Comprehending that other people might think differently from you is a form of intelligence known as theory of mind – what does it mean that the artificial intelligence behind ChatGPT can do as well on tests of it as a 9-year-old child?
The artificial intelligence model behind the ChatGPT chatbot can solve tasks used to test whether people can understand different perspectives, a key sign of intelligence known as theory of mind. Its ability – which seems to have spontaneously emerged rather than being something the AI was trained to do – is comparable to that of a 9-year-old child. However, whether this shows that the AI is using theory of mind …
or is finding other ways to pass the tests isn’t known
“What [it] is doing is demonstrating a young child’s capacity to pass some of these benchmark tasks, and that’s not trivial,” says Ian Apperly at the University of Birmingham, UK, who wasn’t involved in the work. Read More
Monthly Archives: February 2023
Researchers shrink camera to the size of a salt grain
Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have developed an ultracompact camera the size of a coarse grain of salt. The system relies on a technology called a metasurface, which is studded with 1.6 million cylindrical posts and can be produced much like a computer chip. Image courtesy of the researchers
Micro-sized cameras have great potential to spot problems in the human body and enable sensing for super-small robots, but past approaches captured fuzzy, distorted images with limited fields of view.
Now, researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have overcome these obstacles with an ultracompact camera the size of a coarse grain of salt. The new system can produce crisp, full-color images on par with a conventional compound camera lens 500,000 times larger in volume, the researchers reported in a paper published Nov. 29 in Nature Communications. Read More
It’s Time to Embrace Intelligent Document Processing
Technological advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) have made it possible for businesses to unearth meaningful insights from unstructured documents more efficiently than ever.
A growing number of modern enterprises are embracing intelligent document processing (IDP) — a technique that leverages AI technologies such as natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), to transform unstructured and semi-structured data into usable information.
It’s certainly a step in the right direction. Companies must take advantage of AI-powered data extraction tools to process documents efficiently. It’s faster, more cost-effective, and more scalable. Read More
Lockheed Martin’s new jet was flown by AI for 17 hours in world first
Lockheed Martin, and the United States Air Force, are currently developing an AI-powered F-16 variant called the VISTA X-62A.
In December 2021, during a test flight from California’s Edwards Air Force Base, a special Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jet trainer called the VISTA X-62A became the first tactical aircraft to be controlled by AI.
This could be a big deal, as new pilots must be trained to fly high-performance planes in various conditions. Because making and maintaining fighter planes is so expensive, air forces today are much smaller than they used to be. This makes it hard to set aside enough of these “flying thoroughbreds” for training. Read More
GitHub’s Copilot for Business is now generally available
GitHub today announced that Copilot for Business, the company’s $19/month enterprise version of its AI-powered code completion tool, is now generally available, after a short beta phase that started last December. Copilot for Business adds features like license management, organization-wide policy management and additional privacy features. Until now, you had to work with GitHub’s sales organization to sign up for the business version, but now there is a self-serve option as well.
“[This] effectively completes our v1 Copilot story,” GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke told me. “We announced the preview in June 2021 — which feels like ages ago — and then had the general availability last summer. Now we are ready to roll it out to organizations, companies, teams, enterprises — really everybody. In fact, we already have more than 400 organizations that are on Copilot for Business at launch and we see tremendous interest.” Read More
Researchers Discover a More Flexible Approach to Machine Learning
“Liquid” neural nets, based on a worm’s nervous system, can transform their underlying algorithms on the fly, giving them unprecedented speed and adaptability.
Artificial intelligence researchers have celebrated a string of successes with neural networks, computer programs that roughly mimic how our brains are organized. But despite rapid progress, neural networks remain relatively inflexible, with little ability to change on the fly or adjust to unfamiliar circumstances.
In 2020, two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology led a team that introduced a new kind of neural network based on real-life intelligence — but not our own. Instead, they took inspiration from the tiny roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans, to produce what they called liquid neural networks. After a breakthrough last year, the novel networks may now be versatile enough to supplant their traditional counterparts for certain applications. Read More
Copyright won’t solve creators’ Generative AI problem
The media spectacle of generative AI (in which AI companies’ breathless claims of their software’s sorcerous powers are endlessly repeated) has understandably alarmed many creative workers, a group that’s already traumatized by extractive abuse by media and tech companies.
Even though the claims about “AI” are overblown and overhyped, creators are right to be alarmed. Their bosses would like nothing more than to fire them and replace them with pliable software. The “creative” industries talk a lot about how audiences should be paying for creative works, but the companies that bring creators’ works to market treat their own payments to creators as a cost to be minimized. Read More
The AI Bubble of 2023
I’ve spent 25 years watching, trading and investing in the stock market. The repetition of patterns is amazing. In every generation we see new bubbles, which form when a new innovation comes along and everyone gets excited about the future. The crowd gets swept away on a wave of madness, fueled by the recent gains they’ve seen for themselves (or for others) and all other considerations go out the window. Get me in, I don’t care how, I can’t miss out on this.
In December, ChatGPT began to spread like wildfire on social media. A handful of art-related AI programs like DALL-E 2 also began to proliferate on Instagram and some of the more image-oriented sites, but ChatGPT captured the imaginations (and nightmares) of the chattering class like nothing else we’ve ever seen.
Wall Street has begun to take notice of the AI theme for the stock market. It should be noted that trading programs based on earlier versions of AI have been around for decades, so the concept is a very comfortable one among analysts, traders and bankers at traditional firms. But now that there is retail investor interest in riding the wave, you’re going to see the assembly line lurch into action very rapidly. The switch has already been thrown. They’re pulling up their overalls and rolling up their sleeves. Funds, products, IPOs and strategies are being formulated in the dozens as we speak. This will hit the hundreds before we’re through. It’s merely stage one. Read More
The AI photo app trend has already fizzled, new data shows
Is the AI photo app trend already over? Over the past several months, AI-powered photo apps have been going viral on the App Store as consumers explored AI powered–experiences like Lensa AI’s “magic avatars” feature and other apps promising to turn text into images using AI tech. But new data from app intelligence firm Apptopia indicates consumer interest in AI photo apps has fallen as quickly as it rose.
The firm analyzed top AI photo apps worldwide, tracking both their download growth and in-app consumer spending.
In its analysis shared with TechCrunch, Apptopia examined the leading AI photo app Lensa AI and others, including Voi, Remini, Pixelup, Fotor, Wonder, FacePlay, Aiby, FaceApp, Gradient, Dawn AI, Facetune, Prequel, Voilà AI Artist, New Profile Pic Avatar Maker, and Meitu. (Voi was a later arrival, launching on December 7.)
Apptopia found that this group of AI apps first began to take off around Thanksgiving, then hit their peak in terms of both downloads and in-app purchases around mid-December. Read More
Engines of power: Electricity, AI, and general-purpose, military transformations
Major theories of military innovation focus on relatively narrow technological developments, such as nuclear weapons or aircraft carriers. Arguably the most profound military implications of technological change, however, come from more fundamental advances arising from ‘general-purpose technologies’ (GPTs), such as the steam engine, electricity, and the computer. Building from scholarship on GPTs and economic growth, we argue that the effects of GPTs on military effectiveness are broad, delayed, and shaped by indirect productivity spillovers. We label this impact pathway a ‘general-purpose military transformation’ (GMT). Contrary to studies that predict GPTs will rapidly diffuse to militaries around the world and narrow gaps in capabilities, we show that GMTs can reinforce existing balances if leading militaries have stronger linkages to a robust industrial base in the GPT than challengers. Evidence from electricity’s impact on military affairs, covering the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, supports our propositions about GMTs. To probe the explanatory value of our theory and account for alternative interpretations, we compare findings from the electricity case to the military impacts of submarine technology, a non-GPT that emerged in the same period. Finally, we apply our findings to contemporary debates about artificial intelligence, which could plausibly cause a profound GMT. Read More
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