Lifeboat Foundation

Jacopo Pantaleoni joined Nvidia in 2001 when the company had less than 500 employees. He worked on what was then a small research project to improve Nvidia’s graphics processing units so they could better render images on computers and gaming consoles.

More than two decades later, Nvidia has more than 26,000 employees and its GPUs are at the center of the generative AI explosion. Pantaleoni had climbed the ranks to become a principal engineer and research scientist, one of the highest ranking positions for an individual contributor, he says. Then, in July, as Nvidia boomed like no other company, Pantaleoni says he resigned, giving up a substantial amount of unvested stock units, after coming to a realization.

“This market of machine learning, artificial intelligence” is “almost entirely driven by the big players— Googles, Amazons, Metas”—that have the “enormous amounts of data and enormous amounts of capital” to develop AI at scale. Those companies are also Nvidia’s biggest customers. “This was not the world I wanted to help build,” he said.

This isn’t good. I feel for anyone in the human trials.

Documents viewed as part of a new investigation by Wired, however, as well as testimony from a former employee, contradict Musk’s claims entirely — and the details are as upsetting as they are damning, adding to a mounting case against the safety of Neuralink’s devices.

And the timing couldn’t be more exigent either, with Neuralink announcing on Wednesday that it’s recruiting subjects for human trials.

Continue reading “Terrible Things Happened to Monkeys After Getting Neuralink Implants, According to Veterinary Records” »

The discovery made using NASA’s powerful space telescope brings scientists a step closer to determining if the salty water oceans of Europa could support life.

An international research team led by scientists in the Center for Genetic Epidemiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center has singled out mutations in 11 genes that are associated with aggressive forms of prostate cancer.

These findings come from the largest-scale prostate cancer study ever exploring the exome—that is, the key sections of the genetic code that contain the instructions to make proteins. The scientists analyzed samples from about 17,500 prostate cancer patients.

Today, oncologists customize care for certain individuals with aggressive prostate cancer with help from genetic tests. The results can inform treatment, as one class of targeted therapies has proved effective against some inherited prostate cancers. Test findings also can lead to genetic screening among patients’ family members, so they have the chance to take measures that reduce risk and to work with their doctors to be more vigilant in early detection.

The types of cancer that occur in children often are different from those in adults. Childhood cancers usually are not linked to lifestyle or environmental risk factors, as is often the case in adults. Nonetheless, cancer is the second-leading cause of death in children 1 to 14 years old, according to the American Cancer Society. Nearly 10,000 children in the U.S. under the age of 15 will be diagnosed with cancer in 2023, and about 1,000 children are expected to die of the disease.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which makes this a good time to learn about three of the most common types of cancer in children: acute lymphocytic leukemia, neuroblastoma and pediatric brain tumors.

Acute lymphocytic leukemia is a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. It’s the most common type of cancer in children, and treatments result in a good chance for a cure. Acute lymphocytic leukemia also can occur in adults, though the chance of a cure is greatly reduced.

‘They’re not announcing like, ‘We have created a model that does a particular thing.’ Instead, they’re saying ‘We are planning to create a resource that is going to be available for biologists to create new models,’ Carpenter said.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple’s LLC, told The Register that they plan to have their product running by 2024. The company also declined to tell the Register how much it’ll have to spend to make its product.

It could be a hefty bill, considering that the computer parts it wants to use are in high demand and low supply, The Register reported.

The newly upgraded Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory successfully produced its first X-rays, and researchers around the world are already lined up to kick off an ambitious science program.

The upgrade, called LCLS-II, creates unparalleled capabilities that will usher in a new era in research with X-rays.

Scientists will be able to examine the details of quantum materials with unprecedented resolution to drive new forms of computing and communications; reveal unpredictable and fleeting chemical events to teach us how to create more sustainable industries and clean energy technologies; study how biological molecules carry out life’s functions to develop new types of pharmaceuticals; and study the world on the fastest timescales to open up entirely new fields of scientific investigation.

Year 2022 😗😁

During the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (or IEDM), Intel claimed that by 2030, there would be circuits with transistor counts of a trillion, roughly ten times the number of transistors currently available on modern CPUs.

At the meeting, Intel’s Components Research Group laid down its prediction for the future of circuits manufacturing (via sweclockers) and how new packaging technologies and materials will allow chipmakers to build chips with 10x the transistor density, keeping in Moore’s Law.

Continue reading “Intel says there will be one trillion transistors on chips by 2030” »

Pediatric specialists at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford are implementing innovative uses for immersive virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies to advance patient care and improve the patient experience.

Through the hospital’s CHARIOT program, Packard Children’s is one of the only hospitals in the world to have VR available on every unit to help engage and distract patients undergoing a range of hospital procedures. Within the Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center, three unique VR projects are influencing medical education for congenital heart defects, preparing patients for procedures and aiding surgeons in the operating room. And for patients and providers looking to learn more about some of the therapies offered within our Fetal and Pregnancy Health Program, a new VR simulation helps them understand the treatments at a much closer level.