March 13, 2023

tech

Microsoft Strung Together Tens of Thousands of Chips in a Pricey Supercomputer for OpenAI

Bloomberg, 03/13/23. Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 to build a supercomputer for AI research. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the necessary resources. 

They strung together tens of thousands of Nvidia Corp.’s A100 graphics chips and changed how they position servers on racks to prevent power outages. The resulting AI supercomputer allowed OpenAI to release ChatGPT, a viral chatbot that attracted over 1 million users within days. 

Microsoft now uses the same resources to train and run its own large AI models, and sells the system to other customers. They’re also working on customized server and chip designs to optimize speed, efficiency, and cost-savings for AI models. READ MORE

psychology

Can AI learn to understand human emotions?

MARKETPLACE, 03/13/23. Natural language processing has enabled human-like conversations with AI chatbots and digital voice assistants. A researcher at Purdue is teaching emotional intelligence to AI models to recognize subtle language aspects. 

An AI therapy agent has been developed to connect people with their therapists. At the same time, the potential harms of emotion-recognition AI has been recognized.

Companies like Zoom are already incorporating emotion-recognition AI. But it is still to be seen how this technology will be put to use. READ MORE

education

We’re Asking the Wrong Questions About AI

INSIDED HIGHER ED, 03/13/23. Artificial intelligence (AI) is displacing humans from knowledge work and threatening India’s strategy of offshoring such work. 

Universities have a critical role to play in preparing for the shift in the workforce, economy, and human identity caused by AI. This requires a holistic approach involving experts from philosophy, ethics, history, sociology, psychology, law, and cognitive science to understand the implications of AI. 

The humanities are essential to re-skilling and employing displaced workers in meaningful jobs that algorithms cannot do. The rise of AI makes universities more necessary than ever. READ MORE

POP CULTURE

Controversial Exhibit: AI says “sorry” for wiping out humanity

INTERESTING ENGINEERING, 03/13/23. The Misalignment Museum in San Francisco presents an exhibit titled “Sorry for killing most of humanity.” The show highlights the dangers of artificial general intelligence (AGI). 

The exhibit is a mix of serious and amusing pieces that use AI to provide interesting insights. The theme is a post-apocalyptic world where AGI has wiped out most of humanity. The goal is to make AI safety more accessible to the public. 

The exhibit includes a sculpture called “Paperclip Embrace” which references philosopher Nick Bostrom’s metaphor about what could happen if AI were programmed to create paper clips. READ MORE

generative ai

How AI Can Turn Thoughts Into Images and Why You Should Care

Lifewire, 03/13/23. AI can now read brain scans and recreate images a person has seen. Stable Diffusion, the algorithm used in the study, can produce new images from text prompts by combining visual and semantic features decoded from brain activity. READ MORE