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Of all the AI models in the world, OpenAI’s GPT-3 has most captured the public’s imagination. It can spew poems, short stories, and songs with little prompting, and has been demonstrated to fool people into thinking its outputs were written by a human. But its eloquence is more of a parlor trick, not to be confused with realintelligence.

Nonetheless, researchers believe that the techniques used to create GPT-3 could contain the secret to more advanced AI. GPT-3 trained on an enormous amount of text data. What if the same methods were trained on both text and images?

Now new research from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, AI2, has taken this idea to the next level. The researchers have developed a new text-and-image model, otherwise known as a visual-language model, that can generate images given a caption. The images look unsettling and freakish—nothing like the hyperrealistic deepfakes generated by GANs —but they might demonstrate a promising new direction for achieving more generalizable intelligence, and perhaps smarter robots as well.

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Very interesting!

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“The plan was to scan patients’ genomes—in particular, a set of 13 genes involved in interferon immunity against influenza. In healthy people, interferon molecules act as the body’s security system. They detect invading viruses and bacteria and sound the alarm, which brings other immune defenders to the scene.

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Casanova’s team has previously discovered [genetic mutations](https://medicalxpress.com/tags/genetic+mutations/) that hinder interferon production and function. People with these mutations are more vulnerable to certain pathogens, including those that cause influenza. Finding similar mutations in people with COVID-19, the team thought, could help doctors identify patients at risk of developing severe forms of the disease. It could also point to new directions for treatment, he says.”

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“As the researchers began analyzing patient samples, they started to uncover harmful mutations, in people young and old. The team found that 23 out of 659 patients studied carried errors in genes involved in producing antiviral interferons.”

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“That thought sparked a new idea. Maybe other patients with severe COVID-19 also lacked interferons—but for a different reason. Maybe some patients’ bodies were harming these molecules themselves.”

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Continue reading “Some severe COVID-19 cases linked to genetic mutations or antibodies that attack the body” | >

The Navy has fielded a 650-round ammo backpack nicknamed ‘Avenger’ to troops at some point in the last two years.

Daimler has unveiled an electric bus equipped with a solid-state battery pack — probably becoming the first planned production EV with a solid-state battery.

The German automaker has been aggressively electrifying its deep lineup of big vehicles from buses to commercial trucks.

This week, Daimler unveiled an update to its eCitaro, the electric version of its best-selling Citaro electric city bus, and the update included the anticipated solid-state version of the bus: the eCitaro G.

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The Navy has fielded a 650-round ammo backpack nicknamed ‘Avenger’ to troops at some point in the last several years, the service confirmed to Task & Purpose, although officials declined to elaborate on the scope or details of the system’s employment.

“Unfortunately we cannot disclose this type of information as it pertains to troop location, movements, and tactics,” Lisa Oswald, a spokeswoman for Naval Supply Systems Command, told Task & Purpose.

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Last year, for the first time, the world gazed in collective wonder at an actual direct image of a black hole’s shadow.

Now, looking back at earlier, more rudimentary images, scientists have found evidence that the ring around M87 has a wobble that makes it look as though it’s glittering.

Last year’s history-making image was a feat of hard work that pushed our observation technology to the limits. It was the culmination of years of effort and planning — but the final image was put together from only one week’s worth of observations, taken in 2017.

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