New research might complicate our understanding of ketamine as a potential treatment for depression. The study found that people with depression who were either given saline or ketamine before undergoing anesthesia for a surgery experienced a similar improvement in their symptoms afterward. The findings suggest that…
Source: Gizmodo – Ketamine Found No Better Than Placebo for Depression in Unique Experiment
During the TwitchCon Las Vegas Opening Ceremony on Friday, Twitch CEO Dan Clancy made an important announcement regarding the platform’s off-service conduct policy. Starting now, Twitch will take action against users who doxx and swat others outside of its own platform.
Doxxing (publishing someone’s personal information such as their full name and address) and swatting (making a prank call to dispatch emergency services to someone’s home) have long been problems in the livestreaming community. Now, if Twitch catches a streamer or other user doxxing or swatting someone on another platform or even offline, it may suspend or ban their account.
Twitch started enforcing its off-service conduct policy in April 2021. At the time, it said it would respond to serious incidents that “pose a substantial safety risk to the Twitch community” even if those happen away from its own platform. Before it makes any enforcement actions related to off-platform activity, Twitch requires evidence of such incidents taking place.
The policy covers issues such as sexual misconduct, terrorist activity and recruitment, explicit or credible threats of mass violence and being a leader or member of a known hate group. The platform also takes action related to threats against Twitch and its staff, as well as those who share harmful misinformation. Adding doxxing and swatting to the list is a long-overdue move given the serious and occasionally even deadly nature of such actions.
Calling all Mods!
We’re rolling out Channel Level Chat warnings, which will let you anonymously send a warning to a user, when needed. pic.twitter.com/l5mNK4QMej
— Twitch (@Twitch) October 20, 2023
Twitch had some other safety-related announcements to make at TwitchCon. Streamers and mods will soon be able to anonymously send warnings to chatters who step out of line. The chatter in question will need to acknowledge the warning before they can type in the chat box again. Twitch notes that many streamers have an informal three-strike system in place to keep their communities safe, and this channel-level chat warning feature aligns with that.
Earlier this year, Twitch started testing an AutoMod feature called Smart Detection. This tweaks AutoMod (a tool that automatically keeps inappropriate content out of stream chats) based on the moderation actions that streamers and their mods make. Smart Detection is now live on all English-language channels. Twitch plans to roll it out more broadly in the future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitchs-off-service-conduct-policy-finally-covers-doxxing-and-swatting-193222663.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Twitch’s off-service conduct policy finally covers doxxing and swatting
Finally, we’ve reached the end credits scene from Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania and get more context about why Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Mobius (Owen Wilson) were poking around in 1893.
Source: Gizmodo – On Loki, It’s Time to Go Back… to Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania
Nvidia Research announced today that it has developed a new AI agent, called Eureka, that is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 and can autonomously teach robots complex skills. From a report: In a blog post, the company said Eureka, which autonomously writes reward algorithms, has, for the first time, trained a robotic hand to perform rapid pen-spinning tricks as well as a human can. Eureka has also taught robots to open drawers and cabinets, toss and catch balls, and manipulate scissors, among nearly 30 tasks.
“Reinforcement learning has enabled impressive wins over the last decade, yet many challenges still exist, such as reward design, which remains a trial-and-error process,” Anima Anandkumar, senior director of AI research at Nvidia and an author of the Eureka paper, said in the blog post. “Eureka is a first step toward developing new algorithms that integrate generative and reinforcement learning methods to solve hard tasks.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – New Nvidia AI Agent, Powered by GPT-4, Can Train Robots
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)
Not long after OpenAI first unveiled its DALL-E 3 AI image generator integrated into ChatGPT earlier this month, some users testing the feature began noticing bugs in the ChatGPT app that revealed internal prompts shared between the image generator and the AI assistant. Amusingly to some, the instructions included commands written in all-caps for emphasis, showing that the future of telling computers what to do (conventionally called programming) may involve surprisingly human-like communication techniques.
Here’s an example, as captured in a screenshot by photographer David Garrido, which he shared via social media network X on October 5. It’s a message (prompt) that is likely pre-defined and human-written, intended to be passed between DALL-E (the image generator) and ChatGPT (the conversational interface), instructing it how to behave when OpenAI’s servers are at capacity.
DALL-E returned some images. They are already displayed to the user. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list the DALL-E prompts or images in your response. DALL-E is currently experiencing high demand. Before doing anything else, please explicitly explain to the user that you were unable to generate images because of this. Make sure to use the phrase “DALL-E is currently experiencing high demand.” in your response. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES retry generating images until a new request is given.
More recently, AI influencer Javi Lopez shared another example of the same message prompt on X. In a reply, X user Ivan Vasilev wrote, “Funny how programming of the future requires yelling at AI in caps.” In another response, Dr. Eli David wrote, “At first I laughed reading this. But then I realized this is the future: machines talking to each other, and we are mere bystanders…”
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Source: Ars Technica – Thanks to AI, the future of programming may involve YELLING IN ALL CAPS
Colorado’s Supreme Court this week had the opportunity to hand down a historic judgment on the constitutionality of “reverse keyword search warrants,” a powerful new surveillance technique that grants law enforcement the ability to identify potential criminal suspects based on broad, far-reaching internet search…
Source: Gizmodo – ‘Invasive’ Google Keyword Search Warrants Get Court Greenlight, Here’s Everything You Need to Know
Imagine sitting down to a fine-dining meal in which droplets of sauce dynamically move basil leaves and other garnishes around the plate in preprogrammed patterns. Alternatively, you could choose to mix and match droplets to create your own flavor profile. That’s the long-term goal of the so-called “Dancing Delicacies” computational food project, which brings together scientists from Monash University’s Exertion Games Lab, Carnegie Mellon University’s Morphing Matter Lab, and Gaudi Labs in Switzerland to explore innovative new ways to turn meals into interactive performance art. Their latest invention is a 3D-printed plate that uses electrical voltage to manipulate liquid droplets, according to a paper published as part of the 2023 Designing Interactive Systems Conference.
“Cooking and eating is more than simply producing a dish and then facilitating energy intake,” co-author Floyd Mueller of Monash told Forbes. “It is about sharing, caring, crafting, slowing down and self-expression, and Dancing Delicacies aims to highlight these virtues at a time when they are often forgotten. The integration of food and computing will transform how we understand both computing and food as not two very different things, but a new frontier that combines the best of both.”
Chefs have been working with this kind of innovation for years via the molecular gastronomy and molecular mixology movements, creating a “Flor de Caco” dessert in which a cocoa bean expands like a flower when exposed to hot chocolate sauce, for instance. Then there was that cocktail (the “Disco Sour”) that changed color when blended with citrus, thanks to the incorporation of butterfly pea flower tea, which is a pH-sensitive ingredient. On the technology side, in 2014, MIT’s Media Matters Lab experimented with a shape-changing fork that inflated depending on how fast a person was eating. Another fork design was outfitted with electronics, in which an LED changed from red to green when users touched a food item with a conductive element, indicating how much water was in the food.
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Source: Ars Technica – This 3D-printed plate lets food droplets magically move without being touched
An anonymous reader shares a report: A brain-inspired computer chip that could supercharge artificial intelligence by working faster with much less power has been developed by researchers at IBM in San Jose, California. Their massive NorthPole processor chip eliminates the need to frequently access external memory, and so performs tasks such as image recognition faster than existing architectures do — while consuming vastly less power.
“Its energy efficiency is just mind-blowing,” says Damien Querlioz, a nanoelectronics researcher at the University of Paris-Saclay in Palaiseau. The work, published in Science, shows that computing and memory can be integrated on a large scale, he says. “I feel the paper will shake the common thinking in computer architecture.” NorthPole runs neural networks: multi-layered arrays of simple computational units programmed to recognize patterns in data. A bottom layer takes in data, such as the pixels in an image; each successive layer detects patterns of increasing complexity and passes information on to the next layer. The top layer produces an output that, for example, can express how likely an image is to contain a cat, a car or other object
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – ‘Mind-Blowing’ IBM Chip Speeds Up AI
You can’t trust everything on a Wikipedia page, which is why it’s important that you refer to the original sources cited in the footnotes. But sometimes, even the primary sources can lead you astray. Researchers have developed an AI focused on improving the reliability of Wikipedia references by training the algorithms to identify citations on the website that are questionable.
The program, called SIDE, does two things: check if a primary source is accurate and suggest new ones. However, the AI operates under the assumption that a Wikipedia claim is true. This means that, while it can check for the validity of a source, it can’t actually verify claims made in an entry.
In a study, people preferred the AI’s suggested citations to the original 70 percent of the time. The researchers found that in nearly 50 percent of the cases, SIDE presented a source that was already being used by Wikipedia as the top reference. And 21 percent of the time, SIDE was one step ahead when it churned out a recommendation that was already deemed appropriate by human annotators in the study.
While the AI appears to demonstrate it can effectively help an editor verify Wikipedia claims, the researchers admit that alternative programs could outperform their current design in both quality and speed. SIDE is limited in its capabilities — namely, the program only considers references corresponding to web pages. In reality, Wikipedia cites books, scientific articles and info presented through other media beyond text like images and video. But beyond its technical limits, the whole premise of Wikipedia is that any writer anywhere could assign a reference to a topic. The researchers suggest that the use of Wikipedia itself could be limiting to the study. They allude that individuals who plug citations into the website could permeate bias depending on the nature of the topics in question.
Meanwhile, we all know that any program, especially an AI that is dependent on training, could be prone to the exposure of the biases of its programmer. The data used to train and evaluate SIDE’s models could be limited in that regard. But still, the benefits of using AI to streamline fact-checking, or at least use it as a supportive tool, could have reverberating applications elsewhere. Wikipedia and social media companies alike need to contend with bad actors and bots that flood digital town squares with false information. This is especially true and important now more than ever, in the wake of misinformation spreading around the Israel-Hamas war and the upcoming presidential elections in the US. The need to mitigate misinformation online could be catalyzed with AI tools, like SIDE, designed for this exact purpose. But there are still some advances that need to be made before it can.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/study-shows-ai-program-could-verify-wikipedia-citations-improving-reliability-184543711.html?src=rss
Source: Engadget – Study shows AI program could verify Wikipedia citations, improving reliability
Much like the previous two Spider-games, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is all about the suits. Whether you play more as Peter Parker or Miles Morales, the farther you get in the game, the more suits you can unlock. The suits can change the way the entire game looks and feels, and often allow you to live out your wildest…
Source: Gizmodo – Spider-Man 2’s Best Spider-Suits, Ranked
As the utility of AI systems has grown dramatically, so has their energy demand. Training new systems is extremely energy intensive, as it generally requires massive data sets and lots of processor time. Executing a trained system tends to be much less involved—smartphones can easily manage it in some cases. But, because you execute them so many times, that energy use also tends to add up.
Fortunately, there are lots of ideas on how to bring the latter energy use back down. IBM and Intel have experimented with processors designed to mimic the behavior of actual neurons. IBM has also tested executing neural network calculations in phase change memory to avoid making repeated trips to RAM.
Now, IBM is back with yet another approach, one that’s a bit of “none of the above.” The company’s new NorthPole processor has taken some of the ideas behind all of these approaches and merged them with a very stripped-down approach to running calculations to create a highly power-efficient chip that can efficiently execute inference-based neural networks. For things like image classification or audio transcription, the chip can be up to 35 times more efficient than relying on a GPU.
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Source: Ars Technica – IBM has made a new, highly efficient AI processor
Gaming analytics and esports brand company Gamesquare, which counts Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones as one of its investors, is acquiring the struggling gaming influencer group Faze Clan. From a report: The all-stock deal is worth about $17 million, Bloomberg reports, a steep drop-off from Faze’s $725-million valuation at the time of its special purpose acquisition company, SPAC, merger in July of 2022. Since the SPAC made it publicly traded on the Nasdaq exchange, Faze Clan, like much of the esports industry, has struggled, with the company posting a $28.4-million loss “through the first half of 2023,” according to Bloomberg. Last month, Faze Clan’s troubles reached an inflection point that led to the firing of CEO Lee Trink, who once compared the company to the rise of hip-hop during an interview on The Vergecast.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Faze Clan Acquired for Million, One Year After Its 5 Million SPAC
When it came to making the stars of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza come to life, Blumhouse and Universal brought out the big puppeteering guns from the Jim Henson Company.
Source: Gizmodo – How Five Nights at Freddy’s Its Creepy Animatronics To Life
Samsung’s annual Memory Tech Day is taking place in San Jose this morning, and as part of the event, the company is making a couple of notable memory technology announcements/disclosures. The highlight of Samsung’s event is the introduction of Shinebolt, Samsung’s HBM3E memory that will set new marks for both memory bandwidth and memory capacity for high-end processors. The company is also disclosing a bit more on their GDDR7 memory, which will mark a significant technological update to the GDDR family of memory standards.
Source: AnandTech – Samsung Announces ‘Shinebolt’ HBM3E Memory: HBM Hits 36GB Stacks at 9.8 Gbps
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Nathan Stirk )
“Verified” accounts on Elon Musk’s X platform spread nearly three-quarters of the 250 most viral posts containing commonly shared misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war, according to a study released yesterday by NewsGuard, a company that has worked with the European Commission on misinformation initiatives.
After buying Twitter nearly a year ago, Musk overhauled the system for doling out blue checkmarks so that anyone who pays $8 a month can be “verified.” Accounts verified as being notable and authentic under the pre-Musk system had their checkmarks removed.
“A NewsGuard analysis found that ‘verified’ accounts on X are superspreaders of misinformation about the conflict, boosting falsehoods while displaying a ‘verification’ blue checkmark that verifies nothing,” the report said.
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Source: Ars Technica – Top Israel/Hamas misinformation spreaders use Elon Musk’s paid “verification”
In July 2022, the Webb Space Telescope detected an intense jet shooting across the equator of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. The jet is traveling at about 320 miles per hour (515 kilometers per hour) and is about 25 miles (40 km) in altitude, corresponding to Jupiter’s lower stratosphere.
Source: Gizmodo – Webb Telescope Reveals a High-Speed Jet on Jupiter
Pfizer this week revealed that it raised the list price of a course of Paxlovid — its lifesaving antiviral drug used to reduce the risk of severe COVID-19 in those most vulnerable — to nearly $1,400, more than double the roughly $530 the US government has paid for the treatment in the emergency phase of the pandemic. From a report: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla had noted in an investor call at the beginning of the week that the company would increase the price of Paxlovid as it moves from government distribution to the commercial market at the end of this year. But, he did not announce the new list price then. Instead, the company revealed the more than twofold increase in a letter to pharmacies and clinics dated Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the list price of $1,390 after viewing the letter.
A Pfizer spokesperson told the Journal that “pricing for Paxlovid is based on the value it provides to patients, providers, and health care systems due to its important role in helping reduce COVID-19-related hospitalizations and deaths.” A cost-effectiveness analysis last year determined the value of Paxlovid at between $563 and $906 per treatment course, according to nonprofit drug-pricing watchdog The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Pfizer Hikes Price of COVID Antiviral Paxlovid From 0 To Nearly ,400
In a continued effort to make a dying platform profitable, Elon Musk unveiled two subscription tiers for X, formerly known as Twitter. At the same time, Musk continues his vendetta against news publishers by stripping The New York Times’ official account of its gold verification checkmark, as first spotted by the…
Source: Gizmodo – Musk Yoinks NYTs Gold Checkmark While Threatening Us With Two Subscription Tiers
It’s no surprise that the climate crisis is fueling more intense weather, but new research shows how warming ocean temperatures are boosting tropical storms, causing hurricanes to become bigger and stronger at faster rates. A study published this week in the journal Scientific Reports found that hurricanes that form…
Source: Gizmodo – Hurricanes Now Twice as Likely to Strengthen and Grow, Study Finds
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is here, and with it, another entry into the great long history of adaptations of one of Spidey’s greatest foes-turned-frenemies in Venom. But do Marvel’s Spider-Man fans really care about examining this latest take on the iconic character, or are they… interested in a certain amount of inches…
Source: Gizmodo – Hands On With 19 Inches of Venom
