Google DeepMind’s New Generative Mannequin Makes Tremendous Mario-Like Video games From Scratch
Will Douglas Heaven | MIT Expertise Assessment
“OpenAI’s latest reveal of its gorgeous generative mannequin Sora pushed the envelope of what’s potential with text-to-video. Now Google DeepMind brings us text-to-video video games. The brand new mannequin, known as Genie, can take a brief description, a hand-drawn sketch, or a photograph and switch it right into a playable online game within the fashion of basic 2D platformers like Tremendous Mario Bros.”
Determine Rides the Humanoid Robotic Hype Wave to $2.6B Valuation
Brian Heater | TechCrunch
“[On Thursday] Determine confirmed long-standing rumors that it’s been elevating more cash than God. The Bay Space-based robotics agency introduced a $675 million Sequence B spherical that values the startup at $2.6 billion post-money. The lineup of buyers is equally spectacular. It contains Microsoft, OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Jeff Bezos (by way of Bezos Expeditions), Parkway Enterprise Capital, Intel Capital, Align Ventures and ARK Make investments. It’s a mind-boggling sum of cash for what stays a still-young startup, with an 80-person headcount. That final bit will nearly actually change with this spherical.”
How First Contact With Whale Civilization Might Unfold
Ross Andersen | The Atlantic
“One evening final winter, over drinks in downtown Los Angeles, the biologist David Gruber instructed me that human beings may sometime discuss to sperm whales. …Gruber mentioned that they hope to report billions of the animals’ clicking sounds with floating hydrophones, after which to decipher the sounds’ that means utilizing neural networks. I used to be instantly intrigued. For years, I had been toiling away on a guide concerning the seek for cosmic civilizations with whom we’d talk. This one was proper right here on Earth.”
RIP Apple Automobile. This Is Why It Died
Aarian Marshall | Wired
“After a decade of rumors, secretive developments, government entrances and exits, and pivots, Apple reportedly instructed staff yesterday that its automotive venture, internally known as ‘Venture Titan,’ isn’t any extra. …’Prototypes are straightforward, quantity manufacturing is tough, optimistic money circulation is excruciating,’ Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted just a few years again. It’s a lesson that would-be automotive firms—in addition to Tesla—appear to study many times. Even after a decade of labor, Apple by no means fairly received to step one.”
Apple Revolutionized the Auto Business With out Promoting a Single Automobile
Matteo Wong | The Atlantic
“Apple is so huge, and its units so pervasive, that it didn’t have to promote a single car to be able to rework the auto business—not by way of batteries and engines, however by way of software program. The power to hyperlink your smartphone to your automotive’s contact display screen, which Apple pioneered 10 years in the past, is now customary. Just about each main automotive firm has taken an Apple-inspired method to know-how, to such a level that ‘smartphone on wheels’ has grow to be an business cliché. The Apple Automobile already exists, and also you’ve nearly actually ridden in a single.”
Bitcoin Surges Towards All-Time Excessive as Everybody Forgets What Occurred Final Time
Matt Novak | Gizmodo
“Bitcoin’s worth surged previous $63,000 after which receded only a bit underneath on Wednesday, reaching a stage the crypto coin hasn’t seen since November 2021. Whereas it nonetheless has just a little option to climb to succeed in an all-time excessive of $68,000, that stage feels comfortably inside attain. And if you happen to’re feeling uneasy concerning the rally, given what occurred two years in the past, you’re not alone.”
Excessive-Velocity Humanoid Feels Like a Step Change in Robotics
Loz Blain | New Atlas
“You’ve seen a ton of movies of humanoid robots—however this one feels totally different. It’s Sanctuary’s Phoenix bot, with ‘the world’s finest robotic fingers,’ working completely autonomously at near-human speeds—a lot sooner than Tesla’s or Determine’s robots.
The Mindblowing Expertise of a Chatbot That Solutions Immediately
Steven Levy | Wired
“Groq makes chips optimized to hurry up the massive language fashions which have captured our imaginations and stoked our fears prior to now yr. …The expertise of utilizing a chatbot that doesn’t want even just a few seconds to generate a response is stunning. I typed in a simple request, as you do with LLMs lately: Write a musical about AI and dentistry. I had hardly stopped typing earlier than my display screen was full of an in depth blueprint for the two-act Mysteries of the Mouth.”
SECURITY
Right here Come the AI Worms
Matt Burgess | Wired
“In an illustration of the dangers of linked, autonomous AI ecosystems, a bunch of researchers have created certainly one of what they declare are the primary generative AI worms—which may unfold from one system to a different, doubtlessly stealing knowledge or deploying malware within the course of. ‘It principally implies that now you’ve gotten the flexibility to conduct or to carry out a brand new sort of cyberattack that hasn’t been seen earlier than,’ says Ben Nassi, a Cornell Tech researcher behind the analysis.”