Monday - December 11 2023, 14:15 UTC - 11 months ago

Quantum computers are on the rise and are expected to have the power to decrypt and attack existing encryption standards in the near future. This could have massive implications for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, as the existing standards are not quantum-resistant and could render them vulnerable to attack. To protect existing cryptographic systems, regulations are expected to come into effect in 2035 that may require existing cryptocurrency networks to move to a quantum-safe chain.

Monday - December 11 2023, 09:52 UTC - 11 months ago

OpenAI has revealed that, in order to create safe ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) systems, the critical step is curating the data to include ethical and pro-humanity examples. This is laborious yet important in order to create AI that is beneficial to the world, with greater safety in mind.

Monday - December 11 2023, 05:31 UTC - 11 months ago

Google DeepMind's AI can learn to mimic human behaviour with only a few demonstrations required, through their specially designed simulator GoalCycle3D. The AI makes use of reinforcement learning to make it imitate an expert agent in a variety of different environments. The AI was tested by training it on one set of environment and then tested them on another, showing that it can imitate the expert route in brand new environments. This means that AI can now learn from peers and mentors quickly, without requiring hundreds of examples.

Monday - December 11 2023, 00:42 UTC - 11 months ago

MIT geologists have found that smectite, a clay mineral found on the seafloor, has a powerful ability to sequester carbon over millions of years, providing a natural buffer against human-driven global warming. This occurs when plate tectonics bring rocks to the surface that, over time, can weather into minerals including the clay. Smectite sequesters carbon in its microscopic folds, sequestering organic carbon and cooling the planet over millions of years. Scientists suggest that this carbon-trapping smectite could be used to offset human-emitted carbon.

Sunday - December 10 2023, 20:29 UTC - 11 months ago

Google DeepMind launched its new AI platform Gemini, claiming it outperforms OpenAI's GTP-4 on multiple levels. However, while it is a powerful tool for developers, many reports point out Gemini isn't necessarily revolutionary. Gemini is the AI equivalent of Apple's iPhone, a performance upgrade but not necessarily a revolutionary leap. It comes in three sizes, Ultra, Pro and Nano, and will be available to developers from December 13th, 2020.

Sunday - December 10 2023, 15:57 UTC - 11 months ago

The Reachability Problem is the question of whether it is possible to reach a certain target state through a combination of transitions in a Vector Addition System (VAS). It is difficult to calculate its complexity, as it's an NP-complete problem. It has implications on numerous disciplines and requires significant computational power to fully solve.

Sunday - December 10 2023, 11:15 UTC - 11 months ago

Lunar exploration is undergoing a renaissance, driven by various reasons such as geopolitical posturing and the search for resources. Science is also sure to be a major beneficiary, especially with regard to astronomy, which could benefit from observations on the lunar far side. This side is permanently shielded from radio signals on Earth, allowing for low-frequency radio astronomy that could probe the origin and evolution of the universe.

Sunday - December 10 2023, 06:33 UTC - 11 months ago

AI is increasingly being used in many aspects of agriculture, from federated learning to pest and disease detection, and forecasts of prices. This technology could benefit farmers by allowing them to make better decisions and meet their sustainability goals, while reducing the amount of chemicals used.

Sunday - December 10 2023, 01:57 UTC - 11 months ago

JP Morgan, one of the world's leading financial institutions, is exploring the potential applications of quantum technology in a variety of ways, including using quantum hardware to solve problems and testing its effectiveness in real-world financial applications. Quantum technology has the potential to revolutionize the financial industry by providing faster solutions for portfolio optimization, risk management and pricing models, as well as better insights into more complex financial systems.

Saturday - December 9 2023, 21:33 UTC - 11 months ago

Honoring the memory of Frank Herbert's 'Dune' legacy, a newly discovered species of stalked puffball fungus, Tulostoma shaihuludii, has been found in Hungary's Pannonian Steppe. An international research team discovered the species and the importance of species-habitat connections and geographic isolation to the emergence of new species were revealed. Further research into fungi of Hungary and worldwide will provide a greater insight into the diversity of species.

Saturday - December 9 2023, 17:16 UTC - 11 months ago

The Subaru Telescope has observed a star, designated "S0-6," which has likely ventured from a far away galaxy over a period of 10 billion years, before arriving at the vicinity of the supermassive black hole of the Milky Way. The star was found to be located 0.4 light-years away from the black hole, and its chemical composition was similar to that of stars measured in nearby galaxies of the Milky Way. The findings were reported in the journal Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B.

Saturday - December 9 2023, 12:31 UTC - 11 months ago

DemoFusion is a new tool made by the University of Surrey that promises to bring low-cost, high-resolution artificial intelligence (AI) image generation to a wider audience without the need for powerful computers behind a paywall.

Saturday - December 9 2023, 08:13 UTC - 11 months ago

Q-CTRL has raised over $70 million to develop quantum error suppression and quantum error mitigation to improve the performance of quantum computers. They are working with customers to optimize shipping parcel loading and help them extract more useful answers from current quantum-computing architectures. By leveraging decades of research, they are speeding up the development of real-world quantum applications.

Saturday - December 9 2023, 03:07 UTC - 11 months ago

Dr. John Preskill delivered a Q2B Quantum computer 2023 keynote talk on the state of Quantum Error correction with quantum computers. QuEra is a leader in neutral rydberg atoms and with quantum error correction and has done some research with analog quantum simulation of topological matter. It is believed that if the 10,000 atoms QuEra has can be operationalized, there could be a near term path to 50-600 eror corrected qubits.

Friday - December 8 2023, 22:32 UTC - 11 months ago

ChatGPT is the fastest-growing app in history, and it is transforming the world in terms of AI safety, job security, education, content standards, and art. The impacts are still being felt, and nations are starting to adapt to its presence.

Friday - December 8 2023, 17:38 UTC - 11 months ago

The turmoil at OpenAI highlights the need to consider AI safety and the catastrophic risks posed by the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Task-specific AI is widely used, and can cause harm through bias and proxy discrimination. The risk of AI going rogue is speculative for now, but is a key topic for discussion.

Friday - December 8 2023, 12:56 UTC - 11 months ago

Astronomers used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to discover 14 transient objects in the Christmas Tree Galaxy Cluster, MACS0416, about 4.3 billion light-years away. Transients, which briefly brighten and then fade, reveal information about distant stars and the universe's structure. An international team of scientists, led by University of Missouri's Haojing Yan, used JWST to research the galaxy cluster and confirmed what's causing the transients previously seen using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Two of the transients are supernovae, which can be used to study their host galaxies, and the team has used the data to learn more about the structure of the magnifying glass and dark matter distribution.

Friday - December 8 2023, 08:31 UTC - 11 months ago

The world's first commercial gene-editing treatment, Casgevy, is set to revolutionize the lives of those with sickle-cell disease. This therapy involves a molecular bank shot – editing BCL11A, a gene that turbo-boosts the inhibitor and prevents the production of fetal hemoglobin in adult bodies. This will cause more fetal hemoglobin to be produced. Through early trials, there is proof that this gene-editing therapy is revolutionizing and potentially curing patients with sickle-cell disease.

Friday - December 8 2023, 03:39 UTC - 11 months ago

This week, IBM announced two new quantum processors and the launch of their System Two, containing three Condor chips. IBM will focus on getting the most out of the qubits it has, emphasizing speed and minimal error-prone. IBM also hopes to create a fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029 and have already achieved several milestones.