Europe fears US AI control as OpenAI, Anthropic rules tighten at G7 talks
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Geoffrey Hinton: “AI Is Already Conscious” | Big Technology Podcast
The “Godfather of AI” and Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton just said the quiet part out loud: he believes today’s AI is already conscious — and that our entire model of the mind is “as wrong as the belief that people were designed by God.” In this clip from the Big Technology Podcast, Hinton dismantles the “stochastic parrot” argument (“I think that’s complete nonsense”), explains why understanding a question is impossible without real comprehension, and walks through the Copernicus → Darwin → AI arc that he says will end humanity’s belief that it is special. Then he turns to the company at the center of the AI safety debate: Anthropic. Hinton argues that a publicly traded AI lab has “a fiduciary duty to maximize profits for shareholders — as opposed to legally required to not wipe out human beings,” and warns that Anthropic is “caught in a bind” trying to stay safe while raising the money it needs to compete. He closes with the line every founder and regulator should hear: progress is the accelerator, regulation is the steering wheel — and the big labs are asking us to let them build a very fast car without one. Chapters: 0:00 “I believe they’re already conscious” 0:05 Why “stochastic parrot” is nonsense 1:40 We’re about to become the cat 3:40 Anthropic is caught in a bind 5:00 Regulation is the steering wheel, not the brake Geoffrey Hinton won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics and is often called the Godfather of AI for his foundational work on deep learning and backpropagation. He left Google in 2023 to speak freely about AI risk. 🎙️ Full episode (Big Technology Podcast): • AI Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton: AI Is Consciou… 📺 Frontier Cut curates the sharpest clips from the world’s top AI and business podcasts. New episodes weekly. 🔔 Subscribe: @frontiercut #GeoffreyHinton #AI #Anthropic #AISafety #Superintelligence #AGI #BigTechnologyPodcast
Could Dark Energy Rewrite Physics? | Priya Natarajan
What if one of the most important assumptions in modern cosmology is wrong?
Priya Natarajan discusses new observational hints that dark energy may not be constant over cosmic time — a possibility that would have major implications if confirmed.
0:00 Is Dark Energy Really Constant?
1:30 New Hints From Observations.
2:23 Why Changing Dark Energy Matters.
4:14 What Changing Dark Energy Would Mean.
6:44 What Evidence Would Convince Us?
Priyamvada \
Kill the bench
Drawing from historical examples, Carmen Kivisild puts forth a bold vision for why wet lab automation is the future of biology. I’ve had similar hopes/thoughts for how biology will progress and I greatly enjoyed how this essay put words to these concepts.
Like Grace Hopper killed the punch card. The story of how “scientist” gets redefined.
Holographic Breakthrough: This New Futuristic 3D Imaging System Overcomes a Longstanding Problem for Holographic Tech
A new 3D image projection system from researchers at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) marks a major step toward overcoming a longstanding problem for holographic technology.
Professor Aydogan Ozcan led the work reported in a recent paper published in Light Science and Applications, which describes the team’s new snapshot 3D image projection system, solving one of the technology’s most daunting issues.
“These results establish the diffractive 3D display system as a compact and scalable framework for depth-resolved snapshot 3D image projection, with potential applications in holographic displays, AR/VR interfaces, and volumetric optical computing,” the authors write.
Linux Foundation’s AI CTO on China, Open Source, and What Comes Next
Matt White is the AI CTO at the Linux Foundation. He just got back from visiting DeepSeek, Moonshot, Zhipu, Qwen, and Minimax in China.
In this episode:
What he saw inside China’s top AI labs that the West doesn’t know.
4 Chinese breakthroughs US labs are quietly building on.
Why export controls backfired and forced China to innovate faster.
150 humanoid robot startups, China builds the body, America builds the brain.
The biggest mistake enterprises make with AI
Where he’d put $1M in AI right now.
Chapters.
00:00 — Intro.
00:54 — Inside China’s AI Labs.
09:43 — DeepSeek’s Culture & the Distillation Debate.
17:03 — Open Source Models vs Commercial APIs.
27:28 — How Startups Should Choose Their AI Stack.
41:17 — Agentic AI Safety & Multi-Agent Systems.
53:08 — Enterprise AI Mistakes & Where to Start.
01:08:26 — The Future of Agentic Commerce & One-Person Companies.
Follow Matt White: / mdwdata.
Follow Anthony Sar: / anthonysar.
Advancing Surgical Robotics with AI-Driven Simulation and Digital Twin Technology
Imagine a surgeon being able to “step inside” a digital version of a patient’s body — studying organs, tissues, and complex structures, rehearsing procedures, and evaluating possible approaches before performing the actual operation.
The integration of robotic surgical assistants (RSAs) in operating rooms offers substantial advantages for both surgeons and patient outcomes. Currently operated through teleoperation by trained surgeons at a console, these surgical robot platforms provide augmented dexterity that has the potential to streamline surgical workflows and alleviate surgeon workloads. Exploring visual behavior cloning for next-generation surgical assistants could further enhance the capabilities and efficiency of robotic-assisted surgeries.
This post introduces two template frameworks for robotic surgical assistance: Surgical First Interactive Autonomy Assistant (SuFIA) and Surgical First Interactive Autonomy Assistant – Behavior Cloning (SuFIA-BC). SuFIA uses natural language guidance and large language models (LLMs) for high-level planning and control of surgical robots, while SuFIA-BC enhances the dexterity and precision of robotic surgical assistants through behavior cloning (BC) techniques. These frameworks explore the recent advances in both LLMs and BC techniques and tune them to excel to the unique challenges of surgical scenes.
This research aims to accelerate the development of surgical robotic assistants, with the eventual goal of alleviating surgeon fatigue, enhancing patient safety, and democratizing access to high-quality healthcare. SuFIA and SuFIA-BC advance this field by demonstrating their capabilities across various surgical subtasks in simulated and physical settings. Moreover, the photorealistic assets introduced in this work enable the broader research community to explore surgical robotics—a field that has traditionally faced significant barriers to entry due to limited data accessibility, the high costs of expert demonstrations, and the expensive hardware required.
This man with ALS is “the first power user” of a brain implant that lets him speak
Casey Harrell uses his implants to talk to friends and family, read to his young daughter, and perform his job.