast incorporates an aggressive 4X improvement in hardware compute performance, but this gain is overrun by a 50X increase in processing workloads, even with a rapid rate of innovation around inference algorithms and their efficiency. Neural Networks (NNs) designed to run at scale will be even more highly optimized and will continue to improve over time, which will increase each server’s capacity. However, this improvement is countered by increasing usage, more demanding use cases, and more sophisticated models with orders of magnitude more parameters. The cost and scale of GenAI will demand innovation in optimizing NNs and is likely to push the computational load out from data centers to client devices like PCs and smartphones.

May 15, 2023

What Are The Risks Of Google And Microsoft Advancing Their Generative AI Innovations?

Posted by in categories: innovation, robotics/AI

Major announcements from CEO Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google at the I/O conference yesterday that generative AI will underpin their search, Gmail, and other products. Coming at the heels of major announcements from Microsoft and OpenAI’s partnership since January, 2023, Google has been scrambling to get their market and generative AI product positioning up to snuff. This announcement was applauded after the recent gaffaw in early February, when Google announced its AI chatbot Bard — a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.


This blog highlights Google’s generative AI announcement against Microsoft’s OpenAI. Also key issues on data bias and impacts to society and citizen privacy caution to ensure AI legislation speeds up in 2023 to balance out the technology giants power.

May 15, 2023

Mysterious sounds in stratosphere can’t be traced to any known source

Posted by in category: sustainability

Solar-powered balloons floating 20 kilometres above ground have recorded inaudible low-frequency signals that have so far not been traced back to any known source.

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

May 15, 2023

Companies have to figure out the skills they need to reap AI benefits

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Seems obvious enough, but organizations need to move past the hype and determine how they can benefit from artificial intelligence, so they can identify skillsets they need to bring the benefits to fruition.

May 15, 2023

Study shows distinct types of cerebellar neurons control motor and social behaviors

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

The cerebellum, a major part of the hindbrain in all vertebrates, is important for motor coordination, language acquisition, and regulating social and emotional behaviors. A study led by Dr. Roy Sillitoe, professor of Pathology and Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine and investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute (Duncan NRI) at Texas Children’s Hospital, shows two distinct types of cerebellar neurons differentially regulate motor and non-motor behaviors during development and in adulthood.

The study, published in Nature Communications, provides the first in vivo evidence supporting the critical role of a specific subset of excitatory glutamatergic neurons in acquiring motor and sensory/emotional behaviors. Further, it shows that neurons present in different regions of the cerebellum contribute differently to motor versus non-motor behaviors during development and in adulthood.

The cerebellar nuclei are present in the deepest layer of the cerebellum. These nuclei are encased by an outer highly convoluted sheet of tissue called the cerebellar cortex, which contains most of the other types of neurons in the cerebellum. The cerebellar cortex receives information from most parts of the body and other brain regions. These inputs are integrated by many types of cerebellar neurons and the deep-set cerebellar nuclei—the sole output structures in the cerebellum—then send those signals to the other parts of the brain.

May 15, 2023

The first radiation belt outside the solar system has been spotted

Posted by in category: space

Encircling a Jupiter-sized body about 18 light-years from Earth, the radiation belt is 10 million times as bright as the ones around Jupiter.

May 15, 2023

French Polynesia nuke tests slightly increased cancer risk: Study

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, military, nuclear weapons

Polynesians exposed to fallout from France’s nuclear tests in the South Pacific have a slightly increased risk of developing thyroid cancer, a study suggested on Monday that used declassified military data for the first time.

France carried out 41 atmospheric nuclear weapon tests in French Polynesia between 1966 and 1975, exposing residents to fallout which has been a source of lasting friction between Paris and residents of the Pacific archipelago.

The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, used risk modeling to estimate that the were associated with between 0.6 percent and 7.7 percent of in French Polynesia.

May 15, 2023

“Zombie virus” revived after 48,500 years in permafrost

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A newly discovered “zombie virus” was still able to infect hosts more than 48,500 years after it was trapped in Siberian permafrost.

May 15, 2023

Digital DNA through your digital twin in the sentient-world-simulation

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, biotech/medical, food

Perhaps your real life is so rich you don’t have time for another.

Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.

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