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World-leading? Britain's science sector has some way to go - Financial Times

Years before ChatGPT, two Google engineers developed an advanced AI chatbot. Leonardo Munoz/VIEWpress

Google is expected to release its widely anticipated AI chatbot Bard in the near future. But years ago, two ex-Google engineers pushed their former employer to release a similar chatbot to the public and they were met with resistance, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

Around 2018, Daniel De Freitas, who was a research engineer at Google, started working on an AI side project with the goal of creating a conversational chatbot that mimicked the ways humans speak, former colleagues told the Journal. Noam Shazeer, a software engineer for Google's AI research unit, later joined the project.

Per the Journal, De Freitas and Shazeer were able to build a chatbot, which they called Meena, that could argue about philosophy, speak casually about TV shows, and generate puns about horses and cows. They believed that Meena could radically change the way people search online, their former colleagues told the Journal.

But their efforts to launch the bot which they renamed LaMDA, which would become the language model behind Bard reached an impasse after Google executives said the chatbot didn't adhere to its AI safety and fairness standards, per the Journal. Executives thwarted multiple attempts made by the engineers to send the bot to external researchers, add the chat feature to Google Assistant, and launch a demo to the public, the Journal reported.

Frustrated by the executive response, De Freitas and Shazeer left Google near the end of 2021 to start their own company despite CEO Sundar Pichai personally requesting they stay and continue working on the chatbot, per the Journal. Their company, which now goes by Character.Ai, has since released a chatbot that can roleplay as figures like Elon Musk or Nintendo's Mario.

"It caused a bit of a stir inside of Google," Shazeer said in an interview with investors Aarthi Ramamurthy and Sriram Krishnan last month. "But eventually we decided we'd probably have more luck launching stuff as a startup."

De Freitas and Shazeer declined an interview request from the Journal, and did not respond to Insider's request for comment. Google did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

Google's hesitancy to release its AI tools is nothing new.

In 2012, Google hired Ray Kurzweil, a computer scientist, to work on its language processing models, TechCrunch reported. About one year later, Google bought British AI firm DeepMind which aimed to create artificial general intelligence, per TechCrunch.

However, academics and tech experts pushed back on using the tech due to ethical concerns around mass surveillance, the Journal reported, and Google committed to limiting how it would use AI. In 2018, Google ended its project to use its AI tech in military weapons in response to employee backlash, per the Journal.

But Google's AI plans may now finally see the light of day, even as discussions around whether its chatbot can be responsibly launched continue. The company's chatbot, Bard, will come after Microsoft whose stock is on the rise released its own chatbot through Bing.

After Google's Bard chatbot generated a factual error during its first public demo last month, Google employees were quick to call the announcement "rushed" and "botched." The chairman of Alphabet, John Hennessy, agreed that Google's chatbot wasn't "really ready for a product yet."

Pichai has asked all Google employees to spend two to four hours of their time helping test the product so it can be ready for launch.

"I know this moment is uncomfortably exciting, and that's to be expected: the underlying technology is evolving rapidly with so much potential," Pichai wrote to Google employees in a February memo.

"The most important thing we can do right now is to focus on building a great product and developing it responsibly," he said.

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Google had an AI chatbot years ago, execs shut it down: report - Business Insider

While writing my novel The Dog of the North, I found myself preoccupied with geology. One of the characters is based on my geologist mother, which led me to re-immerse myself in how she viewed the world. Her career included time with the USGS and the National Park Service as a Ranger Naturalist, and her interest in the formations that make up the earth had long spilled over into our lives.

We were often sent into the Grand Canyon to observe naked cross sections of geologic history, from the light gray Kaibab Limestone at the rim to the dark and glossy two-billion-year-old Vishnu Schist along the Colorado River below. We spent many days on trips in the southwest hunched over, scanning the ground for crinoids and petrified wood. When I was living in Vermont, she came to visit and spoke animatedly of the glacial drumlins shed seen flying up the Hudson Valley. Her passion for the stories told by the land brought her eventually to Australia, where she immigrated and spent the rest of her life.

There, I recalled how she reacted to the landscapes in novels that werent ostensibly about geologysuch as Voss by Patrick White, which tells the story of the doomed Leichhardt expedition in the Australian outback in the mid-nineteenth centurymarking up pages with comments on the topography.

The Australian chapters in The Dog of the North arose from this personal history, and took me on a research junket to the Barkly karst formations in northwest Queensland. A few lessons on the earths substance and structure were soon in order. Mostly limestone, karst formations like these are found across the world, laid down by ancient seas, composed of shells, sand and calcium carbonate, rife with fossils. Brittle, permeable by water, the terrain in these regions is riddled with caves and underground pools. Its prone to crumble and collapsewhich suggested all sorts of narrative possibilities.

But symbolic possibilities also presented themselves. When limestone, a sedimentary rock, undergoes pressure and stress, the calcite in it crystallizes, and those crystals in its molecular structure interlock into a tight matrix. And thus the rock becomes something else entirely. Its now metamorphic. Limestone becomes what we know as marble. Sandstone under these conditions becomes quartzite. Shale becomes slate. Harder substances, beautiful, enduring. Had my mother ever mentioned this? Maybe, but I guess I hadnt been listening.

As I worked over my manuscript, roughing it up from every direction, the forces of the earth on my mind, I began to see a metaphor taking shape to do with the importance of subjecting our prose to metamorphic conditions if we are to write novels that become more than the sum of their parts. And that while we may believe weve reached our goal when we achieve limestone, in itself an accomplishment for a novel in progress, we should push on with all the resources at our disposal to transmute the work to the next, more luminous stage. To apply intense, unflinching pressure to every aspect of the work in progress, subject every participating component to the heat of judgment. Stress our base materials to such a degree that they move towards crystallization, towards marble.

In other words, a process beyond what we think of as revision.

Everyone has their methods. I might start with appraisals at the word level. Which are empty, filler. This noun is too general. That verb is flat. Then move on to syntactics: this phrase here, not there. Then dynamics: This paragraph has no spring, no life. Have I told it slant, so that it topples inevitably into the next paragraph? Then tonal: Does it evoke anythinghumor, sorrow, joy, darkness, lightor is it merely a slab of print? Then acoustical: Does it have rhythm, does it have music? Then content: What really happens in this sentence, this paragraph, this page, this chapter? And so on. Ill read it aloud, or Ill switch fonts and see it anew on the page. Leave no stone/word unturned.

And so at what point comes this hoped for metamorphosis? I think I know when it happens for me. Its when I finally pick up the work and think, who wrote this? All of those bits and pieces and decisions became this? Its like alchemy, almost magical.

I didnt have much interest in geology when my mother was alive. I made fun of glacial drumlins. When she moved to Australia she left behind a storage locker that, years later, I had to empty out after she was gone. Id expected to find household items deemed unworthy of shipping to the southern hemisphere, but no, the locker was filled with rocks.

They werent labeled, though some I recognized like old friends. Notable cobbles from riverbeds that had once been placed around our yard in LA (and are now in mine). Mineral specimens, fossils, canvas sacks of agates and geodes. I had no idea where they came from and since I couldnt ask her, I understood that identifying them was up to me. Strangely, now all of a sudden Im looking for the geological everywhere, even in metaphor. I want to know what lies beneath everything, and how it came to be.

__________________________________

The Dog of the North by Elizabeth McKenzie is available from Penguin Press, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

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What Lies Beneath: The Deep Geology of Prose - Literary Hub

Published 9:14 am Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Written by Noah Wortham

One day after an intensive surgery on the back of his legs that was supposed to put him in a wheelchair and prevent him from being able to put weight on his legs, he stood and took steps.

A 9-year-old Wilsonville Elementary School student, Patton Hunt fought through the pain and became an immediate inspiration to his family and the community.

Still battling health concerns on a daily basis and recently out of surgery, Pattons fight is ongoing, but one he will continue to stand for.

Tough challenges

Leigh Hunt is seven months pregnant and out driving when a woman runs a stop sign and crashes into her, causing Leighs stomach to hit the steering wheel.

He was born that day, Leigh said. He was in the NICU for a little over six weeks. It was kind of chaotic. We were not expecting him to be there that soon. We had some scary moments while he was in there with him being so little and having some of the issues of being born early and the injuries.

Although he was still in the NICU, they proceeded to begin therapy with Patton until he was able to go home.

When we came home from the hospital, ARC of Shelby County would come to our house and they would do therapy with him, Leigh said. At the beginning, it was just stuff like him being able to hold his head up. Then we started going to Life Without Limits Clinic, and he learned to walk there.

Patton was almost two years old when he started walking on his own.

As a result of the car accident, Patton continues to suffer from both hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy.

Patton has hydrocephalus, which means that his fluid in his brain doesnt drain like everybodys else does, Leigh said. He has a shunt that its basically a little drain and a valve that allows fluid to drain off of him and off his brain so that his body can reabsorb it. Without that he literally wouldnt be alive, it would cause too much brain pressure.

Patton has undergone more than 20 surgeries despite being only 9 years old.

We were told when he was a baby that he wouldnt walk. Then we were told, Well, he may walk with crutches. But he does gymnastics, he swims, hes an awesome kid, Leigh said while laughing.

Alongside the shunt, Patton also has to wear braces to assist him in walking.

Eventually he had to have a gastrocnemius recession performed to loosen up the leg muscles on the back of his legs.

Its a pretty intense surgery, and he came home in casts and leg immobilizers, Leigh said. He wasnt supposed to be able to stand, to bear weight on either leg. He was supposed to be in a wheelchair for a while. As soon as he got home that day, after surgery, he was just bound and determined he was going to walk. And so, he did, it hurt, but he was already walking that first day which was pretty incredible. Thats the determined spirit that he has.

Despite these issues, Patton has strived to do the things he enjoys with the full support of his parents.

Weve always tried to push Patton to do more than he thinks that he can do, and then he always kind of surprises us with all that he is able to do, Leigh said.

Striving to be a normal kid

Despite his struggles, Patton continues to be an active child on the family farm.

My favorite hobbies and things to do are like dig holes, ride horses, help on the farm and feed animals, Patton said. I like to work out, and I can run a mile and stuff.

He enjoys learning about how things work and what things are called. His favorite classes at school are science and PE.

Hes a very unique kid, Leigh said. Hes very inquisitive, which I guess a lot of kids are, but I think hes a deep thinker. Hes all the time asking me questions about stuff. He likes to figure things out. He loves to work and to earn money and save money for things.

Patton stands out in the crowd, not just for what hes overcome, but for who he is.

Pattons talents are also observed by his teachers and peers at Wilsonville Elementary School. Patton, and one other child, were chosen as the Fourth Grade Good Citizen for the month of October.

An organization in Chelsea named Bikes 4 Kids creates custom bicycles tailor made to the wishes of kids. Charlie Bradford, the owner of the organization, made a custom bike for Patton.

The goal was to build something that looked more custom and normal to other bikes, so when he rode with his cousin he would have a bike, Bradford said. But with his disability it was hard to balance a bike. We had to build something with custom training wheels.

When Bradford met with him to get an idea of the type of bike he wanted, Patton introduced himself.

My name is Patton, and he shook my hand like a grown man with a cowboy hat on and he knew exactly what he wanted, Bradford said. He said, Before we get started, I want to make sure you know what I want.

Patton then told Bradford that he only wanted two colors on his biketan and army greenand after the bike was put together, they presented it to him.

It looked really good, Bradford said. He loves it, was crazy about it. And after that, he got the bike and he rides the wheels off of it.

After making a custom bike for Patton, Bradford chose Patton to be the Grand Marshall for Chelseas first Bikes 4 Kids rodeo.

Me, Patton and his family had become pretty close after that, Bradford said. I decided Patton would be a great Grand Marshall. Because he loves rodeos. Hes a cowboy, a farm boy. And when I told him, that boy was as excited as he can be, he could just not wait. The days were too long.

Patton attended the rodeo as the Grand Marshall and did his job in riling up the crowds.

Pattons a really good kid, Bradford said. Hes very smart for his age and he knows how to talk to people respectfully. Hes very talented in that area, to be honest, hes above his level.

An ongoing battle

On Monday, Nov. 7, Patton came home from school due to a headache and lethargy. He then began to throw up. His parents took him to the hospital, and he had to get the shunt in his brain replaced.

We went to the hospital and they operated and put in a new shunt, but he had some bleeding in his brain when they did that, Leigh said. Normally, when he has the shunt surgery, he just gets better afterwards, its immediate relief. But he didnt have that. He was still hurting really bad after the first surgery. They went in to do another revision to check what was going on, and what happened is there was some bleeding with the first surgery that had blocked the catheter that allows fluid to drain off his brain. So, they put in another new shunt.

Patton has had 17 brain surgeries in the last nine years, and yet, he keeps going and continues to do the things that he loves.

If I could give advice to a parent whose child was faced with some challenges, especially early on because Pattons conditions were from birth, is that God can do amazing things, Leigh said. He can do more than we think sometimes, and I always say that if I would have been able to see the whole picture, all the 20 plus surgeries that Patton would have to have, the thousands of hours of therapy, all those sorts of things.

If I could have seen it all at once I would have said I wasnt equipped to do that, but God only shows you one moment at a time. So, we cant live in the future. We cant live in the past. We can only live in the present moment. And so, we take each moment that were given and we do the very best that we can with that moment.

Despite his struggles, Patton has large ambitions.

Im going to Troy to study nursing, and then Im going to UAB to become a pediatric neurosurgeon, Patton said. I want to work at Childrens. The reason is because Ill know the feelings of the kids that have the same problems.

His parents are there to help him every step along the way and encourage him to keep going.

Weve never set any sort of limitations with him, weve always I feel like tried to give him every opportunity that there was and to encourage him to always do his best with everything.

Patton doesnt just have high ambitions, he also carries with him an optimistic worldview.

Theres some tough times, but God really has blessed us with the good times, Patton said. We have a hospital to go to when there is bad stuff. The hospitals not fun but it is a place to go to, and just when theres a million things to be sad about, theres always one thing to be happy about.

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Profile: Mind over Matter: Wilsonville Elementary student Patton ... - Shelby County Reporter

Our new Hidden Gems series aims to educate and entertain readers with excellent but obscure music. We begin this month with an exquisite selection of what is known as deep soul, the gritty sounds of the southeastern United States, where much of the best soul music was made.

The American Deep South includes music hotspots like Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham and Macon, but not Nashville, which is a little too close to Chicago. The region gave birth to many all-time greats like Little Richard, Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas and Al Green. It is a sacred place for soul music, and major record labels like Stax Records (Memphis, Tennessee) and FAME Studios (Muscle Shoals, Alabama) were started there. However, this months hidden gems dont come from any famous names but from three forgotten musicians. They represent the true deep soul, a pure, vibrant and evocative sound that reminds us of the greatness of soul music, that extraordinary genre created from the depths of human emotion.

He could have had it all but died almost penniless. Arthur Alexander pioneered what became known as the Muscle Shoals sound, a fascinating soup of soul, blues and R&B cooked with passion and quality in the FAME studios. Alexander made music before other stars like Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and Candi Staton came along. You Better Move On has hints of the late 1950s when American teenagers spent their time hanging around diners, racing cars and fooling around at summer fairs. With deep and precise tones, Alexander is a southern crooner whose unhurried singing slowly melts his listeners. The music beats like a feverish high-school dance, but the lyrics convey painful feelings of life in the segregated and poverty-stricken South.

Marred by his bipolar disorder, James Carrs career never soared to the heights of contemporaries like Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett. However, You Got My Mind Messed Up proves that he was undoubtedly talented. Carr was turned down by Stax Records, but he landed a recording contract with Goldwax in 1964 and stayed with the label for the rest of his short career. He would spill out his heart in his songs, his breaking voice wailing in true Redding style just listen to Love Attack. This splendid album shows he belongs at the top of the southern soul pantheon, but history relegated him to the shadows.

She grew up singing gospel music but blossomed outside church walls. Duke had a torridly beautiful voice and started out as a backup singer for Nina Simone. In 1969, former Atlantic Records producer Jerry Swamp Dogg Williams Jr. signed her as a solo artist and recorded the unappreciated Im a Loser album. Doggs elegant production meshed perfectly with Dukes melancholic sound, who was likened to a mid-career Franklin, but in a leather jacket, more badass and streetwise. After all, she had grown up in Georgia and knew what it was like to struggle for her daily bread.

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Three forgotten gems of 'deep soul' music from the American South - EL PAS USA