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Nov 10, 2023

North Korea is “preparing” for war with nuclear weapons buildup

Posted by in categories: existential risks, military, nuclear weapons

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “seriously preparing” for war as it builds its nuclear weapons arsenal, according to an expert on Korean history.

After decades of international pressure attempting to stop its development of nuclear weapons, North Korea announced during the administration of former President George W. Bush that it was conducting nuclear tests and had weapons. The country now has an arsenal that includes an estimated 35 to 63 warheads, according to the Institute for Science and International Security.

In an interview published by The Financial Times on Thursday, Kookmin University history professor Andrei Lankov said that Kim had been emboldened to build the nuclear arsenal due to Western leaders failing to take advantage of earlier opportunities to pressure the regime, wrongly believing that the nuclear program was not “a realistic threat.”

Nov 10, 2023

Android Studio gets a built-in coding bot

Posted by in categories: mobile phones, robotics/AI

Android Studio, like so much of Google’s product portfolio, is getting its infusion of AI today at the company’s annual I/O developer conference. Android Studio Hedgehog, the upcoming version of Android Studio currently in the canary release channel, will be the first to add support for the new conversational experience in Android Studio meant to help developers write code and fix bugs and answer more general coding questions.

Built on top of Codey, Google’s new PaLM 2-based foundation model specifically trained for coding, the Studio Bot will roll out to developers in the U.S. first, with a wider rollout expected over time.

Nov 10, 2023

Ray Kurzweil: Our Brain Is a Blueprint for the Master Algorithm

Posted by in categories: information science, neuroscience, Ray Kurzweil

face_with_colon_three Year 2017


Ray Kurzweil is an inventor, thinker, and futurist famous for forecasting the pace of technology and predicting the world of tomorrow. In this video, Kurzweil suggests the blueprint for the master algorithm—or a single, general purpose learning algorithm—is hidden in the brain.

The brain, according to Kurzweil, consists of repeating modules that self-organize into hierarchies that build simple patterns into complex concepts. We don’t have a complete understanding of how this process works yet, but Kurzweil believes that as we study the brain more and reverse engineer what we find, we’ll learn to write the master algorithm.

Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil: Our Brain Is a Blueprint for the Master Algorithm” »

Nov 10, 2023

High-speed photonic neuromorphic computing using recurrent optical spectrum slicing neural networks

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

face_with_colon_three year 2022.


Sozos and co-workers present and numerically evaluate photonic neuromorphic hardware using recurrent optical spectrum slicing for use in ultra-fast optical applications. The approach extends optical signal transmission reach to more than four-fold that of two state-of-the-art digital equalizers and reduces power consumption tenfold.

Nov 10, 2023

AI in Radiology at Stanford: Rise of the Machines

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Stanford AI in Radiology overview 2018

Dr. Matthew Lungren.

Continue reading “AI in Radiology at Stanford: Rise of the Machines” »

Nov 10, 2023

China Unveils Plan To Mass Produce Human-like Robots, Calling It ‘New Engine’ For Growth

Posted by in categories: innovation, robotics/AI

More than 10 Chinese companies this year have revealed innovations related to humanoid robots, he noted, adding that China already has some supporting facilities from developing industrial robots.

Beijing has set aside about 10 billion yuan (about $1.4 billion) to fund the robotic development. On Nov. 6, China opened the first provincial-level innovation center on humanoid robots in the country’s capital to work on solving pressing “key common problems,” including an operation control system, open source software, and robot prototypes.

At least one Chinese company, Jiangsu Miracle Logistics System Engineering Co., has promised to introduce its first humanoid robot by the end of the year. Chinese securities brokerage firm Zheshang Securities estimates that the humanoid robot market will have a demand for 1.77 million machines by 2030.

Nov 9, 2023

Pancreatic Cancer Finds Alternate Fuel for Survival, Growth

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Blocking how cancer cells acquire and use energy, or their metabolism, as a treatment has been challenging, Dr. Lyssiotis explained. But a better understanding of how cancer cells adapt their metabolism in the often oxygen-and nutrient-deprived environments in which they exist, he said, may open other avenues for attacking them.

Identifying alternative sources of energy for cancer cells

Pancreatic cancer is one of the leading causes of death from cancer. Not only does its stark microenvironment thwart the entry of drugs designed to kill tumors, but numerous studies have shown that other residents in and around the tumors create an ecosystem that help the tumors thrive.

Nov 9, 2023

“Backdoor” into the ear offers new hope for reversing deafness

Posted by in category: futurism

A new study has unlocked a “backdoor” into the inner ear that could make administering gene therapies to restore hearing less risky.

Nov 9, 2023

The Most Exciting Show of 2023 Defies the Rules of Sci-Fi

Posted by in category: futurism

Is the alternate timeline of ‘For All Mankind,’ leading to a better future? Here’s what the philosophy and atheistic of this sci-fi show is all about.

Nov 9, 2023

New Tool Lets Artists “Poison” Their Work to Mess Up AI Trained on It

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

In particular, many have griped over their original work being used to train these AI models — a use they never opted into, and for which they’re not compensated.

But what if artists could “poison” their work with a tool that alters it so subtly that the human eye can’t tell, while wreaking havoc on AI systems that try to digest it?

That’s the idea behind a new tool called “Nightshade,” which its creators say does exactly that. As laid out in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper spotted by MIT Technology Review, a team of researchers led by University of Chicago professor Ben Zhao built the system to generate prompt-specific “poison samples” that scramble the digital brains of image generators like Stable Diffusion, screwing up their outputs.