ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Meet Plato, an AI That Gains Intuition Like a Human BabyMonisha Ravisetti | CNETIn collaboration with AI research laboratory DeepMind in the UK, this team developed an artificial intelligence system that learned intuitive physics, that is, commonsense understanding of how our universes mechanics work, just like a human baby. Current artificial intelligence systems pale in their understanding of intuitive physics, in comparison to even very young children, the study authors wrote in their paper. Here we address this gap between humans and machines by drawing on the field of developmental psychology.i

150,000 Qubits Printed on a ChipCharles Q. Choi | IEEE SpectrumQuantum computers can theoretically solve problems no classical computer ever couldeven given billions of yearsbut only if they possess many components known as qubits. Now scientists have fabricated more than 150,000 silicon-based qubits on a chip that they may be able to link together with light, to help form powerful quantum computers connected by a quantum internet.

Editing Cholesterol Genes Could Stop the Biggest Killer on EarthAntonio Regalado | MIT Technology ReviewA volunteer in New Zealand has become the first person to undergo DNA editing in order to lower their blood cholesterol, a step that may foreshadow wide use of the technology to prevent heart attacks. Of all the different genome editing ongoing on the clinic, this one could have the most profound impact because of the number of people who could benefit, says Eric Topol, a cardiologist and researcher at Scripps Research.

Inside a Radical New Project to Democratize AIMelissa Heikkil | MIT Technology ReviewA group of over 1,000 AI researchers has created a multilingual large language model bigger than GPT-3and theyre giving it out for free. The researchers hope developing an open-access LLM that performs as well as other leading models will lead to long-lasting changes in the culture of AI development and help democratize access to cutting-edge AI technology for researchers around the world.

Advanced EV Batteries Move From Labs to Mass ProductionJack Ewing | The New York TimesFor years, scientists in laboratories from Silicon Valley to Boston have been searching for an elusive potion of chemicals, minerals and metals that would allow electric vehicles to recharge in minutes and travel hundreds of miles between charges, all for a much lower cost than batteries available now. [Now a few of those scientists and their companies] are building factories to produce next-generation battery cells, allowing carmakers to begin road testing the technologies and determine whether they are safe and reliable.

7 Spectacular Lessons From James Webbs First Deep-Field ImageEthan Siegel | Big ThinkWith merely 12.5 hours of exposure time in its first deep-field image, the James Webb Space Telescope has truly ushered in an entirely new era in astronomy and astrophysics. Despite devoting just 1/50th of the time that went into Hubbles deepest image of the universe, the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, JWST has revealed details weve never seen before. Here are seven spectacular lessons we can learn from its first deep field image, along with tremendous reasons to be excited for all the amazing science to come!

GM Announces Plans to Build Coast-to-Coast Network of 2,000 EV Chargers at Truck StopsAndrew J. Hawkins | The VergeGM and Pilot Company say the new network will include 2,000 DC fast chargers installed at up to 500 truck stops and travel centers, capable of offering speeds of up to 350kW. The chargers will be in addition to the 3,250 chargers that GM is currently installing with EVgo, which the automaker has said will be completed by the end of 2025. The automaker has said it would spend $750 million in total on EV charging infrastructure.

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Can Planting a Trillion New Trees Save the World?Zach St. George | The New York TimesThe idea that planting trees can effectively and simultaneously cure a host of the worlds most pressing maladies has become increasingly popular in recent years, bolstered by a series of widely cited scientific studies and by the inspiring and marketable goal, memorably proposed by a charismatic 13-year-old, of planting one trillion trees. Nearly everyone agrees that planting trees can be a useful, wholesome activity. The problem is that, in practice, planting trees is more complicated than it sounds..

Is It a Bird? Is It a Plane? No, Its a Flying FerryNicole Kobie | WiredThree feet above the waves, the Candela P-12 sprints across Lake Mlaren near Stockholm, Sweden. With only its hydrofoils cutting through the water, the boat leaves virtually no wake, noise, or emissionsa sea change from the hulking diesel-powered ferries that currently haul commuters through the archipelago that makes up the Swedish capital.

Image Credit: NASAs James Webb Space Telescope

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through July 16) - Singularity Hub

Deep endless blue for thousands of miles. I used to think I could see the other side of the world when I looked at the ocean and that spot on the horizon where it met the orange sky. I wondered where it was. Perhaps Italy or France or India or Australia. All realistic options to me at the time since I refused to learn geography as a child. I used to think about swimming to the other side, just keep going even after hitting the plastic rope that was used to mark off the areas the lifeguard deemed safe to swim. Then, swimming under the rope and continuing on for miles and miles. They wouldnt notice, and if they did, Id be too far for them to stop me, especially since crossing those plastic lines would be far too much of a hassle. I craved the silence; far from the people on the beach, far from the sailboats and the jet skis, far enough where it felt like I was too close to the other side to turn back. I wanted my mind to be empty, purely empty, for a brief moment. Something about the silence and brown noise of the ocean was alluring. The ocean captivated me. It drew me in further and further until I couldnt help but think about the ocean wherever I was, about the fuzziness my brain would feel from the silence, about the mystery of what was on the other side.

Everything about the ocean is enchanting. How cold it feels on my skin on a warm day. The sound of the waves on the shore and how quickly it calms my nerves. People drive hours just to lay on the sand and watch it. And no matter how far I roll my pants up, the ocean leaves them soaked. The ocean connects us all. The people living on the other side, who I may never get a chance to meet, see the same blue as I do, the same water, the same floating seaweed. Its a connection that makes me feel like I am not alone in this world. They feel the same joy and pain and anger and grief that I do. The ocean also brings this feeling of insignificance. How I am just one of billions in this world. And theres something comforting in that, knowing the power and size this world has, and knowing how the never-ending dark thoughts questioning my worth and existence that pile in my head take up virtually no space beyond my mind. It was naive to think that the ocean would actually travel to me, that it would be the same ocean that carried seaweed stuck on a nine year olds leg, the same ocean carried in a pail to carve out a river through a sand castle. Nevertheless, its nice to imagine the inherent shared connection between us all. The ocean is homely and meaningful in that way, holding the souls and ashes of thousands of people, including my ancestors, their stories, their dreams, their deepest thoughts. The place for them to finally rest and be at peace, releasing them of the harshness of life and all their worries. To give them peace is to give them a never-ending space for their ashes to spread, while releasing their soul, cleansing it to fill them with purity as they become one with higher power, and stopping any more pain brought onto the soul by ceasing the possibility of another reincarnated life in this world. Finally returning back to where it all began.

I was jealous of the ocean, which sounds crazy but is ultimately true. It is free, it flows in whichever direction it pleases. The waves collapse on each other, pushing themselves closer and closer to where they want to go. The only boundaries are the beaches and land it meets. The ocean is stubborn, and would sometimes push further and further onto the land, collapsing those seemingly untouchable boundaries and teaching us that it truly knows no bounds. It is unapologetic for the strength it uses to take control of the land. It reminds us that it is raging and wild, one of the few things that man cannot tame and control no matter how many times he tries. It is out of our reach, too strong to be held down and too light to chase after, free of pain and worry, just at peace.

Yet, I found the ocean intimidating. Deep endless blue for thousands of miles, too strong to be held down, truly having no bounds. It was scary and mysterious. If I swam, what would pull me down? The pile of self-doubting dark thoughts sitting heavy in my head? Or whatever hid deep underneath, under the foamy white waves, past the murky green water, where the ocean is truly blue? But I wasnt just scared of what couldve physically happened to me. I wondered what the silence would do, what the freedom would do. Would it get to me? Would I ever come back to the shore? Or would I live amongst the mystery of whatever lived deep underneath? Who would it make me? Or what would it turn me into? I was scared of how powerful the ocean was, how vast and glorious, how dark and mysterious it was. These thoughts flood my mind often, slowly drowning me in curiosity and fear.

But this curiosity and fear that the ocean brought me only made it more enticing. It was the good kind of fear, the kind that leaves you with a slightly faster heart beat and a tiny pit in your stomach and a smile on your face. Its a fear that leaves you wanting more, where you forever seek it and chase after it. And I did. I spent my time at beaches, staring at the water, wanting to go deeper and deeper but stopping myself. I spent it at pools in the deep end, trying to swim to the bottom until the force of the water pushed me back up. But nothing gave me the same feeling as the thought of swimming under the plastic rope in the dark blue ocean.

I swim past the rope into a sea of meaning that holds stories and dreams and souls bigger than my own. Beyond this rope, I could gain strength, unapologetically crashing through my boundaries onto undiscovered land. I could be as mysterious, sharing parts of me with only myself, as independent and happy being alone, as stubborn and uncontrollable, and mostly, as beautiful.

MiC Columnist Roshni Mohan can be contacted at romohan@umich.edu

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I want to be beautiful like the ocean - The Michigan Daily

In March 2022 DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company, announced it had developed Ithaca, a deep neural network trained to restore and attribute ancient Greek inscriptions.

Ancient Greek inscriptions have shaped our understanding of the Mediterranean world from 800BC to late antiquity. Inscriptions refer to text written on durable materials such as stone and pottery. Unfortunately, these materials are typically not durable enough to remain perfectly preserved for two millennia.

Therefore, the epigraphic evidence of this period is often damaged by the time it is uncovered and the inscribed texts are incomplete as a result. Restoring (filling in missing words) and attributing (identifying chronological and geographical origins) damaged inscriptions can shed light on the past.

Ithaca relies on deep learning to restore damaged inscriptions. Deep learning is a subset of machine learning. It uses artificial neural networks that are modeled on the way neurons in the human brain communicate, with multiple layers of processing that are used to extract progressively higher-level features from the data. This means a deep learning algorithm can recognize patterns in databases without a human choosing the features the algorithm should pay attention to. The algorithm can then predict the outcome of new, similar datasets based on those patterns. The more data a deep learning algorithm has to analyze, the more accurate its predictions will be.

Ithaca has been trained to restore ancient Greek inscriptions on a database of just under 80,000 inscriptions from the Packard Humanities Institute. By recognizing patterns in elements such as language choice and style, across such an extensive database, the theory is that Ithaca will be able to fill in the blanks of damaged inscriptions based on probability.

According to its creators, Ithaca achieved a 62% accuracy rate when restoring incomplete inscriptions by itself. This is a significantly higher rate of accuracy than historians, who, on average, achieved a 25% accuracy rate. However, historians achieved a 75% accuracy rate when they used Ithaca to restore inscriptions. In other words, the highest accuracy rate was achieved when historians expertise and contextual knowledge were combined with Ithacas ability to detect statistical patterns across tens of thousands of inscriptions.

Therefore, Ithaca has been designed not as a replacement for historians, but as a tool for them to use when studying epigraphic evidence. For example, rather than returning a single text restoration and geographical attribution, Ithaca provides a list of possibilities ranked according to probability. This range of suggestions can combine with a historians contextual knowledge to provide the best chance of correctly restoring and attributing epigraphic evidence. Ithaca also shows which words contributed the most to its prediction, enabling historians to understand the AIs thought process.

Using Ithaca in this way is astute because there are weaknesses in how an AI naturally approaches inscription restoration. Deep learning systems are defined by the databases they learn from. If these databases are insufficiently diverse, the systems prediction accuracy will vary depending on the input data. Imagine an AI is being used to identify types of trees. If the AI is trained on a database that includes significantly more images of oak trees than beech trees, the AI will more accurately identify oak trees than beech trees. This issue has, for example, embedded racial bias into AI-based facial recognition systems. In 2018, an MIT researcher tested the facial recognition systems of Microsoft, IBM, and Megvii. The error rate for light-skinned men was less than 1% but just under 35% for dark-skinned women.

The style and language of ancient Greek inscriptions vary depending on the time and geographical area in which they were written and the purpose of the inscription. Two inscriptions separated by enough chronological and geographical distance can be in different dialects of ancient Greek. A legal decree will differ stylistically from a poetic verse or joke inscribed on pottery.

The database Ithaca has been trained onconsisting of roughly 80,000 inscriptions from the Packard Humanities Institutewill be better at restoring and attributing certain inscription types than others. This is because the c.80,000 inscriptions that constitute Ithacas database are unevenly dispersed across 84 different geographical regions. Attica in Greece houses by far the largest share of these inscriptions, followed by nearby Delphi and Lydia in modern-day Turkey. The prevalence of Attic inscriptions will be bolstered heavily by inscriptions from Athens, many of which are legal decrees. These inscribed decrees became more frequent in the fifth century as Athens democracy radicalized, the governance of its growing empire became increasingly intrusive, and war broke out between Athens and Peloponnesian city-states.

As a result, Ithaca will be better at restoring and attributing Athenian decrees than it will be at restoring and attributing, say, Spartan commemorative trophies at holy sites. Far more Athenian decrees have reached us than Spartan commemorative trophies, and far more Athenian decrees will be included in Ithacas database.

This is another reason why using Ithaca to aid rather than replace historians is the right idea. A historians experience and contextual knowledge are all the more important when the inscription in question is of a type that constitutes a relatively small share of Ithacas database. Whatever Ithaca has to offer epigraphic restoration, the emphasis on assisting rather than replacing historians with AI is entirely prudent because of the way humans and machines can complement each others strengths and mitigate each others weaknesses.

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DeepMind's Ithaca: Humans and AI combine to rediscover the past - Verdict

TAIPEI, June 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --Wistron Medical Technology (WMT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wistron Corporation, which has vowed to take Wistron's more than 20 years' experience and networks in information and communication technology (ICT) design and manufacturing into the field of digital health and precision medicine.

Wistron Medical Technology (WMT) digitizes healthcare information and facilitates a cloud-based, light-weight dialysis management systemBestShape Chronic Kidney Disease Care.

WMT digitizes healthcareinformationand facilitatesa cloud-based, light-weight dialysis management systemBestShape Chronic Kidney Disease Care, which transmits warnings when detecting a drop of blood pressure in terminal-stage renal patientsby using AI technology.It provides greatsupport to front-line health workers and makes optimal care possible.

With holistic medicine in mind, WMT also launched a healthcare platform, Health 365, which brings medical institutions and the healthcare industry together, hoping to provide comprehensive chronic disease care to chronic patients and senior groups and medical services to enterprise employees, so as tocreatean inclusivehealth ecosystemin their country.

Developing precision medicine that enables superior healthcare quality and outcomes has become a global trend. WMT is cooperating with the Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital to develop a digital pathology platform powered by Intel's OpenVINO open-source toolkit: OWL. Based on FHIR and mCODE specifications and on disease detection algorithms driven by AI, it produces structured reporting that saves doctors considerable time in writing pathology reports. It is also an industry first that OWL makes possible pathology-slide browsing and/or labeling and doctors' online meetings, shortening the time needed for data cleaning and lesion labeling and optimizing the quality of AI models.

Taiwan is a pivotal partner in the global semiconductor and ICT supply chains, and its high-quality medical services and technologies are also widely recognized. The combination of the two is a forward-looking medical technology island.

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Medical Taiwan DigitalGO (June 923) is an integrated B2B business-matching online trade show where products and services from various sectors of the healthcare industry are on display, including medical devices; textile applications; raw materials and components; smart healthcare; and beauty and/or skin care. Come join us and explore business opportunities and blue oceans in healthcare.

Wistron Medical Technology Corporation: https://en.wistronmedtech.com/

Medical Taiwan DigitalGO: https://virtual.medicaltaiwan.com.tw/en/index.html

SOURCE Medical Taiwan

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Wistron Medical Technology Dives Deep into Digital Health and Precision Medicine Markets with its Forward-Looking Tech Services - Yahoo Finance