Lifeboat Foundation

Superfast, subatomic-sized particles called muons have been used to wirelessly navigate underground for the first time. By using muon-detecting ground stations synchronized with an underground muon-detecting receiver, researchers at the University of Tokyo were able to calculate the receiver’s position in the basement of a six-story building.

As GPS cannot penetrate rock or water, this new technology could be used in future search and rescue efforts, to monitor undersea volcanoes, and guide autonomous vehicles underground and underwater. The findings are published in the journal iScience.

GPS, the global positioning system, is a well-established navigation tool and offers an extensive list of positive applications, from safer air travel to real-time location mapping. However, it has some limitations. GPS signals are weaker at higher latitudes and can be jammed or spoofed (where a counterfeit signal replaces an authentic one). Signals can also be reflected off surfaces like walls, interfered with by trees, and can’t pass through buildings, rock or water.

IBM in collaboration with UC Berkeley researchers announced a recent breakthrough experiment which indicates that quantum computers will soon surpass classical computers in practical tasks.

Now, the company is taking another major step that has never been done before by it. The company is making the 127-qubit quantum computer publicly available over IBM Cloud.

Continue reading “IBM Makes the Best Quantum Computer Open to Public” »

For only $450,000. A steal. it’s not even $500,000.

It comes just weeks after a separate space firm owned Sir Richard, Virgin Orbit, was shut down.

There is tremendous apprehension about the potential of generative AI—technologies that can create new content such as text, images, and video—to replace people in many jobs. But one of the biggest opportunities generative AI offers is to augment human creativity and overcome the challenges of democratizing innovation.

In the past two decades, companies have used crowdsourcing and idea competitions to involve outsiders in the innovation process. But many businesses have struggled to capitalize on these contributions. They’ve lacked an efficient way to evaluate the ideas, for instance, or to synthesize different ideas.

Generative AI can help over­come those challenges, the authors say. It can supplement the creativity of employees and customers and help them produce and identify novel ideas—and improve the quality of raw ideas. Specifically, companies can use generative AI to promote divergent thinking, challenge expertise bias, assist in idea evaluation, support idea refinement, and facilitate collaboration among users.

Mercedes owners in the U.S. will soon add a new luxury to their already luxurious vehicles: ChatGPT. The automaker is adding OpenAI’s conversational AI agent to its MBUX infotainment system, though what it could possibly be needed for is hard to say.

U.S. owners of models that use MBUX will be able to opt into a beta program starting tomorrow, June 16, activating ChatGPT functionality. This will enable the highly versatile large language model to augment the car’s conversation skills. You can join up simply by telling your car “Hey Mercedes, I want to join the beta program.”

It’s not really clear what for, though. After all, a car is a pretty well constrained environment. People need to drive, navigate, and control their media and the car’s basic functions, and certainly a voice interface is sometimes the safest or best option for doing so without taking their eyes off the road.

They believe the process could take roughly a quadrillion years.

A team of astronomers discovered a star that is gradually crystallizing into an enormous diamond. Scientists believe it is at the beginning of a process that takes roughly a quadrillion years, a report from Space.com reveals. As the universe is 13.6 billion years old, no star has ever fully crystallized.

The discovery sheds new light on the evolution of stars as they gradually transform over time.

Continue reading “Astronomers observe white dwarf star transforming into massive celestial diamond” »

The AI Act could be set in motion as early as the end of the year.

On Wednesday, the European Parliament voted on its negotiating position on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act with 499 votes in favor, 28 against and 93 abstentions, according to a press release by the organization.

The statement said that “the rules would ensure that AI developed and used in Europe is fully in line with EU rights and values including human oversight, safety, privacy, transparency, non-discrimination and social and environmental wellbeing.”

The company now plans to power its quantum computers with a minimum of 127 qubits.

IBM’s Eagle quantum computer has outperformed a conventional supercomputer when solving complex mathematical calculations. This is also the first demonstration of a quantum computer providing accurate results at a scale of 100+ qubits, a company press release said.

Continue reading “IBM’s Eagle quantum computer just beat a supercomputer at complex math” »

An AI photo company promises to ‘cut out the need for expensive photographers’ by providing a cost-effective way to generate images.