Lifeboat Foundation

As autonomous drones soar toward the frontline, bigger countries like China and the U.S. are watching.

Theory of mind —the ability to understand other people’s mental states—is what makes the social world of humans go around. It’s what helps you decide what to say in a tense situation, guess what drivers in other cars are about to do, and empathize with a character in a movie. And according to a new study, the large language models (LLM) that power ChatGPT and the like are surprisingly good at mimicking this quintessentially human trait.

“Before running the study, we were all convinced that large language models would not pass these tests, especially tests that evaluate subtle abilities to evaluate mental states,” says study coauthor Cristina Becchio, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany. The results, which she calls “unexpected and surprising,” were published today —somewhat ironically, in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

The results don’t have everyone convinced that we’ve entered a new era of machines that think like we do, however. Two experts who reviewed the findings advised taking them “with a grain of salt” and cautioned about drawing conclusions on a topic that can create “hype and panic in the public.” Another outside expert warned of the dangers of anthropomorphizing software programs.

Geoffrey Hinton, one of the “godfathers” of AI, is adamant that AI will surpass human intelligence — and worries that we aren’t being safe enough about its development.

This isn’t just his opinion, though it certainly carries weight on its own. In an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight program, Hinton claimed that the idea of AI surpassing human intelligence as an inevitability is in fact the consensus of leaders in the field.

“Very few of the experts are in doubt about that,” Hinton told the BBC. “Almost everybody I know who is an expert on AI believes that they will exceed human intelligence — it’s just a question of when.”

Aaron Vick is a multi-x founder, former CEO, best-selling author, process and workflow nerd and early-stage/growth advisor focused on Web3.

The age of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the landscape of creativity, challenging our understanding of creator rights and digital identity. As AI becomes an integral part of the creative process, collaborating with human minds to push the boundaries of imagination and innovation, we find ourselves in a new era that demands reevaluating the essence of authorship.

This AI renaissance is not just about the tools we use to create; it is about the fundamental shift in how we perceive and value creativity. In a world where AI can generate art, music and literature that rivals the works of human creators, we must reconsider what it means to be an author, an artist or a creator. The lines between human and machine creativity are blurring, giving rise to new forms of expression and collaboration that were once unimaginable.

I found this on NewsBreak: Exclusive: Inflection AI reveals new team and plan to embed emotional AI in business bots.

At Microsoft’s AI press event, the company unveiled its latest Surface PCs with new AI Copilot features built-in. Check out all the highlights in our recap from Redmond, WA.

Everything Microsoft Just Announced: Copilot Plus PCs, Surface Pro and Laptop Running on Qualcomm https://bit.ly/3ynj8BQ

Continue reading “Microsoft Surface Copilot + PC Event: Everything Revealed in 13 Minutes” »

From UC berkeley, stanford, carnegie mellon, & google deepmind.

Octo.

An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policy.

Continue reading “Octo: An Open-Source Generalist Robot Policy” »

The International Energy Agency predicts that artificial intelligence will consume 10 times as much energy in 2026 as it did in 2023.

Optical neural networks, which use photons instead of electrons, have advantages over traditional systems. They also face major obstacles.

In a path-breaking study, researchers have created artificial neurological junctions called synapses using a mix of water and salt, paving the way for the development of advanced computers that mimic the performance of a human brain. The artificial brain cells, developed by the team from Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Sogang University in South Korea, use the same water and salt ingredients the brain uses.

The results of the study were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists striving to develop energy efficient and high-performance computers often look up to human brains as a source of inspiration.