A cubic millimeter of brain tissue may not sound like much. But considering that that tiny square contains 57,000 cells, 230 millimeters of blood vessels, and 150 million synapses, all amounting to 1,400 terabytes of data, Harvard and Google researchers have just accomplished something stupendous.

Led by Jeff Lichtman, the Jeremy R. Knowles Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and newly appointed dean of science, the Harvard team helped create the largest 3D brain reconstruction to date, showing in vivid detail each cell and its web of connections in a piece of temporal cortex about half the size of a rice grain. — Read More

The Study

AI is a lever that becomes a lens

I remember when I first saw GPT-3 output writing: that line of letters hammered out one by one, rolling horizontally across the screen in its distinctive staccato. It struck both wonder and terror into my heart.

I felt ecstatic that computers could finally talk back to me. But I also felt a heavy sense of dread. I’m a writer—what would happen to me? 

We’ve all had this experience with AI over the last year and a half. It is an emotional rollercoaster. It feels like it threatens our conception of ourselves.  — Read More

It is estimated that 180,000 Americans live with quadriplegia, and each year, an additional ~18,000 suffer a paralyzing spinal cord injury. We live in a digital society where‬‭ much of our work, entertainment, and social lives rely heavily on our use of computers and‬‭ smart devices. People with quadriplegia often find that their needs to engage seamlessly with the digital world go unmet, leading to decreased independence, isolation, and financial challenges. Our goal is to provide a high-performance interface that will enhance the control of digital devices for people with quadriplegia, unlocking their personal and professional potential.

The first step toward this goal was achieved just over 100 days ago at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix Arizona, where Noland Arbaugh, the first participant of the PRIME Study*, received his Neuralink implant (Link). As noted in our last blog post, the surgery went extremely well, and he was able to go home the following day.

The aim of the PRIME Study is to demonstrate that the Link is safe and useful in daily life. We will monitor its technical performance remotely and quantify any benefit it provides by timing the duration of independent use and assessing how it affects study participants’ quality of life. — Read More

In the dynamic field of artificial intelligence, the quest for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) represents a pinnacle of innovation, promising to redefine the interplay between technology and human intellect. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, a trailblazer in AI technology, recently brought this topic to the forefront of technological discourse. During a forum at Stanford University, Huang posited that AGI might be realized within the next five years, a projection that hinges critically on the definition of AGI itself.

According to Huang, if AGI is characterized by its ability to successfully pass a diverse range of human tests, then this milestone in AI development is not merely aspirational but could be nearing actualization. This statement from a leading figure in the AI industry not only sparks interest but also prompts a reassessment of our current understanding of artificial intelligence and its potential trajectory in the near future. — Read More

The first human being to receive a brain chip from Elon Musk’s Neuralink can apparently control a computer mouse just by thinking, according to Musk.

…”Progress is good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of,” Musk said. “Patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking.”

…Last month, Musk shared in a post on X that Neuralink had successfully performed the transplant surgery on a human for the first time on Jan. 28. — Read More

The rapid progression of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, facilitated by the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs), has resulted in their widespread application to provide human assistance across diverse industries. This trend has sparked significant discourse centered around the ever-increasing need for LLM-based AI systems to function among humans as part of human society, sharing human values, especially as these systems are deployed in high-stakes settings (e.g., healthcare, autonomous driving, etc.). Towards this end, neurosymbolic AI systems are attractive due to their potential to enable easy-to-understand and interpretable interfaces for facilitating value-based decision-making, by leveraging explicit representations of shared values. In this paper, we introduce substantial extensions to Khaneman’s System one/two framework and propose a neurosymbolic computational framework called Value-Inspired AI (VAI). It outlines the crucial components essential for the robust and practical implementation of VAI systems, aiming to represent and integrate various dimensions of human values. Finally, we further offer insights into the current progress made in this direction and outline potential future directions for the field.  – Read More

#human

We explore the intriguing possibility that theory of mind (ToM), or the uniquely human ability to impute unobservable mental states to others, might have spontaneously emerged in large language models (LLMs). We designed 40 false-belief tasks, considered a gold standard in testing ToM in humans, and administered them to several LLMs. Each task included a false-belief scenario, three closely matched true-belief controls, and the reversed versions of all four. Smaller and older models solved no tasks; GPT-3-davinci-003 (from November 2022) and ChatGPT-3.5-turbo (from March 2023) solved 20% of the tasks; ChatGPT-4 (from June 2023) solved 75% of the tasks, matching the performance of six-year-old children observed in past studies. These findings suggest the intriguing possibility that ToM, previously considered exclusive to humans, may have spontaneously emerged as a byproduct of LLMs’ improving language skills.  – Read More

Artificial intelligence has entered every aspect of our technological lives in the past few years, from chatbots to catflaps — but one company wants AI to enter your dreams.

Neurotechnology startup Prophetic has a new AI model called Morpheus-1 that it claims can help people both enter a lucid dream state and stabilize that dream.

Lucid dreaming is a state of dreaming where the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming and often has some control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment. It was the main plot device in Christopher Nolan’s confusing 2010 modern classic Inception.  – Read More