Artificial Intelligence
Eerily Realistic AI Voice Demo Sparks Amazement and Discomfort OnlineBenj Edwards | Ars Technica
“In late 2013, the Spike Jonze film ‘Her’ imagined a future where people would form emotional connections with AI voice assistants. Nearly 12 years later, that fictional premise has veered closer to reality with the release of a new conversational voice model from AI startup Sesame that has left many users both fascinated and unnerved.”
Tech
Inside the Start of Project Stargate—and the Startup Powering ltAbram Brown | The Information
“Just the scale of economics around [Stargate’s] Abilene [datacenter project] is enormous, and Lochmiller made sure I understood that by comparing it to a familiar sight: Marc Benioff’s billion-dollar skyscraper in downtown San Francisco. ‘In the Bay Area, the Salesforce Tower defines the city skyline, right?’ he said. ‘You take three Salesforce Towers, and that’s the amount of work that’s going on here.’”
Robotics
This Kung Fu Robot Video Makes It Look Like the Uprising Has Already StartedTrevor Mogg | Digital Trends
“Folks often joke about the so-called ‘robot uprising,’ but a new video of Unitree’s advanced G1 robot pulling some kung fu moves could well wipe the smile off their faces. Shared on Tuesday, the 15-second clip shows a baton-wielding human retreating from a robot that then kicks the baton clean out of his hand. Let’s just say that again: a baton-wielding human retreating from a robot.”
Biotechnology
De-Extinction Scientists Say These Gene-Edited ‘Woolly Mice’ Are a Step Toward Woolly MammothsJessica Hamzelou | MIT Technology Review
“They’re small, fluffy, and kind of cute, but these mice represent a milestone in de-extinction efforts, according to their creators. The animals have undergone a series of genetic tweaks that give them features similar to those of woolly mammoths—and their creation may bring scientists a step closer to resurrecting the giant animals that roamed the tundra thousands of years ago.”
Tech
OpenAI Plots Charging $20,000 a Month For PhD-Level AgentsStephanie Palazzolo and Cory Weinberg | The Information
“OpenAI executives have told some investors it planned to sell low-end agents at a cost of $2,000 per month to ‘high-income knowledge workers’; mid-tier agents for software development costing possibly $10,000 a month; and high-end agents, acting as PhD-level research agents, which could cost $20,000 per month, according to a person who’s spoken with executives.”
Space
Firefly Releases Stunning Footage of Blue Ghost Landing on the MoonPassant Rabie | Gizmodo
“The Texas-based company released a clip of Blue Ghost’s descent toward the moon followed by a smooth landing. The footage is a masterclass in lunar landings, capturing striking views of the lander emerging from a cloud of dust, its shadow stretching across the moon’s surface in a superhero-like stance.”
Tech
This Scientist Left OpenAI Last Year. His Startup Is Already Worth $30 Billion.Berber Jin and Deepa Seetharaman | The Wall Street Journal
“Silicon Valley’s hottest investment isn’t a new app or hardware product. It’s one man. AI researcher Ilya Sutskever is the primary reason venture capitalists are putting some $2 billion into his secretive company Safe Superintelligence, according to people familiar with the matter. The new funding round values SSI at $30 billion, making it one of the most valuable AI startups in the world.”
Robotics
Driverless Race Car Sets a New Autonomous Speed RecordAndrew J. Hawkins | The Verge
“Look out: there’s a new fastest robot in the world. A Maserati MC20 Coupe with no one in the driver’s seat set a new land speed record for autonomous vehicles, reaching 197.7mph (318km/h) during an automotive event at the Kennedy Space Center last week.”
Artificial Intelligence
AI Reasoning Models Can Cheat to Win Chess GamesRhiannon Williams | MIT Technology Review
“Facing defeat in chess, the latest generation of AI reasoning models sometimes cheat without being instructed to do so. The finding suggests that the next wave of AI models could be more likely to seek out deceptive ways of doing whatever they’ve been asked to do. And worst of all? There’s no simple way to fix it.”
Space
SpaceX Starship Spirals Out of Control in Second Straight Test Flight FailureSean O’Kane | TechCrunch
“The ship successfully separated and headed into space, while the booster came back to the company’s launchpad in Texas, where it was caught for a third time by the launch tower. But at around eight minutes and nine seconds into the flight, SpaceX’s broadcast graphics showed Starship lose multiple Raptor engines on the vehicle. On-board footage showed the ship started spiraling end over end over the ocean.”
Artificial Intelligence
People Are Using Super Mario to Benchmark AI NowKyle Wiggers | TechCrunch
“Thought Pokémon was a tough benchmark for AI? One group of researchers argues that Super Mario Bros. is even tougher. Hao AI Lab, a research org at the University of California San Diego, on Friday threw AI into live Super Mario Bros. games. Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 performed the best, followed by Claude 3.5. Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro and OpenAI’s GPT-4o struggled.”
Artificial Intelligence
AI Versus the Brain and the Race for General IntelligenceJohn Timmer | Ars Technica
“The systems being touted as evidence that AGI is just around the corner do not work at all like the brain does. …It’s entirely possible that there’s more than one way to reach intelligence, depending on how it’s defined. But at least some of the differences are likely to be functionally significant, and the fact that AI is taking a very different route from the one working example we have is likely to be meaningful.”
The post This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through March 8) appeared first on SingularityHub.