Lifeboat Foundation

While we recover from New Year festivities, SpaceX is already checking off things on its 2024 list. SpaceX recently shared photos on X stating that six Starlink satellites with Direct to Cell capability will be launched into orbit soon.

“SpaceX is leveraging its experience in manufacturing [and] launching the world’s most advanced rockets and spacecraft to deploy Starlink satellites with the Direct to Cell capability at scale,” notes SpaceX.

“Direct to Cell satellites will initially be launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and then Starship. On orbit, the satellites will immediately connect over laser backhaul to the Starlink constellation to provide global connectivity.”

Starlink may have launched its first African service in Nigeria, but it is choosing Kenya as the location of its first physical office on the continent.

SpaceX, parent company of the satellite internet company Starlink, recently posted a job vacancy for the position of Global Licencing Activation Manager, sub-Saharan Africa.

The successful candidate is expected to manage a portfolio of countries, interfacing internally and externally, to enable Starlink to become licenced as an Internet service provider and bring the country online, so it can serve people and enterprises around the world in the near future.

Generative AI has sparked a tremendous backlash across the internet, as the early promise of the technology has been overshadowed by the wide range of problems it has introduced.

It’s true that no artist was asked if their work could be used to train these models. But even if the courts rule in favor of the machines, the practical application of the technology doesn’t seem worth the cost.

Generative AI is incredibly energy-intensive, surprisingly labor-intensive, and requires constant input — annotation — from human workers to keep it functional, lest it spiral into hallucinogenic nonsense.

Continue reading “The Big Backlash Against AI-Generated Art, Explained” »

An Internet pioneer’s mistakes, satellite jamming, and underperforming 5G networks.

Integrating large language models (LLMs) into various scientific domains has notably reshaped research methodologies. Among these advancements, an innovative system named Coscientist has emerged, as outlined in the paper “Autonomous chemical research with large language models,” authored by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Emerald Cloud Lab. This groundbreaking system, powered by multiple LLMs, is a pivotal achievement in the convergence of language models and laboratory automation technologies.

Coscientist comprises several intricately designed modules, with its cornerstone being the ‘Planner.’ This module operates using a GPT-4 chat completion instance, functioning as an interactive assistant capable of understanding user commands such as ‘GOOGLE,’ ‘PYTHON,’ ‘DOCUMENTATION,’ and ‘EXPERIMENT.’ Additionally, the ‘Web Searcher’ module, fueled by GPT-4, significantly enhances synthesis planning. Notably, it has exhibited exceptional performance in trials involving acetaminophen, aspirin, nitroaniline, and phenolphthalein. The ‘Code execution’ module, triggered by the ‘PYTHON’ command, facilitates experiment preparation calculations. Meanwhile, the ‘Automation’ command, guided by the ‘DOCUMENTATION’ module, implements experiment automation via APIs.

The prowess of the GPT-4-powered Web Searcher module in synthesis planning is evident in its success across diverse trials, demonstrating a capacity for efficient exploration and decision-making in chemical synthesis. Furthermore, the documentation search module equips Coscientist with the ability to utilize tailored technical documentation efficiently, enhancing its API utilization accuracy and improving overall experiment automation performance.

Only a year ago, ChatGPT woke the world up to the power of foundation models. But this power is not about shiny, jaw-dropping demos. Foundation models will permeate every sector, every aspect of our lives, in much the same way that computing and the Internet transformed society in previous generations. Given the extent of this projected impact, we must ask not only what AI can do, but also how it is built. How is it governed? Who decides?

We don’t really know. This is because transparency in AI is on the decline. For much of the 2010s, openness was the default orientation: Researchers published papers, code, and datasets. In the last three years, transparency has waned. Very little is known publicly about the most advanced models (such as GPT-4, Gemini, and Claude): What data was used to train them? Who created this data and what were the labor practices? What values are these models aligned to? How are these models being used in practice? Without transparency, there is no accountability, and we have witnessed the problems that arise from the lack of transparency in previous generations of technologies such as social media.

To make assessments of transparency rigorous, the Center for Research on Foundation Models introduced the Foundation Model Transparency Index, which characterizes the transparency of foundation model developers. The good news is that many aspects of transparency (e.g., having proper documentation) are achievable and aligned with the incentives of companies. In 2024, maybe we can start to reverse the trend.

The tech giant has been accused of tracking user activities even in “private mode.”

In a recent development, Google has reached a preliminary settlement in a lawsuit alleging that the search engine provider tracked the internet usage of millions who believed their browsing activities were private.

Google has agreed to settle a lawsuit claiming it secretly tracked the internet use of millions of people who thought they were doing their browsing privately.

Continue reading “Private? Google’s $5 billion lawsuit settlement exposes incognito snooping” »

A research group from Tohoku University and RIKEN has developed a high-speed, high-sensitivity terahertz-wave detector operating at room temperature, paving the way for advancements in the development of next generation 6G/7G technology.

Details of their breakthrough were published in the journal Nanophotonics on November 9, 2023.

The enhancement of current communications speeds will rely on terahertz (THz) waves. THz waves are electromagnetic waves within the THz range, which falls between the microwave and infrared portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, typically spanning frequencies from 300 gigahertz to 3 THz.

The World Wide Web was first tested on Christmas Day in 1990. Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau set up successful communication between a web browser & server via the Internet.

Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989, while working at CERN. The Web was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for automated information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world.

CERN is not an isolated laboratory, but rather the focal point for an extensive community that includes more than 17 000 scientists from over 100 countries. Although they typically spend some time on the CERN site, the scientists usually work at universities and national laboratories in their home countries. Reliable communication tools are therefore essential.

Continue reading “A short history of the Web” »