Category: Scoop.it

 

The poisonous birds inhabit one of Earth’s most pristine rainforests, a place as exotic as no other in the world. Hearing the words poisonous and bird coupled will be an eye-opener for most. But poisonous birds actually exist. And now, more species have been discovered in New Guinea’s jungles.

“We managed to identify two new species of poisonous birds on our most recent trip. These birds contain a neurotoxin that they can both tolerate and store in their feathers,” says Knud Jønsson of the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

Jønsson and fellow UCPH researcher, Kasun Bodawatta have been on an Indiana Jones-like research trip, risking life and limb to regularly warring tribespeople and ex-cannibals amidst the jaw-dropping biodiversity of New Guinea’s rainforest. Here they captured two new bird species, each of which has developed the ability to consume toxic food and turn that into a poison of their own.

The other new poisonous bird discovered is the The regent whistler (Pachycephala schlegelii). The two birds that the researchers discovered to be poisonous are the regent whistler (Pachycephala schlegelii), a species that belongs to a family of birds with a wide distribution and easily recognizable song well-known from across the Indo-Pacific region, and the rufous-naped bellbird (Aleadryas rufinucha).

Read the full article at: science.ku.dk

New Age, a Dhaka-based leading English language daily newspaper, is a major source of news of Bangladesh and international affairs…

Read the full article at: www.newagebd.net

Creating brain-like computers with minimal energy requirements would revolutionize nearly every aspect of modern life. Funded by the Department of Energy, Quantum Materials for Energy Efficient Neuromorphic Computing (Q-MEEN-C) — a nationwide consortium led by the University of California San Diego — has been at the forefront of this research. 

 

UC San Diego Assistant Professor of Physics Alex Frañó is co-director of Q-MEEN-C and thinks of the center’s work in phases. In the first phase, he worked closely with President Emeritus of University of California and Professor of Physics Robert Dynes, as well as Rutgers Professor of Engineering Shriram Ramanathan. Together, their teams were successful in finding ways to create or mimic the properties of a single brain element (such as a neuron or synapse) in a quantum material.

 

Now, in phase two, new research from Q-MEEN-C, published in Nano Letters, shows that electrical stimuli passed between neighboring electrodes can also affect non-neighboring electrodes. Known as non-locality, this discovery is a crucial milestone in the journey toward new types of devices that mimic brain functions known as neuromorphic computing.

 

Read the full article at: today.ucsd.edu

 

New research from UM and its partners suggests artificial intelligence can match the top 1% of human thinkers on a standard test for creativity.

 

The study was directed by Dr. Erik Guzik, an assistant clinical professor in UM’s College of Business. He and his partners used the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, a well-known tool used for decades to assess human creativity. The researchers submitted eight responses generated by ChatGPT, the application powered by the GPT-4 artificial intelligence engine. They also submitted answers from a control group of 24 UM students taking Guzik’s entrepreneurship and personal finance classes. These scores were compared with 2,700 college students nationally who took the TTCT in 2016. All submissions were scored by Scholastic Testing Service, which didn’t know AI was involved.

 

The results placed ChatGPT in elite company for creativity. The AI application was in the top percentile for fluency — the ability to generate a large volume of ideas — and for originality — the ability to come up with new ideas. The AI slipped a bit — to the 97th percentile — for flexibility, the ability to generate different types and categories of ideas. “For ChatGPT and GPT-4, we showed for the first time that it performs in the top 1% for originality,” Guzik said. “That was new.” He was gratified to note that some of his UM students also performed in the top 1%. However, ChatGTP outperformed the vast majority of college students nationally.

 

Guzik tested the AI and his students during spring semester. He was assisted in the work by Christian Gilde of UM Western and Christian Byrge of Vilnius University. The researchers presented their work in May at the Southern Oregon University Creativity Conference.

“We were very careful at the conference to not interpret the data very much,” Guzik said. “We just presented the results. But we shared strong evidence that AI seems to be developing creative ability on par with or even exceeding human ability.”

 

Guzik said he asked ChatGPT what it would indicate if it performed well on the TTCT. The AI gave a strong answer, which they shared at the conference: “ChatGPT told us we may not fully understand human creativity, which I believe is correct,” he said. “It also suggested we may need more sophisticated assessment tools that can differentiate between human and AI-generated ideas.”

He said the TTCT is protected proprietary material, so ChatGPT couldn’t “cheat” by accessing information about the test on the internet or in a public database.

 

Guzik has long been interested in creativity. As a seventh grader growing up in the small town of Palmer, Massachusetts, he was in a program for talented-and-gifted students. That experience introduced him to the Future Problem Solving process developed by Ellis Paul Torrance, the pioneering psychologist who also created the TTCT. Guzik said he fell in love with brainstorming at that time and how it taps into human imagination, and he remains active with the Future Problem Solving organization — even meeting his wife at one of its conferences.

Read the full article at: www.umt.edu

Maya Bodnick, a student at Harvard University, conducted an experiment to determine if GPT-4, an AI language model, was capable of passing college exams in the humanities and social sciences. Bodnick had GPT-4 write seven essays on topics such as economic concepts, presidentialism in Latin America, and a literary analysis. She then submitted the essays to professors for grading, without revealing whether they were written by herself or GPT-4.

The results were impressive, with GPT-4 receiving grades ranging from A to B-. It achieved an average GPA of 3.57, which Bodnick called “respectable.” She noted that GPT-4 wrote all the essays based on the given prompts.

 

Bodnick disclosed that she submitted GPT-4’s answers without any edits, but with two exceptions. First, she combined multiple responses to meet the word count requirement, as GPT-4 could only generate up to 750 words at a time. Second, she asked the evaluators to disregard any missing citations that GPT-4 couldn’t provide, which would normally be essential for academic work.

The evaluators praised GPT-4’s essays, commenting on their clarity, well-structured arguments, and detailed analysis. Only one essay received a lower grade, with the evaluator noting a flowery writing style and a lack of consideration for positive aspects of presidentialism and economic factors.

 

Bodnick believes that GPT-4’s performance suggests AI-generated essays could receive favorable grades at most universities, though possibly lower at institutions such as Princeton or UC Berkeley. She suggests that AI technology could revolutionize the teaching and learning methods in the humanities and social sciences. Cheating on essays has become easier, and with advancements in technology, including citation capabilities, it may become even more challenging to detect plagiarism.

 

As for the future, Bodnick questions the effectiveness of text detection systems, as OpenAI’s detector was withdrawn due to accuracy issues. She suggests that exams should involve personal conversations to mitigate concerns about AI writing essays. The fact that GPT-4 passed her exams hints at potential developments in Bodnick’s future field.professional field.

Read the full article at: ts2.space

 

Are we on the brink of an AI apocalypse? According to a recent survey, most U.S. citizens share Elon Musk’s concerns about the potential threat artificial intelligence poses to humanity’s future. 

 

What a poll shows: A majority of Americans, 61% to be exact, believe that the fast-paced growth of AI could endanger the future of humanity and over two-thirds expressed concerns about its potential negative impacts, reported Reuters, citing a survey conducted by Ipsos.  As per the findings, the proportion of U.S. citizens who anticipate negative consequences from AI is three times higher than those who don’t, with 61% of the 4,415 adults surveyed expressing concerns over the potential hazard of AI and only 22% disagreeing. Rest 17% of the people were uncertain. 

 

The aforementioned online survey included 4,415 U.S. adults and has a credible interval with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points, the report stated. 

 

Why It’s Important: Landon Klein, director of U.S. policy of the Future of Life Institute, which is behind the “open letter” demanding a six-month pause in AI research “more powerful” than OpenAI’s GPT-4, said that the poll’s findings show that “a broad swath of Americans worry about the negative effects of AI,” the report noted.  “We view the current moment similar to the beginning of the nuclear era, and we have the benefit of public perception that is consistent with the need to take action.”

 

Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015, along with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and over 1000 others, signed an open letter. Although Musk’s intention behind signing the letter has been questioned, considering the tech billionaire’s plans to launch his own chatGPT-rival called “TruthGPT.” 

 

Benzinga research has found that the exponential growth of OpenAI’s chatGPT has made AI a ubiquitous part of everyday life, leading to a surge of interest in the field and sparking an AI arms race between tech giants like Microsoft Corporation and Alphabet Inc., eager to showcase their own AI breakthroughs. 

 

In May 2023, Geoffrey Hinton, who recently left his job at Google citing the need to talk more freely about the risks posed by AI, stated that risks posed by AI to humanity could be more pressing than those of climate change. However, others like the godfather of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, Bill Gates and Jürgen Schmidhuber have a different view and disagree with the sentiment.  

Read the full article at: ktvz.com

 

Recently, researchers have published an important white paper identifying activities in particle physics where burgeoning quantum-computing technologies could be applied. The paper, authored by experts from CERN, DESY, IBM Quantum and over 30 other organisations, is now available on ArXiv.

 

With quantum-computing technologies rapidly improving, the paper sets out where these could be applied within particle physics, in order to help tackle computing challenges related not only to the Large Hadron Collider’s ambitious upgrade program, but also to other colliders and low energy experiments world-wide.

The paper was produced by a working group set up at the first-of-its-kind “QT4HEP” conference, held at CERN last November. Over the last eight months, the 46 people in this working group have worked hard to identify areas where quantum-computing technologies could provide a significant boon.

 

The areas identified relate to both theoretical and experimental particle physics. The paper then maps these areas to “problem formulations” in quantum computing. This is an important step in ensuring that the particle physics community is well positioned to benefit from the massive potential of breakthrough new quantum computers when they come online.

 

“Quantum computing is very promising, but not every problem in particle physics is suited to this mode of computing,” says Alberto Di Meglio, head of the CERN Quantum Technology Initiative (CERN QTI). “It’s important to ensure that we are ready and that we can accurately identify the areas where these technologies have the potential to be most useful for our community.”

 

Read the full article at: quantum.cern

 

The process of reconstructing experiences from human brain activity offers a unique lens into how the brain interprets and represents the world. Recently, the Google team and international collaborators introduced a method for reconstructing music from brain activity alone, captured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This approach uses either music retrieval or the MusicLM music generation model conditioned on embeddings derived from fMRI data. The generated music resembles the musical stimuli that human subjects experienced, with respect to semantic properties like genre, instrumentation, and mood. The scientists investigate the relationship between different components of MusicLM and brain activity through a voxel-wise encoding modeling analysis. Furthermore, they analyze which brain regions represent information derived from purely textual descriptions of music stimuli.

Read the full article at: google-research.github.io