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This simulation was then compared with real-time data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite, which has revolutionized our understanding of the positions and velocities of stars in open clusters.

“Our simulations can only simultaneously match the mass and size of the Hyades if some black holes are present at the centre of the cluster today (or until recently),” said Dr. Torniamenti.

The most plausible simulations suggest the presence of two to three black holes currently residing in the Hyades star cluster. At the same time, scenarios in which the black holes were ejected less than 150 million years ago (constituting the last quarter of the cluster’s life) cannot be completely ruled out.

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In a recent study published in Nature, researchers investigated whether glutamatergic gliotransmission was mediated by specialized astrocytes in the central nervous system.

The role of astrocytes in brain circuitry function, such as swift glutamate release, has been questioned due to inconsistent data and lack of direct evidence. This mechanism, similar to neurons, controls plasticity, excitability, and coordinated activity of synaptic-type networks but also contributes to neuropsychiatric conditions.

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No detectors “reliably distinguish between AI-generated and human-generated content.”

In a section of the FAQ titled “Do AI detectors work?”, OpenAI writes, “In short, no. While some (including OpenAI) have released tools that purport to detect AI-generated content, none of these have proven to reliably distinguish between AI-generated and… More.

Last week, OpenAI published tips for educators in a promotional blog post that shows how some teachers are using ChatGPT as an educational aid, along with suggested prompts to get started. In a related FAQ, they also officially admit what we already know: AI writing detectors don’t work, despite frequently being used to punish students with false positives.

In July, we covered in depth why AI writing detectors such as GPTZero don’t work, with experts calling them mostly snake oil. These detectors often yield false positives due to relying on unproven detection metrics. Ultimately, there is nothing special about AI-written text that always distinguishes it from human-written, and detectors can be defeated by rephrasing. That same month, OpenAI discontinued its AI Classifier, which was an experimental tool designed to detect AI-written text. It had an abysmal 26 percent accuracy rate.

Continue reading “OpenAI confirms that AI writing detectors don’t work” | >

Bad news for anyone looking to get their hands on Nvidia’s top specced GPUs, such as the A100 or H100: it’s not going to get any easier to source the parts until at least the end of 2024, TSMC has warned. The problem, it seems, isn’t that TSMC – which fabricates not just those GPUs for Nvidia but also components for AMD, Apple, and many others – can’t make enough chips. Rather, a lack of advanced packaging capacity used to stitch the silicon together is holding up production, TSMC chairman Mark Liu told Nikkei Asia.

According to Liu, TSMC is only able to meet about 80 percent of demand for its chip on wafer on substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology. This is used in some of the most advanced… More.

Boss Mark Liu says silicon ready but advanced packaging isn’t.

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Schmidt has become an indispensable adviser to government, even as some of his investments have won federal contracts.

Eric Schmidt isn’t shy about his wealth and power: The former Google CEO recently won an auction for a superyacht seized from a Russian oligarch, he owns a big stake in a secretive and successful hedge fund and he spent $15 million for the Manhattan penthouse featured in Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street.

He has also leveraged his $27 billion fortune to build a powerful influence machine in Washington that’s allowed him to shape public policy to reflect his worldview and benefit the industries in which he’s deeply invested — most recently, artificial intelligence. When senators meet next week to hear from tech executives and experts about how AI should be regulated, Schmidt will be at the table.

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The long-promised more affordable Tesla electric car might debut alongside an automated robotaxi.

Tesla is reportedly preparing to build a $25,000 electric car built on the company’s next-generation engineering platform. Axios.

The $25,000 car reportedly has a futuristic design like the long-delayed Cybertruck — the angular pickup truck that Tesla first revealed in 2019. The Cybertruck will supposedly begin production this year, with production-at-scale beginning in 2024.

Who knows when we’ll actually see a $25,000 Tesla.

Continue reading “Tesla’s ‚000 “next-generation car” will have a Cybertruck design” | >

Roblox’s new AI assistant is one of a few new AI tools from the company.

Roblox announced a new conversational AI assistant at its 2023 Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) that can help creators more easily make experiences for the popular social app. The new tool, the Roblox Assistant, builds on previously announced features that let creators build virtual assets and write code with the help of generative AI.

With the Roblox Assistant, creators will be able to type in prompts to do things like generate virtual environments. In one demo, somebody types in “I want to make a game set in ancient ruins,” and Roblox drops in some stones, moss-covered columns, and broken architecture. “Make the… More.

Another AI chatbot, but this seems useful.

Continue reading “Roblox’s new AI chatbot will help you build virtual worlds” | >

China-backed hackers stole a digital skeleton key allowing access to US government emails.

To recap, Microsoft disclosed in July that hackers it calls Storm-0558, which it believes are backed by China, “acquired” an email signing key that Microsoft uses to secure consumer email accounts like Outlook.com. The hackers used that digital skeleton key to break into both the personal and enterprise email accounts of government officials hosted by Microsoft. The hack is seen as a targeted espionage campaign aimed at snooping on the unclassified emails of U.S. government officials and diplomats, reportedly including U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns.

How the hackers obtained that consumer email signing key was a mystery — even to Microsoft — until this week when the technology giant belatedly laid out the five separate issues that led to the eventual leak of the key.

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GPT-4, PaLM, Claude, Bard, LaMDA, Chinchilla, Sparrow – the list of large-language models on the market continues to grow. But behind their remarkable capabilities, users are discovering substantial costs. While LLMs offer tremendous potential, understanding their economic implications is crucial for businesses and individuals considering their adoption.

While LLMs offer tremendous potential, understanding their economic implications is crucial for businesses and individuals considering their adoption.

First, building and training LLMs is expensive. It requires thousands of Graphics Processing Units, or GPUs, offering the parallel processing power needed to handle the massive datasets these models learn from. The cost of the GPUs, alone, can amount to millions of dollars. According to a technical overview of OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model, training required at least $5 million worth of GPUs.

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