ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Developers Are Connecting Multiple AI Agents to Make More ‘Autonomous’ AI
Chloe Xiang | Motherboard
“Multiple developers are trying to create an ‘autonomous’ system by stringing together multiple instances of OpenAI’s large language model (LLM) GPT that can do a number of things on its own, such as execute a series of tasks without intervention, write, debug, and develop its own code, and critique and fix its own mistakes in written outputs.”
ROBOTICS
AI Is Running Circles Around Robotics
Jacob Stern | The Atlantic
“AI’s recent progress has been fueled to a significant extent by training larger models with greater computation power on larger data sets. Roboticists inclined toward this approach—hoping to apply the same machine-learning techniques that have proved so fruitful for large language models—run into problems.”
NANOTECH
Tiny Hybrid Robot Can Identify, Capture a Single Cell
Paul McClure | New Atlas
“Once the hybrid propulsion system was assembled, researchers were able to demonstrate the micro-robot’s capabilities. They used it to capture a single red blood cell, cancer cells, and a single bacterium, demonstrating that the micro-robot could distinguish between a healthy cell and one that had been damaged by a drug or a dying cell and one that was undergoing a natural ‘suicide’ process (apoptosis). Once captured, the cell can be moved to an external instrument for further analysis.”
FUTURE OF FOOD
Lab-Grown Burgers Have a Secret Ingredient: Plants
Matt Reynolds | Wired
“Two companies in the US have the Food and Drug Administration’s nod that their cultivated meat is safe for human consumption, and are awaiting further sign-off from the Department of Agriculture before they can sell their meat in restaurants and stores. But the economics of growing animal cells in bioreactors are still eye-watering. The easiest way to get meat out there that people can afford is to blend expensive bioreactor-brewed animal cells with much cheaper plant-based proteins. The immediate future of cultivated meat is hybrid.”
TECH
This AI Clock Uses ChatGPT to Generate Tiny Poems That Tell the Time
James Vincent | The Verge
“ChatGPT has been one of the internet’s favorite toys for months now, but people are still finding novel and fun ways to use the AI chatbot. Case in point is this rhyming E Ink clock created by designer and blogger Matt Webb. It uses ChatGPT to create a short two-line rhyme that also tells the time for every minute of the day. It’s incredible and we want one.”
SECURITY
Three Ways AI Chatbots Are a Security Disaster
Melissa Heikkiläarchive page | MIT Technology Review
“Tech companies are racing to embed these models into tons of products to help people do everything from book trips to organize their calendars to take notes in meetings. But the way these products work—receiving instructions from users and then scouring the internet for answers—creates a ton of new risks. With AI, they could be used for all sorts of malicious tasks, including leaking people’s private information and helping criminals phish, spam, and scam people. Experts warn we are heading toward a security and privacy ‘disaster.’i”
LAW
Stable Diffusion Copyright Lawsuits Could Be a Legal Earthquake for AI
Timothy B. Lee | Ars Technica
“There are some strong arguments that copyright’s fair use doctrine allows Stability AI to use the images. But there are also strong arguments on the other side. There’s a real possibility that the courts could decide that Stability AI violated copyright law on a massive scale. That would be a legal earthquake for this still-nascent industry.”
ETHICS
The Call to Halt ‘Dangerous’ AI Research Ignores a Simple Truth
Sasha Luccioni | Wired
“Tech leaders’ Open Letter proposed a pause on ChatGPT. But researchers already know how to make artificial intelligence safer. …Instead of focusing on ways that AI may fail in the future, we should focus on clearly defining what constitutes an AI success in the present.“
SPACE
Icy Moons With Vast Oceans Are the Latest Candidates for Alien Life
Editorial Staff | The Economist
“All four of the solar system’s gas giants are either known or suspected to have watery moons of their own. There is even some evidence that the same may be true for Pluto, a dwarf planet that orbits in the frigid darkness beyond the orbit of Uranus. Assuming that gas giants in other star systems also have moons—and there is no reason to assume they do not—that drastically raises the number of places in the galaxy in which life could have arisen.”
Image Credit: Maxim Berg / Unsplash
