Lifeboat Foundation

“There’s a connection between the shape of the ice shell and the temperature in the ocean,” said Dr. Britney Schmidt. “This is a new way to get more insight from ice shell measurements that we hope to be able to get for Europa and other worlds.”

While Earth remains the only known world with bodies of liquid water on its surface, there are a myriad of worlds within our own solar system that have liquid water oceans beneath thick surfaces of ice. But what is the temperature of those interior oceans, and could the thickness of its ice shell determine it? This is what a recent study published in Journal of Geophysical Research Planets hopes to address as a team of researchers led by Cornell University investigated how a process called “ice pumping” could determine the temperature of the interior ocean underneath thick icy shells, also known as ice-ocean interaction. This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand the conditions for finding life beyond Earth with a focus on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, and Saturn’s moon, Enceladus.

“If we can measure the thickness variation across these ice shells, then we’re able to get temperature constraints on the oceans, which there’s really no other way yet to do without drilling into them,” said Dr. Britney Schmidt, who is an Associate Professor of Astronomy & Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University and a co-author on the study. “This gives us another tool for trying to figure out how these oceans work. And the big question is, are things living there, or could they?”

Continue reading “Exploring Ice-Ocean Interactions on Alien Moons” »

Some of Apple’s biggest investors are set to pressure the company tomorrow to reveal its use of artificial intelligence tools (via the Financial Times).

Apple’s annual shareholder meeting takes place tomorrow, allowing those with a major stake in the company to put forward proposals. One resolution proposed by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) asks Apple to disclose its use of AI and any ethical guidelines that the company has adopted regarding the technology.

Researchers at EPFL have developed a new, uniquely modular machine learning model for flexible decision-making. It is able to input any mode of text, video, image, sound, and time-series and then output any number, or combination, of predictions.

We’ve all heard of large language models, or LLMs—massive scale deep learning models trained on huge amounts of text that form the basis for chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Next-generation multimodal models (MMs) can learn from inputs beyond text, including video, images, and sound.

Creating MM models at a smaller scale poses significant challenges, including the problem of being robust to non-random missing information. This is information that a model doesn’t have, often due to some biased availability in resources. It is thus critical to ensure the model does not learn the patterns of biased missingness in making its predictions.

Elon Musk claims OpenAI is using GPT-4 to ‘maximize profits’ instead of ‘for the benefit of humanity.’

The lawsuit claims that the GPT-4 model OpenAI released in March 2023 isn’t just capable of reasoning but is also actually “better at reasoning than average humans,” having scored in the 90th percentile on the Uniform Bar Examination for lawyers. The company is rumored to be developing a more advanced model, known as “Q Star,” that has a stronger claim to being true artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Altman was fired (and subsequently rehired five days later) by OpenAI in 2023 over vague claims that his communication with the board was “hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities.” The lawsuit filed by Musk alleges that in the days following this event, Altman, Brockman, and Microsoft “exploited Microsoft’s significant leverage over OpenAI” to replace board members with handpicked alternatives that were better approved of by Microsoft.

Continue reading “Elon Musk sues OpenAI for abandoning its mission to benefit humanity” »

Genie learns how to control games by watching hours and hours of video. It could help train next-gen robots too.

Over the past couple of years, Nvidia, by far the largest AI chipmaker, has ramped up its investments in startups that propel it deeper into the AI space.

Nvidia isn’t the only AI chipmaker investing in startups. Its rivals — Intel, AMD and Arm — are too. Here’s to what extent.

With an emphasis on AI-first strategy and improving Google Cloud databases’ capability to support GenAI applications, Google announced developments in the integration of generative AI with databases.

AWS offers a broad range of services for vector database requirements, including Amazon OpenSearch Service, Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition, Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, Amazon Neptune ML, and Amazon MemoryDB for Redis. AWS emphasizes the operationalization of embedding models, making application development more productive through features like data management, fault tolerance, and critical security features. AWS’s strategy focuses on simplifying the scaling and operationalization of AI-powered applications, providing developers with the tools to innovate and create unique experiences powered by vector search.

Azure takes a similar approach by offering vector database extensions to existing databases. This strategy aims to avoid the extra cost and complexity of moving data to a separate database, keeping vector embeddings and original data together for better data consistency, scale, and performance. Azure Cosmos DB and Azure PostgreSQL Server are positioned as services that support these vector database extensions. Azure’s approach emphasizes the integration of vector search capabilities directly alongside other application data, providing a seamless experience for developers.

Continue reading “Google’s AI-First Strategy Brings Vector Support To Cloud Databases” »

Punyo is a soft robot designed to improve whole-body manipulation research by employing its arms and chest.

Toyota seems to be diving into more than just cars.

Continue reading “Punyo is a robot helping whole-body manipulation research” »

Check out Sanctuary AI’s Pheonix humanoid robot sorting items with grace and speed.

Following hot on the heels of Tesla’s Optimus and Figure 1 videos released recently, another humanoid robotics firm, Sanctuary AI, released the latest developments in its bot–the Pheonix.

Sanctuary AI’s Pheonix can now move things around a table just like a human being. Check it out for yourself.

Continue reading “Sanctuary AI robot, Pheonix can do simple tasks at human speed” »