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Polyphony Digital and Sony AI Announce “Breakthrough” Project Collaboration

An intriguing message has landed on social media from the official Gran Turismo account and the account of Sony AI teasing what’s referred to as a “Gaming Flagship” and “breakthrough project” in AI. The companies, both subsidiary arms of the wider Sony brand, jointly revealed that they’re set to announce the project on Wednesday February 9.

Along with the announcement, Sony AI posted a short, 25-second teaser video. The clip featured something similar to the light traces we’ve been seeing in the Gran Turismo “Find Your Line” video series, as well as short glimpses of double-World Tour champions Igor Fraga and Takuma Miyazono, along with World Tour finalist Emily Jones.

It ends looking in on Polyphony Digital’s main studio in Tokyo, from where Kazunori Yamauchi has recently been presenting GT7 preview videos and the recent Q&A.

Carbon Robotics unveils new farm tech that kills weeds

Carbon Robotics, an agricultural robotics company, today unveiled its 2022 LaserWeeder implement, an autonomous, laserweeding pull-behind robot that seamlessly attaches to the back of tractors.

The new LaserWeeder is a precise, organic, and cost-effective weed control solution for large-scale specialty row crops.

In addition to an updated build, the 2022 LaserWeeder features 30 industrial CO2 lasers, more than 3X the lasers in Carbon Robotics’ self-driving Autonomous LaserWeeder, creating an average weeding capacity of two acres per hour.

New Reprogrammable Chip Lets AI Learn Continuously—Just Like the Brain

Efforts to mimic the brain in silicon—a field known as neuromorphic computing—have a long pedigree, and have seen significant investments from computing powerhouses like Intel and IBM. So far, most research has focused on replicating the functionality and connectivity of biological neurons and synapses in the hope of replicating the brain’s incredible learning efficiency.

One feature of neurons that has received less attention is the way they’re able to reorganize themselves in response to experience. This powerful capability allows the brain to change both its structure and function as it learns, optimizing its underlying hardware to new challenges on the fly.

Now though, a team led by engineers from Purdue University has demonstrated new circuit components whose functions can be reconfigured with simple electronic pulses. This allows them to seamlessly switch between acting as resistors, memory capacitors, artificial neurons, and artificial synapses. The breakthrough opens the door to creating dynamic neural networks in hardware that can rewire themselves as they learn—just like the brain.

Astronomers spot a wandering black hole in empty space for the first time

Machine learning can work wonders, but it’s only one tool among many.

Artificial intelligence is among the most poorly understood technologies of the modern era. To many, AI exists as both a tangible but ill-defined reality of the here and now and an unrealized dream of the future, a marvel of human ingenuity, as exciting as it is opaque.

It’s this indistinct picture of both what the technology is and what it can do that might engender a look of uncertainty on someone’s face when asked the question, “Can AI solve climate change?” “Well,” we think, “it must be able to do *something*,” while entirely unsure of just how algorithms are meant to pull us back from the ecological brink.

Such ambivalence is understandable. The question is loaded, faulty in its assumptions, and more than a little misleading. It is a vital one, however, and the basic premise of utilizing one of the most powerful tools humanity has ever built to address the most existential threat it has ever faced is one that warrants our genuine attention.

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An international team of researchers has spotted the first isolated black hole that is wandering around in interstellar space.

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