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Blog – Page 3924

Panelists: michael graziano, jonathan cohen, vasudev lal, joscha bach.

The seminal contribution “Attention is all you need” (Vasvani et al. 2017), which introduced the Transformer algorithm, triggered a small revolution in machine learning. Unlike convolutional neural networks, which construct each feature out of a fixed neighborhood of signals, Transformers learn which data a feature on the next layer of a neural network should attend to. However, attention in neural networks is very different from the integrated attention in a human mind. In our minds, attention seems to be part of a top-down mechanism that actively creates a coherent, dynamic model of reality, and plays a crucial role in planning, inference, reflection and creative problem solving. Our consciousness appears to be involved in maintaining the control model of our attention.

In this panel, we want to discuss avenues into our understanding of attention, in the context of machine learning, cognitive science and future developments of AI.

Full program and references: https://cognitive-ai-panel.webflow.io/panels/attention

Continue reading “Vectors of Cognitive AI: Attention” | >

We’ve got a new kind of ice on the block – medium-density amorphous ice (MDA).

It’s amorphous, which means that the water molecules are in a disorganised form instead of being neatly ordered like they are in the ordinary, crystalline ice you find floating in your Scotch on the rocks…

Amorphous ice is super rare on Earth, but scientists think that it might be the main type found in the frigid environment of outer space – because ice wouldn’t have enough thermal energy there to form crystals.

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The michael shermer show # 294

What is time? Does the past still exist? How did the universe begin and how will it end? Do particles think? Was the universe made for us? Why doesn’t anyone ever get younger? Has physics ruled out free will? Will we ever have a theory of everything? According to Sabine Hossenfelder, it is not a coincidence that quantum entanglement and vacuum energy have become the go-to explanations of alternative healers, or that people believe their deceased grandmother is still alive because of quantum mechanics. Science and religion have the same roots, and they still tackle some of the same questions: Where do we come from? Where do we go to? How much can we know? The area of science that is closest to answering these questions is physics. Over the last century, physicists have learned a lot about which spiritual ideas are still compatible with the laws of nature. Not always, though, have they stayed on the scientific side of the debate.

Shermer and Hossenfelder also discuss: theories of everything • quantum flapdoodle • Is math all there is? Is math universal? • Uniformitarianism and the laws of nature • theories of aging • Emergent properties, or why we are not just a bag of atoms • Is knowledge predictable? • Free will and determinism from a physicist’s perspective • Do copies of us exist? Could they ever? • Consciousness and computability • Does the universe think? • Why is there something rather than nothing? • What is the purpose of life, the universe, and everything?

Sabine Hossenfelder is a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany, and has published more than eighty research articles about the foundations of physics, including quantum gravity, physics beyond the standard model, dark matter, and quantum foundations. She has written about physics for a broad audience for 15 years and is the creator of the popular YouTube channel “Science without the Gobbledygook.” Her writing has been published in New Scientist, Scientific American, the New York Times, and the Guardian (London). Her first book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, appeared in 2018.

Continue reading “Free Will and Determinism from a Physicist’s Perspective (Sabine Hossenfelder)” | >

The team behind the work suggest that eventually doctors might be able to grow blobs of brain tissue from a patient’s own cells in the lab and use them to repair brain injuries caused by stroke or trauma.

“This is incredibly exciting to me as a physician,” said Isaac Chen, a physician and assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania.

The study is the latest in the rapidly growing and ethically complex field of brain organoids. Scientists have shown that when cultivated in the right conditions, neurons begin to form tiny brain-like structures, allowing scientists to investigate developmental conditions such as autism and a wide range of basic neuroscience questions.

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Images and spectra from the James Webb Space Telescope suggest that the first galaxies in the universe are too many or too bright compared to what astronomers expected.

Evidence is building that the first galaxies formed earlier than expected, astronomers announced at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Washington.

As the James Webb Space Telescope views swaths of sky spotted with distant galaxies, multiple teams have found that the earliest stellar metropolises are more mature and more numerous than expected. The results may end up changing what we know about how the first galaxies formed.

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After more than a decade of observations, Northwestern University astrophysicist Jason Wang has constructed an amazing time-lapse video of four planets larger than Jupiter as they revolve around their star, giving viewers a one-of-a-kind glimpse into planetary motion.

Wang, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, pointed out that it can be difficult to detect planets in a rotating orbit, which is why this video of planetary motion is so striking.

Objects in our solar system, like Jupiter and Mars, are barely visible since we are in the same system and don’t have a top-down view, Wang explains in a statement. Planetary events occur too promptly or slowly, making it hard to capture video of planetary motion of this caliber.

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It sounds like the start of a Southern gothic horror thriller. Auburn University scientists have been putting alligator DNA in catfish. It’s delicious, but with less chance for infection. Don’t worry, it won’t bite back. MIT Technology Review recently highlighted the work of Rex Dunham, Baofeng Su and their colleagues at Auburn University, who have used genetic modification to reduce problems of disease in catfish farming.

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