Enlarge / The back of the iPhone 13 mini. (credit: Samuel Axon) There are already four American-accented English voices for Siri, but Apple will add a fifth in iOS 15.4. The new voice aims to provide a gender-neutral option for the first time, as reported by Axios. The voice is labeled “Voice 5” in the Settings […]
Enlarge / Plasma inside the tokamak at the EPFL. (credit: EPFL) As the world waits for construction of the largest fusion reactor yet, called ITER, smaller reactors with similar designs are still running. These reactors, called tokamaks, help us test both hardware and software. The hardware testing helps us refine things like the materials used […]
Enlarge / Sony AI has trained a new AI called GT Sophy to be extremely good at Gran Turismo . (credit: Clive Rose – Gran Turismo/Gran Turismo via Getty Images) A team of researchers at Sony AI have used deep reinforcement learning to teach an artificial intelligence to play Gran Turismo at a world-class level. […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images ) Training AIs remains very processor-intensive, in part because traditional processing architectures are poor matches for the sorts of neural networks that are widely used. This has led to the development of what has been termed neuromorphic computing hardware, which attempts to model the behavior of biological neurons in hardware. But […]
Enlarge / UVeye’s technology uses scanners and AI to diagnose defects. (credit: UVeye) Can you train an AI to take a breath, wince, and remark, “Well, it’s going to cost you”? That’s probably easier than teaching one to diagnose problems with your car after a visual scan of its undercarriage, and yet the latter is […]
(credit: MIT Press) “What makes machines, animals, and people smart?” asks the subtitle of Paul Thagard’s new book. Not “Are computers smarter than humans? or “will computers ever be smarter than humans?” or even “are computers and animals conscious, sentient, or self-aware (whatever any of that might mean)?” And that’s unfortunate, becausethough most people are […]
Enlarge (credit: Westend61 | Getty Images) Have you ever had an otherwise perfect photo ruined by someone who moved too quickly and caused a blur? Scientists have the same issue while recording images of proteins that change their structure in response to light. This process is common in nature, so for years researchers have tried […]
Enlarge (credit: MirageC | Getty Images) Algorithms play a growing role in our lives, even as their flaws are becoming more apparent: a Michigan man wrongly accused of fraud had to file for bankruptcy; automated screening tools disproportionately harm people of color who want to buy a home or rent an apartment ; Black Facebook […]
Enlarge / Top row: the hallucination and actual structure. Bottom row: the two structures superimposed. (credit: Anishchenko et. al.) Chemically, proteins are just a long string of amino acids. Their amazing properties come about because that chain can fold up into a complex, three-dimensional shape. So understanding the rules that govern this folding can not […]
Enlarge / With extra-wide tracks and a bunch of other clever features, the Benthic Rover II can roam the seafloor for years at a time. (credit: Madison Pobis | MBARI) The Benthic Rover II is the size of a compact car, although it rocks fat treads, making it more like a scientific tank. That, along […]