From AI discovering a new antibiotic to IBM’s planned 100,000-qubit quantum computer, check out this week’s awesome tech stories from around the web.
There has been shock around the world at the rapid rate of progress with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence created with what’s known as large language models (LLMs). These systems can produce text that seems to display thought, understanding, and even creativity.
But can these systems really think and understand? This is not a question that can be answered through technological advance, but careful philosophical analysis and argument tell us the answer is no. And without working through these philosophical issues, we will never fully comprehend the dangers and benefits of the AI revolution.
In 1950, the father of modern computing, Alan Turing, published a paper that laid out a way of determining whether a computer thinks. This is now called “the Turing test.” Turing imagined a human being engaged in conversation with two interlocutors hidden from view: one another human being, the other a computer. The game is to work out which is which.
The root cause is frustratingly simple: one gene mutation, which affects a critical protein that helps support skin integrity. The single genetic error makes the illness a perfect candidate for gene therapy. Yet with the skin already fragile, injections—a current standard for gene therapy—are hard to tolerate.
What about a genetic moisturizer instead?
This month, the FDA approved the first rub-on gene therapy. Similar to aloe vera for treating sunburns, the therapy comes in a gel that’s gently massaged onto blisters and wounds to help with healing. Dubbed Vyjuvek, it directly delivers healthy copies of the mutated gene onto damaged skin. An alternative version is configured into eye drops to reconstruct the eye’s delicate architecture to better support sight.
‘Base editors’ fix specific sites in the genome without cutting the DNA double helix, according to team.
A perovskite-based device that combines aspects of electronics and photonics may open doors to new kinds of computer chips or quantum qubits.
MIT
MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was founded in 1861. It is organized into five Schools: architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. MIT’s impact includes many scientific breakthroughs and technological advances. Their stated goal is to make a better world through education, research, and innovation.
Don’t try finding Zuzalu on a map; it doesn’t exist anymore. It was a “pop-up city” conceived by the tech entrepreneur Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, and a group of like-minded people to facilitate co-living and collaboration in fields like crypto, network states, AI, and longevity. It was also, in substantial part, funded by Vitalik.
Zuzalu, located on the Adriatic coast of Montenegro, began its short history on March 25 and wound down on May 25. It was a complex and memorable phenomenon, and I’m wrapping my mind around a larger article in the works.
Usually, I don’t eat breakfast due to my intermittent fasting regimen, but in Zuzalu, breakfast, served at a particular local restaurant, was the healthiest meal of the day. Also, it was free (kudos to Vitalik, and more on that later). Most importantly, it was the place to meet new people.
By implanting electrodes into the brains of grasshoppers, scientists were able to harness the insects’ sense of smell for the purpose of explosive detection.
The advent of autonomous-vehicle (AV) technology promises to upend urban mobility and transportation policy. Yet After years of development, with updates here and there from major players in the autonomous vehicle (AV) industry, we’re beginning to see some significant momentum building behind self-driving cars.
These vehicles are starting to hit the streets in limited pilot programs that test their ability to navigate real-world driving environments. Autonomous city car for taxi-sharing. It is a smart car.
Continue reading “Autonomous City Car For Multi-Using Taxi System Concept” »
A pair of food tech startups have teamed up to create what they say are the world’s first lab-grown fish filets — and they used a 3D printer to serve them.
The challenge: Demand for seafood is expected to nearly double by 2050 due to a growing population and increasing incomes, but overfishing, climate change, ocean pollution, and other factors pressure the seafood industry’s ability to satisfy the world’s hunger for fish.
Continue reading “Startups serve ‘world’s first’ lab-grown fish filets” »
“Wish I had this to cite,” lamented Jacob Andreas, a professor at MIT, who had just published a paper exploring the extent to which language models mirror the internal motivations of human communicators.
Jan Leike, the head of alignment at OpenAI, who is chiefly responsible for guiding new models like GPT-4 to help, rather than harm, human progress, responded to the paper by offering Burns a job, which Burns initially declined, before a personal appeal from Sam Altman, the cofounder and CEO of OpenAI, changed his mind.
Continue reading “A new AI lie detector reveals their ‘inner thoughts’” »
