DAY: MAY 26 2024
5-26-2024
AI CHATBOTS ARE INTRUDING INTO ONLINE COMMUNITIES WHERE PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO CONNECT WITH OTHER HUMANS
A parent asked a question in a private Facebook group in April 2024: Does anyone with a child who is both gifted and disabled have any experience with New York City public schools? The parent received a seemingly helpful answer that laid out some characteristics of a specific school, beginning with the context that “I have a child who is also 2e,” meaning twice exceptional. On a Facebook group for swapping unwanted items near Boston, a user looking for specific items received an offer of a “gently used” Canon camera
5-26-2024
MICROSOFT’S AI CHATBOT WILL ‘RECALL’ EVERYTHING YOU DO ON A PC
Microsoft wants laptop users to get so comfortable with its artificial intelligence chatbot that it will remember everything you’re doing on your computer and help figure out what you want to do next. The software giant on Monday revealed a new class of AI-imbued personal
5-26-2024
AI RELIES ON MASS SURVEILLANCE, WARNS SIGNAL BOSS
The AI tools that crunch numbers, generate text and videos and find patterns in data rely on mass surveillance and exercise concerning control over our lives, the boss of encrypted messaging app Signal told AFP on Thursday. Pushing back against the unquestioning enthusiasm at VivaTech in Paris, Europe’s top startup conference where industry players vaunt the merits of their products, Meredith Whittaker said concerns about surveillance and those about AI were “two framings
5-26-2024
THE ‘DEAD INTERNET THEORY’ MAKES EERIE CLAIMS ABOUT AN AI-RUN WEB. THE TRUTH IS MORE SINISTER
An example of a shrimp Jesus image on Facebook with no caption or context information included in the post. Credit: Facebook If you search “shrimp Jesus” on Facebook, you might encounter dozens of images of artificial intelligence (AI) generated crustaceans meshed in various forms with a stereotypical image of Jesus Christ. Some of these hyper-realistic images have garnered more than 20,000 likes and comments. So what exactly is going on here? The “dead internet theory” has an explanation: AI and bot-generated content has surpassed the human-generated internet. But where did
5-26-2024
WHAT ARE DEEPFAKES AND SHOULD WE BE WORRIED?
Deepfakes are creating havoc across the globe, spreading fake news and pornography, being used to steal identities, exploiting celebrities, scamming ordinary people and even influencing elections. Yet a worldwide survey found 71% of people have no idea what deepfakes are. Deepfakes are digital photos, videos or voices of real people that have either been synthetically created or manipulated using artificial intelligence (AI) and can be hard to distinguish from the real thing. You’ve probably seen a deepfake video or photo without even realizing it. Computer-generated Tom Cruises,
5-26-2024
META INTRODUCES CHAMELEON, AN EARLY-FUSION MULTIMODAL MODEL
Chameleon represents all modalities—images, text, and code, as discrete tokens and uses a uniform transformer-based architecture that is trained from scratch in an end-to-end fashion on ?10T tokens of interleaved mixed-modal data. As a result, Chameleon can both reason over, as well as generate, arbitrary mixed-modal documents. Text tokens are represented in green and image tokens are represented in blue. AI researchers at Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and many other products, have designed and built a multimodal model to compete with
5-26-2024
ELECTRIC SCHOOL BUSES MAY YIELD SIGNIFICANT HEALTH AND CLIMATE BENEFITS, COST SAVINGS
Replacing diesel school buses with electric school buses may yield up to $247,600 in climate and health benefits per individual bus, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The researchers found that these benefits—including fewer greenhouse gas emissions and reduced rates of adult mortality and childhood asthma—and their associated savings are strongest in large cities and among fleets of old (2005 and before) buses. The study, “Adopting electric school buses in the United States: health and climate benefits,” was published in the
5-26-2024
WEARABLE DEVICES GET SIGNAL BOOST FROM NEW MATERIAL
Strain-invariant stretchable wireless system enabled by dielectro-elastic composite. A new material that moves like skin while preserving signal strength in electronics could enable the development of next-generation wearable devices with continuous, consistent wireless and battery-free functionality. According to a study published today in Nature, an international team of researchers from Rice University and Hanyang University developed the material by embedding clusters of highly dielectric ceramic nanoparticles into an elastic polymer. The material was reverse-engineered to not only mimic skin elasticity and motion types, but also
5-26-2024
AI DOMINATES ANNUAL PARIS STARTUP EVENT VIVATECH
Vivatech will host more than 150,000 guests, 11,000 startups and 450 speakers over four days. Thousands of tech enthusiasts filed into Europe’s self-declared biggest startup event VivaTech in Paris on Wednesday, with artificial intelligence stealing the show this year. Over four days, the event, now in its eighth year, will host more than 150,000 guests, 11,000 startups and 450 speakers, according to the organizers. The star turns will take to the stage on Thursday—former US climate envoy and secretary of state John Kerry is expected to make a push for
5-26-2024
AI POISED TO USHER IN NEW LEVEL OF CONCIERGE SERVICES TO THE PUBLIC
AI concierge’s fundamental forms. Credit: Journal of Service Management (2024). Concierge services built on artificial intelligence have the potential to improve how hotels and other service businesses interact with customers, a new paper suggests. In the first work to introduce the concept, researchers have outlined the role an AI concierge, a technologically advanced assistant, may play in various areas of the service sector as well as the different forms such a helper might embody. Their paper envisions a virtual caretaker that, by combining natural language processing, behavioral data
5-26-2024
AGE VERIFICATION FOR SOCIAL MEDIA WOULD IMPACT EVERYONE—RESEARCHERS ASK PARENTS AND KIDS IF THEY ACTUALLY WANT IT
by Justine Humphry, Catherine Page Jeffery, Jonathon Hutchinson and Olga Boichak, The Conversation This month the Australian government announced a A$6.5 million commitment to trial an age-verification program that will restrict children’s exposure to inappropriate online content, including pornography and potentially social media. The announcement came out of a National Cabinet meeting geared towards addressing gender-based violence in Australia. Much has been said about age-checking technologies in the weeks since. Experts point out implementing these tools effectively (so they aren’t easily by-passed) will be complicated—and any such system could come
5-26-2024
IS IT SAFE TO FLY? AIRLINE SAFETY EXPERT ON MODERN COMMERCIAL FLIGHT
In light of recent news regarding congressional action on aviation safety, Penn State News spoke with Amy Pritchett, department head of aerospace engineering and professor in Penn State’s College of Engineering. Pritchett previously served as the director of NASA’s Aviation Safety Program and currently chairs the National Academies committee chartered to research and advise federal regulators on emerging trends in aviation safety. In
5-26-2024
USING SMART DEVICES TO SCHEDULE ON-DEMAND PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION CAN SAVE TIME AND MONEY
Suburban residents often face challenges receiving reliable and accessible bus transit—riders often complain about infrequent schedules and long waiting times. Often, transit agencies are unable to provide additional buses because population density in such areas is usually low. On-demand transit (ODT) is an innovative transportation approach that enhances the accessibility and quality of service while reducing operating costs. Despite the rapid growth of ODT services in various cities across Canada and the United States, the mechanism of
5-26-2024
UNDERWATER SIGNALS GENERATED BY OPEN SEA AIRPLANE CRASHES COULD BE KEY TO DETECTING FINAL RESTING PLACE OF MH370
Location of the CTBTO’s hydroacoustic stations H11N and H11S (white triangles); the impact location of three aircrafts (indicated in yellow): F-35a, Transair Flight 810, and Asiana Flight 991; and the distances and bearings relative to the hydroacoustic stations (presented in magenta). The cyan star shows the location of earthquake M 4.8–9 km S of Y?kaichiba, Japan, 2014-03-07 18:34:20 (UTC) 35.611o N 140.552o E 23.9 km depth. Signals captured on underwater microphones could be key to locating airplanes such as MH370 when they crash into
5-26-2024
SURVEY INVESTIGATES AI TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CLASSIFICATION AND CREATION OF ART
A comprehensive survey has looked at the intersection of art and artificial intelligence (AI). The team has focused on how AI technologies are employed in the classification and also the creation of artworks. Andrej Šimi? and Marina Bagi? Babac of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Zagreb have analyzed and categorized a number of research papers in this field to understand the methodologies, techniques, and outcomes in this emerging field. They discuss
5-26-2024
CYBERSECURITY LABELING FOR SMART DEVICES AIMS TO HELP PEOPLE CHOOSE ITEMS LESS LIKELY TO BE HACKED
Smart devices like baby monitors, fitness trackers and internet-connected appliances will soon be eligible for labels certifying that they meet federal cybersecurity standards. Federal officials said Wednesday that the first “Cyber Trust” labels could appear in time for the holiday shopping season. The White House announced the labels last year to help consumers avoid devices that are vulnerable to hacking. Credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File Consumer labels
5-26-2024
WORLD LEADERS STILL NEED TO WAKE UP TO AI RISKS, SAY LEADING EXPERTS AHEAD OF AI SAFETY SUMMIT
Leading AI scientists are calling for stronger action on AI risks from world leaders, warning that progress has been insufficient since the first AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park six months ago. Then, the world’s leaders pledged to govern AI responsibly. However, as the second AI Safety Summit in Seoul (21–22 May) approaches, 25 of the world’s leading AI scientists say not enough is actually being done to protect us from the technology’s risks. In an expert consensus paper published in Science, they outline urgent policy priorities that global leaders
5-26-2024
MICROSOFT’S AI CHATBOT WILL ‘RECALL’ EVERYTHING YOU DO ON A PC
Microsoft wants laptop users to get so comfortable with its artificial intelligence chatbot that it will remember everything you’re doing on your computer and help figure out what you want to do next. The software giant on Monday revealed a new class of AI-imbued personal
5-26-2024
AI TRAINED TO DRAW INSPIRATION FROM IMAGES, NOT COPY THEM
Powerful new artificial intelligence models sometimes, quite famously, get things wrong—whether hallucinating false information or memorizing others’ work and offering it up as their own. To address the latter, researchers led by a team at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a framework to train AI models on images corrupted beyond recognition. DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are among the text-to-image diffusion generative AI models that can turn arbitrary user text into highly realistic images. All three are now facing lawsuits from artists who
5-26-2024
AI CHIPS COULD GET A SENSE OF TIME WITH MEMRISTOR THAT CAN BE TUNED
Tunable composition and structural disorder in single-crystalline ESO thin films on epitaxial YBCO electrodes. Credit: Nature Electronics (2024). Artificial neural networks may soon be able to process time-dependent information, such as audio and video data, more efficiently. The first memristor with a “relaxation time” that can be tuned is reported today in Nature Electronics, in a study led by the University of Michigan. Memristors, electrical components that store information in their electrical resistance, could reduce AI’s energy needs by about a factor of 90 compared to today’s graphical
5-26-2024
WHAT GOOGLE AI MEANS FOR YOU—AND YOUR SEARCH RESULTS
Google recently unveiled plans to integrate its search engine with artificial intelligence (AI). The company is debuting a new search engine feature called A.I. Overviews, which generates an overview of the topic a user searches and displays links to learn more. Traditional search results still appear underneath, but A.I. Overviews, Google says, will parse various pieces of information to give you a quicker answer. The new feature has raised concerns from some web publishers, who worry it will deal a heavy blow to their site traffic. Currently, A.I. Overviews don’t
5-26-2024
RESEARCHERS ANALYZE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF AI-GENERATED DEEPFAKES
Credit: AI-generated image Most of the deepfakes (videos with fake hyper-realistic recreations) generated by artificial intelligence (AI) that spread through social media feature political representatives and artists and are often linked to current news cycles. This is one of the conclusions of research by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) that analyzes the formal and content characteristics of viral misinformation in Spain arising from the use of AI tools for illicit purposes. This advance represents a step towards understanding and mitigating the threats generated by hoaxes in our society.
5-26-2024
INTERDISCIPLINARY GROUP SUGGESTS GUIDELINES FOR THE USE OF AI IN SCIENCE
(AI) generates texts, videos and images that can hardly be distinguished from those of humans—with the result that we often no longer know what is real. Researchers and scientists are increasingly being supported by AI. Therefore, an international task force has now developed principles for
5-26-2024
IMPERCEPTIBLE SENSORS MADE FROM ‘ELECTRONIC SPIDER SILK’ CAN BE PRINTED DIRECTLY ON HUMAN SKIN
Researchers have developed a method to make adaptive and eco-friendly sensors that can be directly and imperceptibly printed onto a wide range of biological surfaces, whether that’s a finger or a flower petal. Credit: University of Cambridge Researchers have developed a method to make adaptive and eco-friendly sensors that can be directly and imperceptibly printed onto a wide range of biological surfaces, whether that’s a finger or a flower petal. The method, developed by researchers from the University of Cambridge, takes its inspiration from spider silk, which can conform and
5-26-2024
BREAKTHROUGH OR BOAST? THE QUEST FOR COMPARABLE RESEARCH RESULTS
More international attention is being paid to the importance of common standards for performing scientific experiments and measuring their results—a field called metrology. In late 2019, physicist Dr. Lorenzo Pattelli was part of an Italian-Chinese scientific team working on a cooling technology that is fast gaining attention as the Earth gets hotter from climate change. Called passive daytime radiative cooling, or PDRC, the technology uses engineered materials to reflect away the sun’s radiation. The idea is that, amid heat waves, PDRC panels would cool buildings without the need for energy-intensive
5-26-2024
AI-ENHANCED COLLECTIVE BARGAINING TOOLS COULD HELP GIG WORKERS SOLVE PROBLEMS
Researchers at Northeastern University have created artificial intelligence tools to help gig workers organize, collect their own job-related data, analyze their work problems and come up with a strategy to implement solutions. “Building solid AI-enhanced solutions to enable gig workers’ collective action will pave the way for a fair and ethical gig economy—one with fair wages, humane working conditions and increased job security,” says Saiph Savage, assistant professor and director of the Civic A.I. Lab at Northeastern’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Gig work is typically performed by a freelancer
5-26-2024
AI-POWERED TRADING STRATEGIES TAME MARKET SWINGS
Average financial indicators feature importance. Credit: Quantitative Finance and Economics (2024). DOI: 10.3934/QFE.2024007 The dynamic landscape of cryptocurrencies, marked by rapid growth and high volatility since Bitcoin’s inception in 2009, has attracted significant attention from investors and traders. The emergence of new digital currencies challenges traditional financial models, necessitating advanced analytical tools to navigate the market’s unpredictability. The quest for effective trading strategies has led to the exploration of AI and machine learning techniques, which promise to enhance decision-making in this speculative yet lucrative field. Researchers from the University of
5-26-2024
NEW ROBOTIC PALM USES SOPHISTICATED TACTILE SENSORS TO MIMIC HUMAN TOUCH
“I’ll have you eating out of the palm of my hand” is an unlikely utterance you’ll hear from a robot. Why? Most of them don’t have palms. If you have kept up with the protean field, gripping and grasping more like humans has been an ongoing Herculean effort. Now, a new robotic hand design developed in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has rethought the oft-overlooked
5-26-2024
SCARLETT JOHANSSON SAYS A CHATGPT VOICE IS ‘EERILY SIMILAR’ TO HERS AND OPENAI IS HALTING ITS USE
Scarlett Johansson poses for photographers at the photo call for the film “Asteroid City” at the 76th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, May 24, 2023. OpenAI plans to halt the use of one of its ChatGPT voices after some drew similarities to Johansson, who famously portrayed a fictional AI assistant in the (perhaps no longer so futuristic) film “Her.” File OpenAI on Monday said it plans to halt the use of one of its ChatGPT voices that “Her” actor Scarlett Johansson says sounds
5-26-2024
AI HEADPHONES LET WEARER LISTEN TO A SINGLE PERSON IN A CROWD BY LOOKING AT THEM JUST ONCE
A University of Washington team has developed an artificial intelligence system that lets a user wearing headphones look at a person speaking for three to five seconds and then hear just the enrolled speaker’s voice in real time even as the listener moves around in noisy places and no longer faces the speaker. Pictured is a prototype of the headphone system: binaural microphones attached to off-the-shelf noise canceling headphones. Credit: Kiyomi Taguchi/University of Washington Noise-canceling headphones have gotten very good at creating an auditory blank slate. But allowing certain sounds
5-26-2024
NVIDIA’S PROFIT SOARS, UNDERSCORING ITS DOMINANCE IN CHIPS FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Nvidia reports earnings on Wednesday, May 22, 2024. Credit: AP Photo/Eric Risberg Nvidia on Wednesday overshot Wall Street estimates as its profit skyrocketed, bolstered by the chipmaking dominance that has made the company an icon of the artificial intelligence boom. Its net income rose more than sevenfold compared to a year earlier, jumping to $14.88 billion in its first quarter that ended April 28 from $2.04 billion a year earlier. Revenue
5-26-2024
EIT-BASED TACTILE SENSOR PROVIDES NEW APPROACH TO FINE MOTOR SKILLS ASSESSMENT
Researchers from SIT Japan showed a peg-shaped sensor for classifying adult pinching motions. Reconstructed images reach 79.4% accuracy, while voltage vectors achieve 91.4%, hinting at automated finger motion analysis potential. a) The microcontroller and sensing device are connected by a wire. (b) Hand model pinching the sensing device with two fingers from the horizontal direction and the reconstructed image. Credit: Hiroki Sato from SIT, Japan. Fine motor skills play a crucial role in human cognition, influencing everything from daily activities to the development of advanced tool-based civilizations. Yet, quantifying and
5-26-2024
EUROPE’S CLIMATE LAWS COULD SPELL THE END TO LOW-COST FLIGHTS—BUT WHAT ABOUT PRIVATE JETS?
The era of low-cost air travel in Europe may be over for good, thanks in part to recent EU environmental policies. All in all, this is good news for the climate. But many low- and middle-income people who used to travel around the EU will no longer be able to do so, or at least will be able to do so much less often. Yet the same policies will have little or no impact on the use of much more polluting private jets, which typically cover distances served by commercial
5-26-2024
ROBOT-PHOBIA COULD EXASPERATE HOTEL, RESTAURANT LABOR SHORTAGE
Using more robots to close labor gaps in the hospitality industry may backfire and cause more human workers to quit, according to a Washington State University study. The study, involving more than 620 lodging and food service employees, found that “robot-phobia”—specifically the fear that robots and technology will take human jobs—increased workers’ job insecurity and stress, leading to greater intentions to leave their jobs. The impact was more pronounced with employees who had real experience working with robotic technology. It also affected managers in addition to frontline workers. The findings
5-26-2024
TWO TYPES OF LLMS FOUND ABLE TO EQUAL OR OUTPERFORM HUMANS ON THEORY OF MIND TESTS
Performance of human (purple), GPT-4 (dark blue), GPT-3.5 (light blue) and LLaMA2-70B (green) on the battery of theory of mind tests. a, Original test items for each test showing the distribution of test scores for individual sessions and participants. b, Interquartile ranges of the average scores on the original published items (dark colors) and novel items (pale colors) across each test. An international team of psychologists and neurobiologists has found via experimentation that two types of LLMs are able to equal or outperform
5-26-2024
SANOFI ALLIES WITH OPENAI, FORMATION BIO FOR AI USE IN DRUG DEVELOPMENT
AI is playing an ever greater role in developing new medicines, as well as identifying new applications for existing drugs. French pharmaceutical company Sanofi announced Tuesday a partnership with ChatGPT-founder OpenAI and US biotech firm Formation Bio to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence in developing drugs. AI is playing an ever greater role in developing new medicines, as well as identifying new applications for existing drugs. It can be used for example to find new molecules more quickly and to improve clinical tests by vetting which patients would be
5-26-2024
USING AI, MASTERCARD EXPECTS TO FIND COMPROMISED CARDS QUICKER, BEFORE THEY GET USED BY CRIMINALS
A sign indicating MasterCard credit cards are accepted is posted at a New York business, Jan. 21, 2015. Mastercard said Wednesday, May 21, 2024, that it expects to be able to discover that your credit or debit card number has been compromised well before it ends up in the hands of a cybercriminal. Credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File Mastercard said Wednesday that it expects to be able to discover that your credit or debit card number has been compromised well before it ends up in the hands of a cybercriminal.
5-26-2024
NEW FLEXIBLE FILM DETECTS EYELASH PROXIMITY IN BLINK-TRACKING GLASSES
When attached to eyeglasses, a clear, flexible sensor can detect how close eyelashes are to the lens, enabling blink tracking. When another person’s finger hovers over your skin, you may get the sense that they’re touching you, feeling not necessarily contact, but their proximity. Similarly, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have designed a soft, flexible film that senses the presence of nearby objects without physically touching them. The study features the new sensor technology to detect
5-26-2024
GAMERS SAY THEY HATE ‘SMURFING,’ BUT ADMIT THEY DO IT
Online video game players believe the behavior known as “smurfing” is generally wrong and toxic to the gaming community—but most admit to doing it and say some reasons make the behavior less blameworthy, new research finds. The new study suggests that debates about toxicity in gaming may sometimes be more complex and nuanced than is often acknowledged, according to the researchers. Online video games use what are called “matchmaking systems” to pair players based on skill. “Smurfing” is when players cheat these systems by creating new accounts so that they
5-26-2024
HUMANS BARELY ABLE TO RECOGNIZE AI-GENERATED MEDIA
AI-generated images, texts and audio files are so convincing that people are no longer able to distinguish them from human-generated content. This is the result of an online survey of about 3,000 participants from Germany, China, and the U.S. This is the first time that a large transnational study has examined this particular form of media literacy.
5-26-2024
CAN AIRPLANE TURBULENCE REALLY KILL YOU? AIRCRAFT PROPULSION EXPERT WEIGHS IN ON SINGAPORE AIRLINES DEATH
One person was killed and several dozen more injured Tuesday when a flight from London to Singapore encountered “sudden extreme turbulence” and plummeted roughly 6,000 feet in a matter of minutes, according to The Washington Post. All told, there were 211 passengers and 18 crew on board, according to Singapore Airlines. The deceased passenger reportedly suffered a heart attack during the mid-air tumult. The Boeing 777-300ER operated by Singapore Airlines diverted to Bangkok, where it landed at 3:45 p.m. local time on Tuesday following the in-flight incident. The New York
5-26-2024
HOW INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES’ ARE CAUTIOUSLY EMBRACING GENERATIVE AI
U.S. intelligence agencies are scrambling to embrace the AI revolution, convinced they’ll otherwise be smothered in data as sensor-generated surveillance tech further blankets the planet. They also need to keep pace with competitors, who are already using AI to seed social media platforms with deepfakes. But the tech is young and brittle, and officials are acutely aware that generative AI is anything but tailor-made for a trade steeped in danger and deception. Years before OpenAI’s ChatGPT set off the current generative AI marketing frenzy, U.S. intelligence and defense officials were
5-26-2024
3D PRINTING ROBOT USES AI MACHINE LEARNING TO CREATE A SHOCK-ABSORBING SHAPE NO HUMAN EVER COULD
Inside a lab in Boston University’s College of Engineering, a robot arm drops small, plastic objects into a box placed perfectly on the floor to catch them as they fall. One by one, these tiny structures—feather-light, cylindrical pieces, no bigger than an inch tall—fill the box. Some are red, others blue, purple, green, or black. Each object is the result of an experiment in robot autonomy. On its own, learning as it goes, the robot is searching for, and trying to make, an object with the most
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