Quantum Computing Update

"IonQ and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Unveil Novel Approach to Scalable Quantum Computing"

VW Data Breach

"Massive VW Data Leak Exposed 800,000 EV Owners’ Movements, From Homes To Private Spaces"

Holiday Hiatus

Admin note: GeekPress will be taking a short holiday break for the rest of the week. Merry Christmas, everybody!

Batteries On Planes

"Battery fires are now happening on planes at least once a week"

Leslie Groves

"General Leslie Groves, Bringer of the Bomb"

AI "Granny" to Tie Up Phone Scammers

"A phone company developed an AI 'granny' to beat scammers at their own game"

Knots And Fractals

"Teen Mathematicians Tie Knots Through a Mind-Blowing Fractal"

Hidden Street

"The forgotten street found behind a hidden library door"

Use End-To-End Encryption

"Why the U.S. government is saying all citizens should use end-to-end encrypted messaging"

Confused Waymo

"Empty Waymo Robotaxi Loops Roundabout 37 Times As If It Was Stuck In Logic Loop"

Are AI Chatbot Promises Legally Binding?

Eugene Volokh: "Can You Sue Over Assurances Made by Company's Customer Service AI Chatbot?"

New Robot Learning

"Robots can learn new actions faster thanks to AI techniques"

Beware "Total App Reliance"

"'Nightmare' Zipcar outage is a warning against complete app dependency"

Math Update: Moving Sofa Problem

"The open problem -- the 'moving sofa problem' -- has possibly just been solved!"

The open problem -- the "moving sofa problem" -- has possibly just been solved!

This mathematical problem basically asks "what is the largest area of a 'sofa' that can be maneuvered through a right-angled corner in a hallway of width 1?"

Short thread 🧵 pic.twitter.com/eLQHX78Z37

— Inquisitive Bird (@Scientific_Bird) December 6, 2024

Jailbreaking AI For Fun And Profit

"Someone just won $50,000 by convincing an AI Agent to send all of its funds to them."

Google AI Glasses

"Google's Prototype Glasses Put An AI Agent On Your Face"

Redaction Failure

"Avoid Super-Embarrassing Redaction Failures"

I have often run across documents written by lawyers that looked redacted—but all the supposedly secret information in them could be extracted with literally three keystrokes (ctrl-A, ctrl-C, ctrl-V). One was a court filing that was filed pursuant to a court order authorizing the redaction; but the material so carefully marked secret proved not to be secret at all.

AI Jesus Is Popular

"'AI Jesus' avatar tests man's faith in machines and the divine"

“What was really interesting (was) to see that the people really talked with him in a serious way. They didn’t come to make jokes,” said chapel theologian Marco Schmid, who spearheaded the project. Most visitors were aged 40 to 70, and more Catholics respondents found the experience stimulating than did Protestants, the report showed.

Schmid was quick to point out that the “AI Jesus” – billed as a “Jesus-like” persona – was an artistic experiment to get people thinking about the intersection between the digital and the divine, not substitute for human interaction or sacramental confessions with a priest, nor was it intended to save pastoral resources.

“For the people it was clear that it was a computer ... It was clear it was not a confession,” Schmid said. “He wasn’t programmed to give absolutions or prayers. At the end, it was more summary of the conversation.”

 

Aaronson On Willow

Scott Aaronson: "The Google Willow thing"

WaPo Panel On The Future Of AI

"The Futurist: The Age of AI"

Today you'll hear from tech executives and AI experts who are studying these trends. First, Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer and executive vice president of Palantir, will discuss America's technological edge on the battlefield. Then Kweilin Ellingrud, the director of the McKinsey Global Institute, and Conor Grennan, the chief AI Architect at the NY Stern School of Business, will discuss how artificial intelligence is already impacting productivity and the economy. And finally, Cristóbal Valenzuela, the co-founder and CEO of Runway, will talk about how generative AI is reshaping the media and entertainment industry today...

Palantir, AI, And Warfare

Fast Company: "How Alex Karp helped turn Palantir into the West's AI arms dealer". 

One eye-opening quote: "A targeting operation that required 2,000 people in 2003 now needs just 20."

I believe AI will be the next "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA).

Notre Dame Restored

"A peek inside the restoration of the iconic Notre Dame cathedral". (Via H.R.)

New NASA Head

"How did the CEO of an online payments firm become the nominee to lead NASA?" (Via H.R.)

Tough Orcas

"An Orca Pod Off Mexico Has Learned to Kill Enormous Whale Sharks". (Via H.R.)

Lego Car Design

Awesome video: "Making Lego Car CROSS Narrow Bridges"

Great example of iterative design refinement for solving successively harder problems. #TheJoyOfEngineering

Lime Burns

"Man suffers chemical burn that lasted months after squeezing limes". (Via H.R.)

Nukes For FB

"Meta turns to nuclear energy for its AI ambitions"

Fatal Names For AI

"Certain names make ChatGPT grind to a halt, and we know why"

Robots With Facial Expressions

"Honda's 12-inch robot talks to people with facial expressions, speeds up tasks by 900%". (Via H.R.)

Fano And Huffman

A fun historical tidbit on information theory.

In 1951, Robert M. Fano, a professor at MIT, assigned his information theory students a deceptively simple-sounding problem as a final term paper: find the most efficient way to represent numbers, letters, or symbols using binary code.

What he didn't reveal was that this was an… pic.twitter.com/xYiQP41wzc

— Fermat's Library (@fermatslibrary) November 27, 2024

More information on Huffman's breakthrough here.