Lifeboat Foundation

Have you ever been faced with a problem where you had to find an optimal solution out of many possible options, such as finding the quickest route to a certain place, considering both distance and traffic?

If so, the problem you were dealing with is what is formally known as a “combinatorial optimization problem.” While mathematically formulated, these problems are common in the real world and spring up across several fields, including logistics, network routing, machine learning, and materials science.

Continue reading “Scalable and fully coupled quantum-inspired processor solves optimization problems” »

Artificial Intelligence (AI), a term first coined at a Dartmouth workshop in 1956, has seen several boom and bust cycles over the last 66 years. Is the current boom different?

The most exciting advance in the field since 2017 has been the development of “Large Language Models,” giant neural networks trained on massive databases of text on the web. Still highly experimental, Large Language Models haven’t yet been deployed at scale in any consumer product — smart/voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, Cortana, or the Google Assistant are still based on earlier, more scripted approaches.

Continue reading “Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Melanie Mitchell: How Close Are We to AI?” »

A new field of science has been emerging at the intersection of neuroscience and high-performance computing — this is the takeaway from the 2022 BrainComp conference, which took place in Cetraro, Italy from the 19th to the 22nd of September. The meeting, which featured international experts in brain mapping, machine learning, simulation, research infrastructures, neuro-derived hardware, neuroethics and more, strengthened the current collaborations in this emerging field and forged new ones.

Now in its 5th edition, BrainComp first started in 2013 and is jointly organised by the Human Brain Project and the EBRAINS digital research infrastructure, University of Calabria in Italy, the Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf and the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany. It is attended by researchers from inside and outside the Human Brain Project. This year was dedicated to the computational challenges of brain connectivity. The brain is the most complex system in the observable universe due to the tight connections between areas down to the wiring of the individual neurons: decoding this complexity through neuroscientific and computing advances benefits both fields.

Hosted by the organising committee of Katrin Amunts, Scientific Research Director of the HBP, Thomas Lippert, Leader of EBRAINS Computing Services from the Juelich Supercomputing Centre and Lucio Grandinetti from the University of Calabria, the sessions included a variety of topics over four days.

Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument reveals a network of scaffolding behind galaxy IC 5332’s iconic spiral structure.

DART demonstrated using a kinetic impactor to crash into a small asteroid and alter its orbital path.

Science_Hightech — operanewsapp.

Bjarke Ingels Group and Barcode Architects collaborated to create ‘Sluishuis’ – an angular residential complex placed above the IJ Lake in Amsterdam. The structure’s sharp geometric ends meet in the air, water, and land, creating a mesmerizing structure that seems to be jutting into the sky while resembling the bow of a ship! It is constructed on an artificial island in the IJ Lake and forms a geometrically-intriguing gateway from the lake.

Designer: Bjarke Ingels Group x Barcode Architects.

A well-known game studio is allegedly using AI voices for a video game. A clarification includes a commitment to human creativity. It’s another footnote in the debate over the value of human labor that will become more common in the future.

It’s the very debate that has erupted so vehemently around AI-generated images in recent months. Are AI images art? If so, can they be equated with human art? Are they detrimental to art? Are they even plagiarism, because the AI examines human works during training – in the inspiration phase, so to speak – and then imitates them in trace elements?

Continue reading “AI audio is on the rise and will spark new debates about the value of human effort” »

Scientists at the Krembil Brain Institute, part of the University Health Network, have proposed a new mechanistic model (AD²) for Alzheimer’s, looking at it not as a brain disease, but as a chronic autoimmune condition that attacks the brain.

This novel research is published today, in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.

“We don’t think of Alzheimer’s as fundamentally a disease of the brain. We think of it as a disease of the immune system within the brain,” says Dr. Donald Weaver, co-Director of the Krembil Brain Institute and author of the paper.