178979670
submission
ZipNada writes:
More than 85 veteran climate scientists have pushed back against a Trump administration report downplaying the severity of climate change, submitting more than 400 pages in public comments to the Energy Department on Tuesday.
The department’s Climate Working Group report, released July 29 alongside proposals to deregulate some polluting sectors, was authored by five well-known climate change contrarians and even portrayed climate change as potentially beneficial.
178122443
submission
ZipNada writes:
The essence of search is compression: distilling insights from a vast corpus. Subagents facilitate compression by operating in parallel with their own context windows, exploring different aspects of the question simultaneously before condensing the most important tokens for the lead research agent. Each subagent also provides separation of concerns—distinct tools, prompts, and exploration trajectories—which reduces path dependency and enables thorough, independent investigations. ...
these architectures burn through tokens fast. In our data, agents typically use about 4× more tokens than chat interactions, and multi-agent systems use about 15× more tokens than chats. For economic viability, multi-agent systems require tasks where the value of the task is high enough to pay for the increased performance. Further, some domains that require all agents to share the same context or involve many dependencies between agents are not a good fit for multi-agent systems today. For instance, most coding tasks involve fewer truly parallelizable tasks than research, and LLM agents are not yet great at coordinating and delegating to other agents in real time. We’ve found that multi-agent systems excel at valuable tasks that involve heavy parallelization, information that exceeds single context windows, and interfacing with numerous complex tools.
177126677
submission
ZipNada writes:
Microsoft's latest research identifies a new type of organization known as the Frontier Firm, where on-demand intelligence requirements are managed by hybrid teams of AI agents and humans.
The report identified real productivity gains from implementing AI into organizations, with one of the biggest being filling the capacity gap — as many as 80% of the global workforce, both employees and leaders, report having too much work to do, but not enough time or energy to do it. ...
According to the report, business leaders need to separate knowledge workers from knowledge work, acknowledging that humans who can complete higher-level tasks, such as creativity and judgment, should not be stuck answering emails. Rather, in the same way working professionals say they send emails or create pivot tables, soon they will be able to say they create and manage agents — and Frontier Firms are showing the potential possibilities of this approach. ...
"Everyone will need to manage agents," said Cambron. "I think it's exciting to me to think that, you know, with agents, every early-career person will be able to experience management from day one, from their first job."
176652755
submission
ZipNada writes:
The ubiquitous ESP32 microchip made by Chinese manufacturer Espressif and used by over 1 billion units as of 2023 contains an undocumented "backdoor" that could be leveraged for attacks.
The undocumented commands allow spoofing of trusted devices, unauthorized data access, pivoting to other devices on the network, and potentially establishing long-term persistence.
This was discovered by Spanish researchers Miguel Tarascó Acuña and Antonio Vázquez Blanco of Tarlogic Security, who presented their findings yesterday at RootedCON in Madrid.
"Tarlogic Security has detected a backdoor in the ESP32, a microcontroller that enables WiFi and Bluetooth connection and is present in millions of mass-market IoT devices," reads a Tarlogic announcement shared with BleepingComputer.
"Exploitation of this backdoor would allow hostile actors to conduct impersonation attacks and permanently infect sensitive devices such as mobile phones, computers, smart locks or medical equipment by bypassing code audit controls."
The researchers warned that ESP32 is one of the world's most widely used chips for Wi-Fi + Bluetooth connectivity in IoT (Internet of Things) devices, so the risk of any backdoor in them is significant.
176605441
submission
ZipNada writes:
Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin has privately pushed the White House for a rewrite of the agency’s finding that planet-warming greenhouse gases put the public in danger. The original 52-page decision in 2009 is used to justify and apply regulations and decisions on heat-trapping emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
“Carbon dioxide is the very essence of a dangerous air pollutant. The health evidence was overwhelming back in 2009 when EPA reached its endangerment finding, and that evidence has only grown since then,” said University of Washington public health professor Dr. Howard Frumkin, who headed the National Center for Environmental Health at the time. “CO2 pollution is driving catastrophic heat waves and storms, infectious disease spread, mental distress, and numerous other causes of human suffering and preventable death.”
That 2009 science-based assessment cited climate change harming air quality, food production, forests, water quality and supplies, sea level rise, energy issues, basic infrastructure, homes and wildlife. ...
It’s these indirect effects on human health that are “far-reaching, comprehensive and devastating,” said Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy. She said rising carbon dioxide levels in the air even “ affect our ability to think and process information.”
Scientists said the Trump administration will be hard-pressed to find scientific justification — or legitimate scientists — to show how greenhouse gases are not a threat to people.
“This one of those cases where they can’t contest the science and they’re going to have a legal way around,” Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said.
176189169
submission
ZipNada writes:
So let’s address the thorny issue of what agentic AI actually is: taking processes and tasks that a person would normally need to perform, where decisions would need to be made by a human on the outputs that preclude automation, and involving GenAI plus RPA and automation to fulfill it. Different agents specialize in doing different tasks, with some focused on compliance and standards. Some fulfill user requests; some seek out, collect and redistribute data to the right places. Workflow agents identify APIs as well as generate and execute workflows across applications.
As an example, in our company's world of QA testing, when tests are running and going through a new version of the application, there are AI agents running autonomously, making decisions. If the code behind the "button" has changed, these agents will be able to make real-time decisions on whether to fix this and keep running or stop the process. This is real-time diagnostics and fixing.
No one’s cowering before their robot overlords, though. Humans are still 100% going to be needed, but their roles will change and be less siloed. There will be fewer of them, too. One action from a team will have the potential to affect other teams much more quickly, making supervision of AI agents, roles involving training AI models and human oversight of critical decision making absolutely vital.
176104107
submission
ZipNada writes:
With ChatGPT and their ilk—Anthropic’s Claude, for example—you can find use cases, but it’s hard to point to any of them that are really killer apps. It’s impossible to point to anything that justifies the ruinous financial cost, massive environmental damage, theft from millions of people, and stealing of the entire internet. Also, on a very simple level, what’s cool about this? What is the thing that really matters here?
176068967
submission
ZipNada writes:
In results that came out late last year, the average scores of Americans ages 16 to 65 fell in both literacy and numeracy on the globally administered Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies.
And even among American adults, achievement gaps are growing. The exam’s results are broken down into six performance levels. On the numeracy portion, for example, the share of Americans scoring at the two highest levels rose two points, from 10% to 12%, while the percentage of those at the bottom two levels rose from 29% to 34%. In literacy, the percentage of Americans scoring at the top two levels fell from 14% to 13%, while the lowest two levels rose from 19% to 28%.
175870193
submission
ZipNada writes:
You are wearing AI-powered glasses that can see what you see, hear what you hear, and process your surroundings through a multimodal large language model. Now when you spot that store across the street, you simply whisper to yourself, “I wonder when it opens?” and a voice will instantly ring back into your ears, “10:30 a.m.”
By 2030, we will not need to whisper to the AI agents traveling with us through our lives. Instead, you will be able to simply mouth the words, and the AI will know what you are saying by reading your lips and detecting activation signals from your muscles.
By 2035, you may not even need to mouth the words. That’s because the AI will learn to interpret the signals in our muscles with such subtlety and precision — we will simply need to think about mouthing the words to convey our intent. You will be able to focus your attention on any item or activity in your world and think something and useful information will ring back
175819011
submission
ZipNada writes:
In a paper published today in Nature, a team led by Columbia Engineering researchers and collaborators report that they have invented new nanoscale sensors of force. They are luminescent nanocrystals that can change intensity and/or color when you push or pull on them. These "all-optical" nanosensors are probed with light only and therefore allow for fully remote read-outs—no wires or connections are needed. ...
They have 100 times better force sensitivity than the existing nanoparticles that utilize rare-earth ions for their optical response, and an operational range that spans more than four orders of magnitude in force, a much larger range—10–100 times larger—than any previous optical nanosensor.
"We expect our discovery will revolutionize the sensitivities and dynamic range achievable with optical force sensors, and will immediately disrupt technologies in areas from robotics to cellular biophysics and medicine to space travel,"
175213179
submission
ZipNada writes:
By the early 2030s, I predict the convergence of artificial intelligence and augmented reality will be sufficiently refined that AI assistants will appear as photorealistic avatars that are embodied within our field of view. No, I don’t believe they will be displayed as human-sized virtual assistants who follow us around all day. That would be creepy. Instead, I predict they will be rendered as cute little creatures that fly out in front of us, guiding us and informing us about our surroundings. ...
On the other hand, deploying intelligent systems that whisper in your ears as you go about your life could easily be abused as a dangerous form of targeted influence. And when this is coupled with the ability to visually modify the world you see around you, these AI-powered glasses could unlock the most powerful tools of persuasion and manipulation ever created.
174751564
submission
ZipNada writes:
“Our theory of consciousness rejects the idea that consciousness initially evolved in order to allow us to make sense of the world and act accordingly, and then, at some later point, episodic memory developed to store such conscious representations,” Budson and his colleagues said in the study. “Our theory is that consciousness developed with the evolution of episodic memory simply—and powerfully—to enable the phenomena of remembering.”
The researchers note that many previous studies have hinted at the key role of episodic memory in consciousness, but they take this hypothesis to the next level by suggesting that the process of remembering episodes in our life is the foundation of our conscious minds. They note that this origin story of consciousness could explain a host of phenomena, such as our frequent inability to control our thoughts and our capacity to unconsciously complete complex tasks, such as driving or making music. The study could also have major implications for understanding and treating neurodegenerative diseases, such as semantic dementia and Alzheimer disease.
174744206
submission
ZipNada writes:
New research reveals that large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT cannot learn independently or acquire new skills without explicit instructions, making them predictable and controllable. The study dispels fears of these models developing complex reasoning abilities, emphasizing that while LLMs can generate sophisticated language, they are unlikely to pose existential threats. However, the potential misuse of AI, such as generating fake news, still requires attention. ... LLMs have a superficial ability to follow instructions and excel at proficiency in language, however, they have no potential to master new skills without explicit instruction. This means they remain inherently controllable, predictable and safe.
174720634
submission
ZipNada writes:
In February, Dutch company ASML announced it had built the world's first High-NA lithography machine. This device would allow finer patterns to be printed onto wafers, paving the way for creating next-generation, sub-2nm transistors. It achieved "first light" two months later in April, and now it's successfully printed both DRAM and logic patterns using the machine, showing the device is working as intended.
Belgium-based Imec is working with ASML in the Netherlands on this project. The two companies are collaborating to get the world's first High-NA lithography machine up and running and have now printed patterns smaller than any existing EUV machine is capable of, demonstrating its readiness for the market. Imec announced the breakthrough in a press release, stating it produced random logic structures down to 9.5nm, typically 13nm, according to Tom's Hardware. This was all done in a single exposure and is suitable for 1.4nm chip production.
174683580
submission
ZipNada writes:
Starting in September, the tech giant will square off against federal prosecutors and a group of states claiming that Google abused its dominance of search advertising technology that is used to sell, buy, and broker advertising space online.
Prosecutors allege that since at least 2015 Google has thwarted meaningful competition and deterred innovation through its ownership of the entities and software that power the online advertising technology market.
Google owns most of the technology to buy, sell, and serve advertisements online.
Advertisers and publishers rely on Google’s suite of technologies — including its publisher ad server, DFT, also known as DoubleClick or GAM, and its ad exchange, ADX — to identify available opportunities for online ad placements and negotiate prices to buy and sell ads.
Google’s share of the US and global advertising markets — when measured either by revenue or impressions — exceeded 90% for "many years," according to the complaint.
