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upstart writes:

Alphabet stock price drops after Google Bard launch blunder:

About 10 percent of Alphabet's market value – some $120 billion – was wiped out this week after Google proudly presented Bard, its answer to Microsoft's next-gen AI offerings, and the system bungled a simple question.

In a promotional video to show off Bard, a web search assistant to compete against Microsoft's ChatGPT-enhanced Bing, the software answered a science question incorrectly, sending Alphabet's share price down amid an overall lackluster launch by the Chocolate Factory.

Microsoft's integration of OpenAI's super-hyped language models into the Bing search engine and Edge web browser has ignited an arms race. Microsoft wants to eat into Google's web search monopoly by offering a better search engine that uses OpenAI's ChatGPT to answer queries in a conversational way with natural language rather than simple lists of links to relevant webpages.

The idea being that the bot is trained on fresh snapshots of the web, and netizens' web search requests are answered automatically by the bot with summaries of info scraped from the internet.

The Chocolate Factory is not about to give up any of its territory without a fight, though it stumbled at the first hurdle with its launch of ChatGPT rival Bard on Wednesday.

upstart writes:

Starlink can be used for military comms, but controlling drones is prohibited:

The close relationship between SpaceX and Ukraine could be strained after the company limited the country's ability to use the Starlink satellite service for offensive military purposes. The move follows reports that Ukraine has been using Starlink to control drones.

SpaceX has supplied over 25,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine and maintained them since the war began, helping keep the nation's critical infrastructure and its citizens online as Russia continues its assault.

But Ukraine is said to have been utilizing Starlink in its offensive push against the Russian military, including using it to target enemies with drones, a violation of SpaceX policies.

Speaking at a conference in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday (via Reuters), SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell said Starlink was never meant to be weaponized.

"However, Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement," she said, referring to reports that Starlink had been used to control Ukraine's drones. "There are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that [controlling the drones]," she said, "There are things that we can do, and have done."

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fliptop writes:

Scientists are trying to understand the impact this huge prominence will have on Earth:

The Sun has always fascinated astronomers. And now, a new development has baffled scientists. A huge part of the Sun broke off of its surface and created a tornado-like swirl around its North Pole. Though scientists are trying to analyse how this occurred, the video of the development has stunned the space community. The remarkable phenomenon was caught by NASA's James Webb telescope and shared on Twitter by Dr Tamitha Skov, a space weather forecaster, last week. The Sun keeps emitting solar flares (called prominence) that sometimes affect communications on Earth, hence scientists are more concerned about the latest development.

"Talk about Polar Vortex! Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of our Star. Implications for understanding the Sun's atmospheric dynamics above 55 degrees here cannot be overstated!" Dr Skov said in a tweet last week.

According to NASA, the prominence is a large bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface. There have been several such instances in the past but this one has stumped the scientific community.

[...] Space scientists are now analyzing the strange event to gather more details about it and present a clearer picture.

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upstart writes:

An AI 'Engineer' Has Now Designed 100 Chips:

[...] AI firm Synopsys has announced that its DSO.ai tool has successfully aided in the design of 100 chips, and it expects that upward trend to continue.

Companies like STMicroelectronics and SK Hynix have turned to Synopsys to accelerate semiconductor designs in an increasingly competitive environment. The past few years have seen demand for new chips increase while materials and costs have rocketed upward. Therefore, companies are looking for ways to get more done with less, and that's what tools like DSO.ai are all about.

The tool can search design spaces, telling its human masters how best to arrange components to optimize power, performance, and area, or PPA as it's often called. Among those 100 AI-assisted chip designs, companies have seen up to a 25% drop in power requirements and a 3x productivity increase for engineers. SK Hynix says a recent DSO.ai project resulted in a 15% cell area reduction and a 5% die shrink.

[...] With all the AI innovations of late, it is starting to feel like a sea change in how we create things. OpenAI's ChatGPT, now embedded in Microsoft's products, can write stories, create computer code, and answer search queries in natural language. Meanwhile, OpenAI's Dall-e can win art competitions with AI-generated art. AI also plays a larger role in gaming, with many titles supporting AI upsampling technologies like DLSS.

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US NIST Unveils Winning Encryption Algorithm for IoT Data Protection

fliptop writes:

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced that ASCON is the winning bid for the "lightweight cryptography" program to find the best algorithm to protect small IoT (Internet of Things) devices with limited hardware resources:

Small IoT devices are becoming increasingly popular and omnipresent, used in wearable tech, "smart home" applications, etc. However, they are still used to store and handle sensitive personal information, such as health data, financial details, and more.

That said, implementing a standard for encrypting data is crucial in securing people's data. However, the weak chips inside these devices call for an algorithm that can deliver robust encryption at very little computational power.

"The world is moving toward using small devices for lots of tasks ranging from sensing to identification to machine control, and because these small devices have limited resources, they need security that has a compact implementation," stated Kerry McKay, a computer scientist at NIST.

[...] ASCON was eventually picked as the winner for being flexible, encompassing seven families, energy efficient, speedy on weak hardware, and having low overhead for short messages.

NIST also considered that the algorithm had withstood the test of time, having been developed in 2014 by a team of cryptographers from Graz University of Technology, Infineon Technologies, Lamarr Security Research, and Radboud University, and winning the CAESAR cryptographic competition's "lightweight encryption" category in 2019.

More info at the algorithm's Website and the technical paper submitted to NIST in May 2021.

Related:

• NIST Drafts Revised Guidelines for Digital Identification in Federal Systems
• NIST Calls Time on SHA-1, Sets 2030 Deadline

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upstart writes:

2024 Mercedes-Benz eSprinter electric van coming to the U.S.:

Mercedes-Benz might be known for luxury cars, but it also makes vans, and it's finally bringing an electric van to the United States.

Scheduled to start production this summer, the 2024 Mercedes-Benz eSprinter is an all-electric version of the Sprinter full-size cargo van that's already a favorite of delivery services like FedEx and Amazon, as well as camper van converters. While the automaker has been selling electric vans in Europe since 2010, the new eSprinter is the first one aimed at the U.S. market.

[...] Mercedes will offer multiple configurations of body style and pack size in other markets, but for now, the U.S.-spec eSprinter is offered exclusively as a high-roof, long-wheelbase cargo van with a 113-kilowatt-hour battery pack. The rear-wheel drive van is powered by a single electric motor with 134 horsepower or 201 hp outputs, both with 295 pound-feet of torque. Full range figures aren't available yet, but Mercedes estimates 248.5 miles on the more lenient European  Worldwide harmonized Light vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP) testing cycle.

The battery cells use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry similar to what is used in some entry-level Tesla models. It's a somewhat cheaper alternative to other lithium-ion chemistries and, Mercedes notes, eliminates the use of cobalt and nickel, costly minerals that have generated concerns over pollution and human rights abuses related to their mining. A 115-kilowatt DC fast charger can take the pack from 10% to 80% in 42 minutes, according to Mercedes. A slower 9.6-kW AC charger is included as well.

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upstart writes:

Just three minutes of exposure to deep red light once a week, when delivered in the morning, can significantly improve declining eyesight:

Published in Scientific Reports, the study builds on the team's previous work*, which showed daily three-minute exposure to longwave deep red light 'switched on' energy producing mitochondria cells in the human retina, helping boost naturally declining vision.

For this latest study, scientists wanted to establish what effect a single three-minute exposure would have, while also using much lower energy levels than their previous studies. Furthermore, building on separate UCL research in flies** that found mitochondria display 'shifting workloads' depending on the time of day, the team compared morning exposure to afternoon exposure.

In summary, researchers found there was, on average, a 17% improvement in participants' colour contrast vision when exposed to three minutes of 670 nanometre (long wavelength) deep red light in the morning and the effects of this single exposure lasted for at least a week. However, when the same test was conducted in the afternoon, no improvement was seen.

[...] "This simple intervention applied at the population level would significantly impact on quality of life as people age and would likely result in reduced social costs that arise from problems associated with reduced vision."

[...] Professor Jeffery said: "Using a simple LED device once a week, recharges the energy system that has declined in the retina cells, rather like re-charging a battery.

"And morning exposure is absolutely key to achieving improvements in declining vision: as we have previously seen in flies, mitochondria have shifting work patterns and do not respond in the same way to light in the afternoon – this study confirms this."

Journal Reference:
Shinhmar, H., Hogg, C., Neveu, M. et al. Weeklong improved colour contrasts sensitivity after single 670 nm exposures associated with enhanced mitochondrial function [open]. Sci Rep 11, 22872 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-02311-1

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upstart writes:

A new experiment creates data-storing holograms from spiraling particles of light.:

Particles of twisted light that have been entangled using quantum mechanics offer a new approach to dense and secure data storage.

Holograms that produce 3-D images and serve as security features on credit cards are usually made with patterns laid down with beams of laser light. In recent years, physicists have found ways to create holograms with entangled photons instead. Now there is, literally, a new twist to the technology.

Entangled photons that travel in corkscrew paths have resulted in holograms that offer the possibility of dense and ultrasecure data encryption, researchers report in a study to appear in Physical Review Letters.

[...] Like any other photons, the twisted versions can be entangled so that they essentially act as one entity. Something that affects one of an entangled photon pair instantly affects the other, even if they are very far apart.

[...] Now the same approach has been applied to record data in holograms. Instead of transmitting information on multiple, twisted light channels, photon pairs with different amounts of twist create distinct sets of data in a single hologram. The more orbital angular momentum states involved, each with different amounts of twist, the more data researchers can pack into a hologram.

upstart writes:

The company's prototype is a smaller version of the nuclear reactor it's hoping to send to the Moon by 2029:

Rolls-Royce Holdings is getting into the spaceflight industry. The British aerospace engineering company says it's developing a micro-nuclear reactor that the company hopes could be a source of fuel for long trips to the Moon and Mars.

As humanity begins to venture back into space, with crewed missions scheduled to visit the Moon and Mars within the next two decades, the technology that moves us throughout the solar system will be a pivotal part of that journey. Last week, Rolls-Royce teased the design of its Rolls-Royce micro-reactor for spaceflight with a digital mockup posted to Twitter last week.

[...] Rolls-Royce Holdings announced in 2021 its intent to develop nuclear reactor technology, having obtained $600 million in public and private funding to develop its business. Since the nuclear reactor won't have to carry as much fuel as a chemical propulsion rocket, the entire system will be lighter allowing for faster travel or increased payloads. The company says that the reactor could serve as both a new form of propulsion and a power source for bases on the Moon or Mars, and Rolls-Royce claims that they will have a nuclear reactor ready to send to the Moon by 2029.

Rolls-Royce is not the only party working on rocket propulsion outside of traditional chemical fuel. NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced a collaboration to develop a thermal rocket engine that could improve the time it takes to get to deep space. Likewise, NASA had a successful test of a rotating detonation rocket engine, which uses less fuel and provides more thrust than current propulsion systems.

[...] A previous version of this article stated that Rolls-Royce is entering the nuclear reactor business. While this is the company's first public effort at space-based nuclear reactors, it has been supplying submarines with small reactors since the 1960s.

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upstart writes:

Recent X-rays of her lungs were so bad, doctors thought she had cancer:

A woman in Washington state is facing electronic home monitoring and possible jail time after spending the past year willfully violating multiple court orders to have her active, contagious case of tuberculosis treated and to stay in isolation while doing so.

Last week, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department announced that it was "monitoring" a case of active tuberculosis in a county woman who had refused treatment.

"Most people we contact are happy to get the treatment they need," Nigel Turner, division director of Communicable Disease Control, said in a press announcement last week. "Occasionally people refuse treatment and isolation. When that happens, we take steps to help keep the community safe."

But reporting by The News Tribune discovered that the woman's refusal to heed public health guidance is a long-standing challenge for local officials. Documents filed in the Pierce County Superior Court and reviewed by the Tribune found that the woman's first court order for involuntary isolation dates back more than a year ago, to January 19, 2022.

Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which mostly causes disease in the lungs, though it can invade other areas of the body. It can easily turn deadly without proper treatment. M. tuberculosis is transmitted through the air when an infected person coughs, sneezes, spits, or launches bacterial cells around them. Although transmission mostly occurs from close, prolonged contact, inhaling only a few of these microscopic germs is enough to spark an infection. According to the World Health Organization, tuberculosis is one of the top infectious disease killers in the world, causing 1.6 million deaths in 2021.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/netflix-taps-ai-image-synthesis-for-background-art-in-the-dog-and-the-boy/

Over the past year, generative AI has kicked off a wave of existential dread over potential machine-fueled job loss not seen since the advent of the industrial revolution. On Tuesday, Netflix reinvigorated that fear when it debuted a short film called Dog and Boy that utilizes AI image synthesis to help generate its background artwork.

Directed by Ryotaro Makihara, the three-minute animated short follows the story of a boy and his robotic dog through cheerful times, although the story soon takes a dramatic turn toward the post-apocalyptic. Along the way, it includes lush backgrounds apparently created as a collaboration between man and machine, credited to "AI (+Human)" in the end credit sequence.

[...] Netflix and the production company WIT Studio tapped Japanese AI firm Rinna for assistance with generating the images. They did not announce exactly what type of technology Rinna used to generate the artwork, but the process looks similar to a Stable Diffusion-powered "img2img" process than can take an image and transform it based on a written prompt.

Related:
ChatGPT Can't be Credited as an Author, Says World's Largest Academic Publisher
90% of Online Content Could be 'Generated by AI by 2025,' Expert Says
Getty Images Targets AI Firm For 'Copying' Photos
Controversy Erupts Over Non-consensual AI Mental Health Experiment
Microsoft's New AI Can Simulate Anyone's Voice With Three Seconds of Audio
AI Everything, Everywhere
Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI Sued for $9B in Damages Over Piracy
Adobe Stock Begins Selling AI-Generated Artwork
AI Systems Can't Patent Inventions, US Federal Circuit Court Confirms

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Dell is cutting 6,650 jobs amid falling demand for PCs:

Computer manufacturer Dell is set to cut about 6,650 jobs representing 5 percent of its global workforce, according to a report from Bloomberg. Announced in a memo on Monday, Dell Co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said that the company's previous cost-cutting measures, such as a pause on hiring and limitations on travel, have proved insufficient, and that the company is experiencing market conditions that "continue to erode with an uncertain future."

The layoffs were announced in the face of falling demand for PCs and laptops. Following a surge in PC sales during the global covid pandemic, most major computing manufacturers are now seeing a sharp drop in demand. Industry analyst IDC reported a 37 percent decline in Dell's computer shipments during its recent holiday quarter compared to the same three-month period the previous year. Bloomberg reports that 55 percent of Dell's revenue is generated from PC sales.

After the layoffs, Dell will have 39,000 fewer global employees compared to its peak in January 2020.

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot ChatGPT, has ramped up its hiring around the world, bringing on roughly 1,000 remote contractors over the past six months in regions like Latin America and Eastern Europe, according to people familiar with the matter:

About 60% of the contractors were hired to do what's called "data labeling" — creating massive sets of images, audio clips, and other information that can then be used to train artificial intelligence tools or autonomous vehicles.

The other 40% are computer programmers who are creating data for OpenAI's models to learn software engineering tasks. OpenAI's existing Codex product, launched in Aug. 2021, is designed to translate natural language into code.

[...] Previously, OpenAI trained its models on code scraped from GitHub, a repository site owned by its largest investor, Microsoft, which last week confirmed multi billion dollars in new funding first reported by Semafor. But in this case, OpenAI appears to be building a dataset that includes not just lines of code, but also the human explanations behind them written in natural language.

[...] Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, recently put the company's headcount at 375 people, a tiny number compared to the thousands of staff at tech giants like Google and Facebook working on artificial intelligence. "I know I'm not supposed to brag about OpenAI," he tweeted, touting the company's "talent density."

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Previously: Why OpenAI's Codex Won't Replace Coders

Related: OpenAI and Microsoft Announce Extended, Multi-Billion-Dollar Partnership

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A recent study shows that top-of-the-line Android phones sold in China are a total privacy nightmare:

New research suggests that users of top-of-the-line Android devices sold in China are getting their personal data pilfered left, right and center, according to new research. The collection, which is happening without notification or consent, could easily lead to the persistent tracking of users and the easy unmasking of their identities.

A study published by computer scientists at several different universities reveals that phone makers like Xiamoi, OnePlus, and Oppo Realme, some of the most popular in China, are all collecting massive amounts of sensitive user data via their respective operating systems, as are a variety of apps that come pre-installed on the phones. The data is also getting hoovered up by an assortment of other private actors, and researchers worry that the devices in question "send a worrying amount of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) not only to the device vendor but also to service providers like Baidu and to Chinese mobile network operators." Given private industry's close relationship with the Chinese government, it's more than enough to raise the specter of broader surveillance concerns for mobile users in China.

The PII being collected includes pretty sensitive stuff, including basic user information like phone numbers and persistent device identifiers (IMEI and MAC addresses, advertising IDs, and more), geolocation data (which, obviously, would allow an observer to unmask your physical location), and data related to "social connections"—such as contacts, their phone numbers, and phone and text metadata, the study found. In other words, the recipients of this data would have a pretty clear picture of who is using a particular device, where they are doing it, and who they're talking to. Phone numbers in China are also tied to an individual "citizen ID," meaning that it's inextricably tied to the user's real, legal identity.

upstart writes:

Scientists Simulate the Human GI Tract in Mice:

A team of biologists and pathologists in Ohio has successfully modeled the human gastrointestinal (GI) tract in rodents. By planting tiny balls of human intestinal tissue into the abdomens of mice and allowing those tissues to take root, the scientists have created a working environment in which they can study GI physiology and immunology without human test subjects.

[...] Thanks to pluripotent stem cells' ability to become any bodily cell, the team could "feed" them a specific growth protein until they became intestinal cells. In less than a month, these cells had formed tiny balls of tissue known as organoids.

Next, the team used Busulfan (a common chemotherapy drug) and genetic engineering to suppress the immune systems of their test mice. This would ensure the lab-grown organoids wouldn't be rejected. The scientists transplanted one organoid next to each test mouse's kidneys, then monitored the organoids' growth over the span of 20 weeks. By the end of this period, the organoids had grown to the size of a pea. Better yet, they contained roughly 20 types of human immune cells, mimicking the immune population in the human GI tract.

Journal Reference:
Bouffi, Carine, Wikenheiser-Brokamp, Kathryn A., Chaturvedi, Praneet, et al. In vivo development of immune tissue in human intestinal organoids transplanted into humanized mice [open], Nature Biotechnology (DOI: 10.1038/s41587-022-01558-x)

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