H+ Weekly - Issue #336
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This week - how can we resurrect all humans; DeepMind's first spin-off company; a new AI bigger and cheaper than GPT-3; robots are on the rise in the US; and more!
MORE THAN A HUMAN
Brain Implant Translates Paralyzed Man's Thoughts Into Text With 94% Accuracy
A 65-years old man paralyzed from the neck down due to a spinal cord injury he sustained in 2007 has shown he can communicate his thoughts, thanks to a brain implant system that translates his imagined handwriting into actual text. In tests, the man was able to achieve writing speeds of 90 characters per minute (about 18 words per minute), with approximately 94% accuracy (and up to 99% accuracy with autocorrect enabled). Not only is that rate significantly faster than previous BCI experiments (using things like virtual keyboards), but it's almost on par with the typing speed of smartphone users in the man's age group.
6 Things to Think About When Designing Your Child
Imagine you are on your way to visit a designer baby consultant. Danny Hills lists 6 things to think about when choosing how your dream child will look like, from physical characteristics to mental predispositions.
Resurrecting all humans ever lived as a technical problem
This article asks not if we can resurrect all humans but how can we do that.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Introducing Isomorphic Labs
Isomorphic Labs is a newly launched DeepMind spin-off company that aims to "reimagine the entire drug discovery process from first principles with an AI-first approach".
Meet M6 — 10 Trillion Parameters at 1% GPT-3’s Energy Cost
Alibaba DAMO Academy (the R&D branch of Alibaba) announced M6 - their new AI similar to GPT-3. M6 has 10 trillion parameters (50x more than GPT-3) and uses only 1% energy of GPT-3. It took 3x less time to train M6 and rough estimations in this article suggest it cost 15x less than GPT-3. InfoQ, a popular Chinese tech magazine compiles M6’s main skills: “[It] has cognition and creativity beyond traditional AI, is good at drawing, writing, question and answer, and has broad application prospects in many fields such as e-commerce, manufacturing, literature and art.”
AI algorithm provides better way to build nanoporous materials
A Washington State and Oregon State University research team has developed a unique computer algorithm that plays a game of 20 questions, quickly narrowing down thousands of possible molecular designs for nanoporous materials to find the optimal one with minimal cost and effort.
ROBOTICS
Rise of the Robots Speeds Up in Pandemic With U.S. Labor Scarce
As pandemic wrecked the labour market, more and more US businesses are investing in automation, Time reports. However, the unions see the rise of robots in the workspace as a threat. Some economists have warned that automation could make America’s income and wealth gaps worse.
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