RISC-V gathers momentum. Qualcomm and Google develop RISC-V wearable platform for smart watches.

Meta AI announced a new research that brings one step closer to real-time decoding of image perception from brain activity.

Using MEG, this AI system can decode the unfolding of visual representations in the brain with an unprecedented temporal resolution.

Can DSP maths help beat the GPU for AI? Lemurian Labs' new logarithmic data types, combined with its specially designed chip which does logarithmic addition in hardware, will be able to beat the H100 on GPT-J, the startup said.

The neuroTech inovation landscape featuring over 100 startups

Phenomenal work by The Feinstein Institutes on a five-chip, double neural bypass that is restoring sensation

The trial procedure is called a double neural bypass, a new bioelectrical therapy born at Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research.

The research was led by professor Chad Bouton, and involves a combination of AI, brain-computer interface implants (BCI), external computers, and non-invasive wearable tech.

Laion AI released 608 B chess moves, 236 B Rubik's Cube moves,
39 B A* moves in ASCII Mazes to improve planing abilities of LLMs:
> 1T Tokens.
> 12 Million CPU hours.

Adept have released a new multi-modal model that shows impressive capabilities across:

- visual Q&A
- document understanding
- interpreting complex charts and scientific diagrams

All with a simplified architecture that scales nicely.

Multi-hop chart Q&A, answering qs on infographics, or old scanned PDFs, on-screen localisation, reasoning about maps.

Nvidia 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

Eureka an open-ended agent that designs reward functions for robot dexterity at super-human level. It’s like Voyager in the space of a physics simulator API.

Eureka bridges the gap between high-level reasoning (coding) and low-level motor control. It is a “hybrid-gradient architecture”: a black box, inference-only LLM instructs a white box, learnable neural network. The outer loop runs GPT-4 to refine the reward function (gradient-free), while the inner loop runs reinforcement learning to train a robot controller (gradient-based).

Eureka also enables a new form of in-context RLHF, which is able to incorporate a human operator’s feedback in natural language to steer and align the reward functions. It can serve as a powerful co-pilot for robot engineers to design sophisticated motor behaviors.

Open-source everything.

Check out video gallery

GitHub here.

IBM developed a new brain-inspired AI processing chip called NorthPole

The chip’s architecture is inspired by connections in the human cerebral cortex.

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 objects.

Zuckerberg and Chan on track to put $50 billion toward science

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan sit atop a fortune that is currently valued at $113 billion, and they’ve promised to give almost all of it away. In 2015, when the self-described science nerds pledged 99% of their Facebook fortune to philanthropic causes over their lifetimes, they did not specify how they might spread their wealth.

The Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange, which specializes in trading energy-related products, has earlier this week settled its first cross-border trade in China’s digital currency.

Highlights:

1. The development of China’s e-CNY system aims to create a digital version of the renminbi that meets the public’s demand for cash in the digital economy era.

2. Domestically, the e-CNY system is designed to support the development of retail payment infrastructures and improve payment system efficiency in parallel with digital economy developments in China.

3. e-CNY also aims to echo international initiatives and explore ways to improve cross-border payments. PBOC has been actively responding to initiatives of the G20 and other international organisations to improve cross border payments, and explore the applicability of CBDC in cross-border scenarios.

4. In this latest transaction, PetroChina International paid for one million barrels of crude oil using digital yuan, the SHPGX announced, without disclosing either the name of the seller or the sum involved. It was also the bourse's first overseas oil settlement in yuan.

5. This is a significant development as this marks the first-ever cross border oil transaction that has been accomplished using e-CNY, the central bank CBDC.

6. China is the world’s largest oil importer. The New York Times this week reported that the majority of China's oil imports originated from countries in the Middle East. No country buys more oil from Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest producer behind the United States. Half of China’s oil imports, and a little more than one-third of all the oil burned in China, comes from the Persian Gulf.

7. At the recent 2023 third “Belt and Road” International Cooperation Summit Forum in Beijing, the Central Banks of China and the United Arab Emirates inked memoranda of understanding (MoU) concerning digital currencies. The People’s Bank of China solidified a digital currency cooperation agreement with the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, while the state-owned commercial Bank of China entered into a similar agreement with the First Abu Dhabi Bank, the UAE’s largest bank.

8. The latest transaction could be a prelude to the wider use of e-CNY with the potential to speed up cross-border payments, lower the cost, improve transparency, and simplify operational complexities are part of the G20 efforts on cross border payments.

9. if e-CNY is adopted at scale in the future, this would enable offshore RMB business platforms and exchanges to connect China and the rest of the world, and in turn promote wider use of RMB in the international markets.

Mythbusters on stage at NVIDIA

Apple has revealed a new plan to integrate AI into its devices.

Here's the rundown of everything going on in AI right now:

- A new version of Siri
-Auto-complete in Messages
-Playlist creation in Music
-Code suggestions in Xcode, and more.

ULTRA - a pre-trained foundation model for knowledge graph reasoning that works on _any_ graph and outperforms supervised SOTA models on 50+ graphs.

Arxiv: arxiv.org/abs/2310.04562
GitHub here.

A long-awaited era in Apple’s health history is here

The Apple Watch is now being leveraged to help manage Parkinson's disease, a degenerative brain disorder that affects as many as a million Americans.

Over the past year, the FDA has cleared three Apple Watch apps from developers to track the tremors and dyskinesia associated with Parkinson’s — work that began nearly a decade ago. 

The goal is to help inform treatment decisions for people and providers, but there’s a long slog ahead before doctors and the broader health system can be convinced the tools are worth using.

Butterfly and Forest Neurotech announced collaboration to develop the first implanted, whole-brain neural interface

Deal includes $20MM in milestones paid to Butterfly with additional revenue anticipated upon commercialization for every unit sold.

Collaboration highlights one of the many potential applications of Butterfly’s novel Ultrasound-on-Chip technology for complementary technology development and device enablement.

⚡️Big leak: Google's secret AI tool codenamed 'Stubbs' was just exposed

According to a leak by Bedros Pamboukian on Medium, Google is set to reveal a new AI tool called 'Stubbs' on Google Makersuite.

Stubbs can generate, deploy, and even publish AI apps with no-code.

He shared screenshots to provide validity to his claim of exclusive access.

The leaks also came with news for Gemini:

-Gemini will replace Google’s PaLM-2 and may power Google's Makersuite and Vertex AI.
-Demis Hassabis said Gemini will surpass the capabilities of GPT-4
-Speculation of a late 2023 release date.

The legal implications of GenAI from Deloitte

This paper delves into the relationship between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and innovation in organizations.

It systematically reviews existing literature to explore how EI, encompassing self-awareness, self-control, empathy, and social skills, can drive creativity and innovation.

It also highlights research gaps, proposing directions for future studies to further understand how organizations can leverage EI to foster a creative and innovative environment.

1. The paper emphasizes the evolving needs of customers and society, necessitating organizations to be emotionally intelligent to adapt their strategies and remain relevant. EI helps in understanding and managing the emotions of internal and external stakeholders, improving the quality of innovations.

2. It discusses different models and definitions of EI, such as the ability model, trait model, and mixed model, each providing a unique perspective on how individuals can understand, manage, and utilize emotions effectively in organizational contexts.

3. The paper identifies a gap in the literature regarding a systematic review that converges the fields of EI and creativity and innovation, motivating the current study. It aims to help organizations identify strategies to build EI competencies that promote innovation and creativity.

4. The study also explores the negative aspects of EI, such as higher stress levels in emotionally intelligent people and a tendency to avoid risks and maintain the status quo, which might be counterproductive to innovation.