This Could Be the Start of Amazon’s Next Robot Revolution
Will Knight | Wired
“In 2012, Amazon quietly acquired a robotics startup known as Kiva Programs, a transfer that dramatically improved the effectivity of its ecommerce operations and kickstarted a wider revolution in warehouse automation. Final week, the ecommerce big introduced one other deal that would show equally profound, agreeing to rent the founders of Covariant, a startup that has been testing methods for AI to automate extra of the selecting and dealing with of a variety of bodily objects.”
Sutskever Strikes AI Gold With Billion-Dollar Backing for Superintelligent AI
Benj Edwards | Ars Technica
“Protected Superintelligence (SSI), newly co-founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised $1 billion in money to assist develop protected synthetic intelligence programs that far surpass human capabilities, firm executives advised Reuters. SSI, which at present has 10 staff, plans to make use of the funds to accumulate computing energy and rent high expertise. It would concentrate on constructing a small extremely trusted staff of researchers and engineers break up between Palo Alto, California and Tel Aviv, Israel.”
What to Know About the Quantum Network Buried Under New York City
Isaac Schultz | Gizmodo
“For 15 days final December, a posh quantum operation happened deep below New York Metropolis. Photons of sunshine streamed round an space stretching from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Corona, Queens, forming a 21-mile-long (34-kilometer-long) quantum community beneath the metropolis. …[The project] despatched half 1,000,000 photon pairs per second by the cable infrastructure, that means 648 billion photon pairs have been shot by the system over the course of the 15-day experiment.”
Roblox Is Launching a Generative AI That Builds 3D Environments in a Snap
Scott J. Mulligan | MIT Expertise Evaluation
“Roblox plans to roll out a generative AI device that can let creators make complete 3D scenes simply utilizing textual content prompts, it introduced in the present day. As soon as it’s up and working, builders on the massively fashionable on-line recreation platform will be capable of merely write “Generate a race observe within the desert,” for instance, and the AI will spin one up. Customers may even be capable of modify scenes or develop their scope—say, to alter a daytime scene to nighttime or change the desert for a forest.”
Colossal 20-MW Wind Turbine Is the Largest on the Planet (For Now)
Abhimanyu Ghoshal | New Atlas
“With its large wind rotor diameter of 260-292 m (853-958 ft), it has a most wind sweeping space of 66,966 sq m—that’s greater than 12 NFL soccer fields. The corporate has a historical past of constructing the most important generators our oceans have ever seen, and notes that with an annual common wind velocity of 8.5m/s, its new turbine can generate 80 million kWh of electrical energy; that’s stated to be sufficient to energy housing for 96,000 residents yearly.”
Waymo Thinks It Can Overcome Robotaxi Skepticism With Lots of Safety Data
Andrew J. Hawkins | The Verge
“The corporate’s totally driverless automobiles have pushed 22.2 million miles throughout 4 cities. It says they’re safer than human drivers in nearly each class. …With the introduction of this new security hub, Waymo can also be making its methodologies obtainable for obtain, so extra exterior researchers can take a look at the uncooked numbers.”
ETHICS
AI’s Impact on Elections Is Being Overblown
Felix M. Simon, Keegan McBride, and Sacha Altay | MIT Expertise Evaluation
“The web is filled with doom-laden tales proclaiming that AI-generated deepfakes will mislead and affect voters, in addition to enabling new types of customized and focused political promoting. Although such claims are regarding, it’s vital to have a look at the proof. With a considerable variety of this 12 months’s elections concluded, it’s a good time to ask how correct these assessments have been to this point. The preliminary reply appears to be not very; early alarmist claims about AI and elections seem to have been blown out of proportion.”
Elon Musk Has the ‘Off’ Switch
Marina Koren | The Atlantic
“This explicit feud has crystallized an unsettling reality that’s rising extra obvious every day: Musk is changing into an web god. Area-based web and social media are a potent mixture, and their management by a single particular person is kind of unprecedented—and alarming in the identical method as a federal authorities limiting on-line speech by way of sweeping decree.”
GADGETS
The Remarkable Paper Pro Is as Outrageous as It is Luxurious
Alex Cranz | The Verge
“You in all probability don’t want the Outstanding Paper Professional. It’s too luxurious. You realize these sports activities automobiles that seem like spaceships however will drive right into a streetlamp in case you sneeze? That’s the sort of luxurious I’m speaking about. That is the hypercar of E Ink note-taking gadgets. It’s received a entrance gentle! It’s received colour! It’s received an 11.8-inch show! It’s received the easiest keyboard case obtainable in the present day! And it’s received a completely audacious selection of a show.”
Picture Credit score: Shubham Dhage / Unsplash
