H+ Weekly - H+ Weekly - Issue #377

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H+ WEEKLY

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Issue #377

This week - AI rapper signs with a label and then gets dropped; synthetic mouse embryos with developed brains; drivers in the UK won't be liable for accidents when the vehicle is self-driving; and more!

Before we jump into this week's issue, I'd like to give a shoutout to Floris who became a Transhuman-level supporter of H+ Weekly on Patreon. Thank you Floris for your support!

MORE THAN A HUMAN

The Bionic-Hand Arms Race
This is an article about prosthetic arms written by someone who is using a prosthetic arm. It shows a disconnect between engineers designing these arms and their users. Engineers aim to help amputees become "whole" again, constantly making their products more complex and therefore more expensive and less accessible. As the author writes, this is in many cases the opposite of what the amputees need and a much simpler design would do the job.

Tesla owner implants a chip to unlock his car and more
For some guy, owning an electric car was not futuristic enough so he implanted a chip in his hand he uses to open his Tesla, among other things like opening doors to his house or storing documents.

This Man Set the Record for Wearing a Brain-Computer Interface
Nathan Copeland has lived with a brain-computer interface (BCI) for more than seven years and three months - that’s the longest anyone has had an implant like this. This is a remarkable achievement which also raises questions about the longevity of BCIs and how to maintain or upgrade a device implanted in someone's brain.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Capitol Records signs AI-powered virtual rapper, FN Meka
FN Meka, an AI-powered virtual rapper with over 10 million followers on TikTok and more than a billion views on the platform, signed a deal with Capitol Records. However, about a week later, Capitol Records dropped FN Meka after the "rapper" received negative feedback and outcry over racial stereotyping. "We offer our deepest apologies to the Black community for our insensitivity in signing this project without asking enough questions about equity and the creative process behind it," said label in a statement.

Tesla Dojo AI System Microarchitecture
Here is something if you are interested in how AI works on a chip level. At Hot Chips conference, engineers from Tesla showed how their in-house-built Dojo AI system works on a microarchitecture level, from node architecture to processing pipelines, networking and instruction sets. This article only has slides and a short comment from ServeTheHome.

The Future of Speech Recognition: Where Will We Be in 2030?
Speech recognition has made enormous progress in the last couple of years so where can it be in the next 10 years? This article gives some ideas - from fully multilingual models that can understand anybody in any language to transcription standardization to making speech recognition more available, adaptive and responsible.

The Future of Interactive Theorem Proving?
Here is yet another application of GPT-3, this time in mathematics. It is a chat-like app where you enter a mathematical statement in plain English and the app translates it into Lean (a mathematical theorems prover) and checks if the statement is true or false.

ROBOTICS

Human drivers in UK won’t be liable for accidents when vehicle is self-driving
Manufacturers operating self-driving vehicles in the U.K. will be liable for a vehicle’s actions when in autonomous mode, according to the country’s new roadmap to achieve a widespread rollout of self-driving vehicles by 2025.

Telexistence Announces Mass Production of AI Robot to be Installed in Japan's 300 FamilyMart Stores
300 FamilyMart stores in Japan will get a robot, starting this month. The robot was designed to do the specific task of restocking refrigerated shelves with bottles and cans, a repetitive, tedious job generally performed by employees. Robots can be in operation 24/7, replenishing shelves at a pace of up to 1000 bottles and cans per day, relying almost completely on its AI system to know when and where products need to be placed on the shelves.

Snap is giving up on its Pixy drone after just four months
Did you know Snap was making a selfie drone? It was released in April this year and now the company is abandoning the project. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel apparently told employees at a Q&A session about the choice to no longer develop the Pixy line.

Google’s New Robot Learned to Take Orders by Scraping the Web
Google has demoed a robot that takes in commands in plain English and does what it has been asked to do. As an example, Google engineer typed "I’m hungry" and the robot grabbed a snack and offered it to him. Behind the scenes, the robot is using a large language model (similar to GPT-3) to translate commands into actions.

BIOTECHNOLOGY

Scientists have created synthetic mouse embryos with developed brains
Researchers have grown mouse embryos from stem cells to the point where the entire brain, including the anterior portion at the front, began to develop. This could help scientists learn more about how human embryos develop and provide insights into diseases, as well as providing an alternative to animals for testing.

A biotech company wants to take human DNA and create artificial embryos that could be used to harvest organs for medical transplants
A biotechnology company based in Israel wants to replicate a recent experiment that successfully created an artificial mouse embryo from stem cells — only this time with human cells. The aim of the company is to use embryos as organ-making machines and the 3D bioprinter to make tissues for transplantations.

This Startup Wants to Grow Rice in the Ocean
An agriculture startup is planning to activate dormant genes in rice to allow it to grow in salt water and eventually move to growing it on floating platforms off the coasts of African and Asian countries.

This issue was brought to you by our awesome patrons Floris, Eric, Andrew, dux and Tom! You too can support the newsletter on Patreon.

Thank you for subscribing,
Conrad Gray (@conradthegray)

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The BionicHand Arms Race synthetic mouse embryos

H+ Weekly - H+ Weekly - Issue #377

MORE THAN A HUMAN

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

ROBOTICS

BIOTECHNOLOGY

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H+ Weekly - Issue #376

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