Most AI-powered robots today use cameras to understand their surroundings and learn new tasks, but it’s becoming easier to train robots with sound too, helping them adapt to tasks and environments where visibility is limited. Though sight is important, for some of our daily tasks, sound is actually more helpful, like listening to onions sizzling…
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The generative AI boom is built on scale. The more training data, the more powerful the model. But there’s a problem. AI companies have pillaged the internet for training data, and…
Melissa Choi has been named the next director of MIT Lincoln Laboratory, effective July 1. Currently assistant director of the laboratory, Choi succeeds Eric Evans, who will step down on June 30 after 18 years as director. Sharing the news in a letter to MIT faculty and staff today, Vice President for Research Ian Waitz…
AI music is suddenly in a make-or-break moment. On June 24, Suno and Udio, two leading AI music startups that make tools to generate complete songs from a prompt in seconds, were sued by major record labels alleging widespread copyright infringement. Sony Music, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group claim the companies made use…
As AI continues to advance at a rapid pace, developers are increasingly turning to AI Driven Development (AIDD) to build more intelligent and adaptive applications. However, using natural language prompts to describe complex behaviors to AI can be a real challenge. While natural language is expressive, it lacks the structure and efficiency needed to clearly…
It feels weird, talking to yourself online. Especially when you’re pretty much the most unpleasant character you’ve ever met. The “me” I’ve been chatting to this week, called King Fiall of Nirth, is a creation in technology from Inworld AI, a US-based firm that hopes to revolutionize how we interact with characters in games. Specifically,…
Startup Synthesia’s AI-generated avatars are getting an update to make them even more realistic: They will soon have bodies that can move, and hands that gesticulate. The new full-body avatars will be able to do things like sing and brandish a microphone while dancing, or move from behind a desk and walk across a room….
The impact of artificial intelligence will never be equitable if there’s only one company that builds and controls the models (not to mention the data that go into them). Unfortunately, today’s AI models are made up of billions of parameters that must be trained and tuned to maximize performance for each use case, putting the…
A potential future conflict between Taiwan and China would be shaped by novel methods of drone warfare involving advanced underwater drones and increased levels of autonomy, according to a new war-gaming experiment by the think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS). The report comes as concerns about Beijing’s aggression toward Taiwan have been…
On May 31, the U.S. Department of Defense’s chief technology officer, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu, presented Eric Evans with the Department of Defense (DoD) Medal for Distinguished Public Service. This award is the highest honor given by the secretary of defense to private citizens for their significant service to…