🧠 Brain Synapses ft. AI

PLUS: Plan your trips with AI

Author

Haroon Choudery
June 07, 2023

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Happy Wednesday, fellow humans. 👋

While AI is the shiny new thing everyone’s talking about, the SEC hasn’t forgotten Web3. Binance and Coinbase both got sued by the Commission this week in an attempt to crack down on crypto exchanges.

Is this FTX 2.0? Let’s hope not.

Anyway, let’s dive into some AI news…

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🧵 In today's edition:

  • 🥊 CNET vs. AI: Round 2

  • 🧠 AI can visualize brain synapses

  • 🇬🇧 UK Warns of AI Troubles

  • 🤑 AI Fundraising News

🤖 Top AI News

🥊 CNET vs. AI: Round 2

AI is not getting a good reputation in industries requiring human creativity.

CNET journalists join the Writers Guild of America in strikes to protest CNET’s latest AI policies that:

  • Allow AI to help automate some portions of their work so they can focus on the parts that add unique value

  • Allow their AI, RAMP, to generate content such as explanatory material (based on trusted sources) that a human could fact-check and edit.

The move comes six months after the site was found to be running AI-created news items without disclosing they were doing so. Sneaky… makes me wonder which other organizations are doing this.

The site has pledged that it will not use entirely AI-generated text and images, but the guidelines have been criticized by the CNET Media Workers Union, which has called for:

  • the right to opt out of the tool when necessary

  • regular testing and oversight.

Let’s see if they get their wish.

Read more: Engadget

🧠 AI can visualize brain synapses

A quick primer on synapses (from the author): Nerve cells transfer information from one cell to another by exchanging chemical messages at synapses (“junctions”).

In the brain, different life experiences, such as exposure to new environments and learning skills, are thought to induce changes at synapses, strengthening or weakening these connections to allow learning and memory.

In the past, scientists only had access to blurry imaging data, making it harder to understand brain chemistry and its behavior when healthy vs. altered by disease.

Now, Johns Hopkins University scientists have developed a cross-modality, computational and biological method that utilizes machine learning to better visualize and track changes in the strength of synapses in live animals.

The technique should help scientists better understand how connections change within human brains due to learning, aging, injuries, and diseases such as Alzheimer's.

Absolutely incredible use of AI.

🇬🇧 UK Warns of AI Troubles

The UK is doing everything in its power to try and warn the world of the dangers of AI.

PM Rishi Sunak's adviser, Matt Clifford, warned that unregulated AI producers could create advances that "kill many humans" within two years, citing the potential risks of developing dangerous cyber and biological weapons.

Requests have also been made by the UK Labor Party to “regulate AI like Nuclear Power.”

Why’s this important: This human death and “extinction” talk isn’t necessarily new - but definitely, one that has been brought up numerous times in the past month alone.

Clifford acknowledged that AI has the potential to be a force for good, such as curing diseases (see above), but stressed the need for control over AI models.

Labor Party spokesperson, Lucy Powell, had similar thoughts, stating that banning AI is not the solution; instead, regulating AI at the developmental level is needed to “mitigate societal risks like bias, discrimination, and surveillance.”

Read more: Sky News

🤑 AI Fundraising News

mend, a New York-based AI life sciences, and digital health company raised $15M in Series A funding.

Meanwhile raises $19 million in funding across two seed rounds to expand its digital asset-denominated life insurance business.

🗞️ Byte size: AI article summaries

Disclaimer: AI is (partially) used to summarize these articles.

Google Brings AI to Priceline to Help Plan Your Vacations [Gizmodo] - Google is partnering with Priceline to bring AI-powered chatbots to the online travel agency. The chatbot will have access to Google's generative AI, allowing the platform to extract data more efficiently and serve it to customers in a natural format. The new feature is expected to launch early this summer and will serve as a "personal concierge" for users. (Read more)

ChatGPT might replace your doctor — and it will actually do a better job of caring for you [Yahoo Finance] - Researchers from the University of California found that ChatGPT has been able to outperform human doctors in diagnosing and empathizing with patients. In tests conducted with almost 200 questions from a Reddit forum, the chatbot provided answers rated as three or four times more reliable than humans used to evaluate those same medical questions and seven times more empathetic. (Read more)

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As always, thanks for reading. Have a great day, and see you next time! ✌️

— Haroon: (definitely) Not A Robot and @haroonchoudery on Twitter

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