NASA Postpones Return of Stranded Starliner Astronauts to March
Barry Wilmore and Suni Williams will now come home in March at the earliest, to allow SpaceX and NASA engineers to complete development of a new Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Swarms of ‘ant-like’ robots lift heavy objects and hurl themselves over obstacles
Scientists have developed swarms of tiny magnetic robots that work together like ants to achieve Herculean feats, including traversing and picking up objects many times their size. The findings suggest that these microrobot swarms — operating under a rotating magnetic field — could be used to take on difficult tasks in challenging environments that individual …
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Human-like artificial intelligence may face greater blame for moral violations
In a new study, participants tended to assign greater blame to artificial intelligences (AIs) involved in real-world moral transgressions when they perceived the AIs as having more human-like minds. Minjoo Joo of Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, Korea, presents these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on December 18, 2024.
Tiny robots, big impact: Revolutionizing infertility treatment with magnetic microrobots
Infertility affects an estimated 186 million people worldwide, with fallopian tube obstruction contributing to 11%-67% of female infertility cases. Researchers have developed an innovative solution using a magnetically driven robotic microscrew to treat fallopian tube blockages. The microrobot is made from nonmagnetic photosensitive resin, coated with a thin iron layer to give it magnetic properties. …
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AI models adjust personality test answers to appear more likable, study finds
Most major large language models (LLMs) can quickly tell when they are being given a personality test and will tweak their responses to provide more socially desirable results—a finding with implications for any study using LLMs as a stand-in for humans.
MidJourney adds Pinterest-like ‘moodboards’ and support for multiple custom AI image models
Moodboards enable users to upload curated collections of images that act as inspiration for generating new art.Read More
Luigi Mangione Conspiracy Theories Are Going Strong
The man who allegedly shot United Healthcare’s CEO has inspired a seemingly never-ending flood of conspiracy theories about everything from his eyebrows to the number 286.
Breaking barriers: Study uses AI to interpret American Sign Language in real-time
A study is the first-of-its-kind to recognize American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet gestures using computer vision. Researchers developed a custom dataset of 29,820 static images of ASL hand gestures. Each image was annotated with 21 key landmarks on the hand, providing detailed spatial information about its structure and position. Combining MediaPipe and YOLOv8, a deep …
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Zero-shot strategy enables robots to traverse complex environments without extra sensors or rough terrain training
Two roboticists from the University of Leeds and University College London have developed a framework that enables robots to traverse complex terrain without extra sensors or prior rough terrain training. Joseph Humphreys and Chengxu Zhou outlined the details of their framework in a paper posted to the arXiv preprint server.
Synthetic data has its limits — why human-sourced data can help prevent AI model collapse
With model degradation, AI development could stall, leaving AI systems unable to ingest new data and essentially becoming “stuck in time.”Read More