Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers at DeepMind say they have solved “the protein folding problem,” a task that has bedeviled scientists for more than 50 years.

Since Xi put out the call to build up the new area, China’s tech giants have piled in. Alibaba Group Holding, Tencent Holdings, Baidu, Zhongguancun Science Park and Tsinghua University have all established projects in Xiongan. The projects include the use of sensors, 5G networks and facilities for supercomputing and big data in the pursuit of building up the smart city. Alibaba is the parent company of the Post.

JD Digits, the e-commerce giant’s big data arm, is building a smart city operating system that uses artificial intelligence for urban management.

Scientists at Osaka University develop a label-free method for identifying respiratory viruses based on changes in electrical current when they pass through silicon nanopores, which may lead to new rapid COVID-19 tests.

The ongoing global pandemic has created an urgent need for rapid tests that can diagnose the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the pathogen that causes COVID-19, and distinguish it from other respiratory viruses. Now, researchers from Japan have demonstrated a new system for single-virion identification of common respiratory pathogens using a machine learning algorithm trained on changes in current across silicon nanopores. This work may lead to fast and accurate screening tests for diseases like COVID-19 and influenza.

In a study published this month in ACS Sensors scientists at Osaka University have introduced a new system using silicon nanopores sensitive enough to detect even a single virus particle when coupled with a machine learning algorithm.

A new MIT report proposes how humans should prepare for the age of automation and artificial intelligence.

Recommended Reading highlights the week’s noteworthy writing on technology and more.

Summary: A new AI system helps researchers better understand the brain computations that underlie thought.

Source: Baylor University.

A team led by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University has developed artificial intelligence (AI) models that help them better understand the brain computations that underlie thoughts. This is new, because until now there has been no method to measure thoughts. The researchers first developed a new model that can estimate thoughts by evaluating behavior, and then tested their model on a trained artificial brain where they found neural activity associated with those estimates of thoughts. The theoretical study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A small group of economists from Italy, the U.K., and the U.S. has published a Policy Forum piece in the journal Science suggesting that consumers need to be protected from collusive price setting by AI systems. They also outline some possible ways to solve the problem.

For most countries, price collusion is illegal. It is where two or more makers or sellers of goods get together and agree to charge higher than market prices for the goods or services they are selling. Such practices are illegal because consumers wind up paying higher prices than they would if prices were market based. In their paper the economists reveal that many large corporations have taken to using computer systems with an AI component to set their prices. Using computers to set prices is not new, of course, some companies sell hundreds of thousands of products. Using computers to help set prices saves a lot of time and money. But until now, such systems have been constrained by the laws in which the companies operate—such laws can be baked in. But now, the authors contend, things have begun to change. AI systems have found, through learned experience, that uncommunicated collusion can lead to higher profits.

From LED-equipped visors to transparent masks, these inventions aim to thwart facial recognition cameras.

As humans, we all enjoy a code of universal human rights. In the future, the question will pop up sooner or later: do AI deserve the same rights we enjoy? In this video, we will explore this question and examine what the future world will look like if AI do have rights.