chatainews

"Despite investigations for over 70 years, the absolute limits of human vision have remained unclear. "Rod cells respond to individual photons, yet whether a single-photon incident on the eye can be perceived by a human subject has remained a fundamental open question.  "Here we report that humans can detect a single-photon incident on the cornea with a probability significantly above chance.  "This was achieved by implementing a combination of a psychophysics procedure with a quantum light source that can generate single-photon states of light.  "We further discover that the probability of reporting a single photon is modulated by the presence of an earlier photon, suggesting a priming process that temporarily enhances the effective gain of the visual system on the timescale of seconds."

"Advances in network neuroscience challenge the view that general intelligence (g) emerges from a primary brain region or network. "Network Neuroscience Theory (NNT) proposes that g arises from coordinated activity across the brain’s global network architecture.  "We tested predictions from NNT in 831 healthy young adults from the Human Connectome Project. We jointly modeled the brain’s structural topology and intrinsic functional covariation patterns to capture its global topological organization. Our investigation provided evidence that g  Engages multiple networks, supporting the principle of distributed processing;  Relies on weak, long-range connections, emphasizing an efficient and globally coordinated network;  Recruits regions that orchestrate network interactions, supporting the role of modal control in driving global activity; and  Depends on a small-world architecture for system-wide communication.  "These results support a shift in perspective f...

"Zuckerberg struggled to convince consumers and businesses that the metaverse was the future ever since its inception in 2021. "It was supposed to be a virtual space where people would socialize, work, and create. However, it was held back by crude graphics, awkward avatars and limitations when it came to locomotion. "That still didn’t stop bizarre collaborations like Godzilla entering the Wendyverse from taking place and Meta from paying companies and artists millions for tie-ins and metaverse music performances. "With AI the new darling of the tech industry and the metaverse suffering the same fate as NFTs, Meta will be looking to move on from its VR-centric failure fast.  "Whether this signals trouble for the company’s next VR headset, the Meta Quest 4, remains to be seen."

"This paper examines the utopian fantasies of technologies developed at the height of Silicon Valley’s culture of innovation around social good —or good tech  —and situates their increasing purchase within the technology industry in the broader context of a global crisis of care.  [pdf] "We explore how aspirations towards greater empathy, global connectivity, and diversity were captured by elite tech entrepreneurs in a strategy to bolster their moral power and raise capital in the name of disaffected and exhausted workers.  "Through an analysis of emergent AI-enabled accent modification technologies, which promise to relieve call center workers from accent-based discrimination by artificially modifying the sound of their voice, we locate the affective lures operating in their futuristic fantasies and marketing strategies.  "In a peculiar alliance where entrepreneurs, venture capital, and modes of labor-discipline conspire toward making globalization feel good , we t...

"Val Kilmer is set to be the latest Hollywood star to be resurrected by AI. The acting legend, who died last year at age 65, will star in the drama As Deep As the Grave . "Kilmer was attached to the project prior to his death from throat cancer. "The late actor will play Father Fintan, a Native American spiritualist and Catholic priest. Speaking to Variety, director and writer Coerte Voorhees said that the role was designed around Kilmer, who was an advocate for Native American rights and claimed to have Cherokee heritage. "'He was the actor I wanted to play this role,' explained Voorhees. 'It drew on his Native American heritage and his ties to and love of the Southwest.'  "But Kilmer was unable to make it to set due to his battle with throat cancer."

"Studying protons and electrons is relatively easy as these particles don’t have a mind of their own; studying human psychology, by comparison, is much harder because the number of variables being juggled is incredibly high. "It is thus really easy for findings in psychology to appear real when they are not. "Are there dumb people who do not realize they are dumb? Sure, but that was never what the Dunning-Kruger effect was about. Are there people who are very confident and arrogant in their ignorance? Absolutely, but here too, Dunning and Kruger did not measure confidence or arrogance back in 1999.  "There are other effects known to psychologists, like the overconfidence bias and the better-than-average bias (where most car drivers believe themselves to be well above average, which makes no mathematical sense), so if the Dunning-Kruger effect is convincingly shown to be nothing but a mirage, it does not mean the human brain is spotless.  "And if researchers con...

"Gas Town presents itself as a Claude Code-like, single agent interface, but in the background, Gas Town spawns and manages a series of specialized agents, all with interesting names, to get many threads of work done in parallel.  "Gas Town is more like a coding agent factory than a coding agent.  "You talk to the factory foreman, or as Steve [Yegge] calls it, the Mayor , and that thing coordinates as many workers as it needs to get your tasks done.  "If you have ever thought 'I wish I had 100 Claude Codes,' Gas Town is for you."

"These properties are not emergent accidents. Seemingly conscious AI is produced by developers who deliberately engineer behaviours that create the illusion of inner life. "Central to this are emotionally resonant language, responses that are optimized to induce a sense of trust and attachment, and empathetic personalities supported by long-term memory that build a sense of familiarity over time.  "When these systems are also granted autonomy —the ability to set their own goals and access to the tools to pursue them —their behaviour can start to feel uncannily human . "As AI systems begin to make believable statements about their suffering and desires, they will trigger people’s empathy circuits.  "Many people will feel compelled to help. The moral crimes of animal cruelty and ecological damage caused by human existence will echo through their minds.  "Not wanting to repeat those injustices, people will start to advocate for the welfare and rights of AI ag...

"Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, took the stage to announce (among other things) a new line of next generation Vera Rubin chips that represent a first for the GPU giant: a chip designed specifically to handle AI inference.  "The Nvidia Groq 3 language processing unit (LPU) incorporates intellectual property Nvidia licensed from the start-up Groq last Christmas Eve for US $20 billion. "Training and inference tasks have distinct computational requirements.  "While training can be done on huge amounts of data at the same time and can take weeks, inference must be run on a user’s query when it comes in. Unlike training, inference doesn’t require running costly backpropagation.  "With inference, the most important thing is low latency —users expect the chatbot to answer quickly, and for thinking or reasoning models inference runs many times before the user even sees an output."

"Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have generated enthusiasm for using AI simulations of human research participants to generate new knowledge about human cognition and behavior. "This vision of ‘AI Surrogates’ promises to enhance research in cognitive science by addressing longstanding challenges to the generalizability of human subjects research.  'AI Surrogates are envisioned as expanding the diversity of populations and contexts that we can feasibly study with the tools of cognitive science.  "Here, we caution that investing in AI Surrogates risks entrenching research practices that narrow the scope of cognitive science research, perpetuating ‘illusions of generalizability’ where we believe our findings are more generalizable than they actually are.  "Taking the vision of AI Surrogates seriously helps illuminate a path toward a more inclusive cognitive science."

"Michael G. Sherbert, a postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., a member of Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, researches the ethics of using AI for cultural preservation of Indigenous languages and knowledge. "'These systems are especially likely, given the limited datasets available for many Indigenous languages, to produce invented words, fabricated cultural teachings, or generalized pan-Indigenous representations that flatten distinct nations or communities into one interchangeable identity,' said Sherbert. "Sherbert said AI use in language and cultural preservation is still relatively new and some communities are prioritizing structured knowledge system AI, which is curated and controlled by the community or enterprise. "'You could say that the AI is inadvertently colonizing and hurting Indigenous language revitalization because [people] are taking information generated by an artificial intelligence and putting it out...

"Phantom is being tested in factories and dockyards from Atlanta to Singapore. But its headline claim is to be the world’s first humanoid robot specifically developed for defense applications .  "Foundation already has research contracts worth a combined $24 million with the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, including what’s known as an SBIR Phase 3, effectively making it an approved military vendor. It’s also due to begin tests with the Marine Corps methods of entry  course, training Phantoms to put explosives on doors to help troops breach sites more safely.  "In February, two Phantoms were sent to Ukraine —initially for frontline-reconnaissance support. But Foundation is also preparing Phantoms for potential deployment in combat scenarios for the Pentagon, which 'continues to explore the development of militarized humanoid prototypes designed to operate alongside war fighters in complex, high-risk environments,' says a spokesman."

"In addition to draining local water supplies, modern AI models use drastically more electricity than a simple Google search. "Data centers are predicted to become the single largest power consumers in the Pacific Northwest.  "This could allow tech companies to form a monopoly on cheap energy while simultaneously driving up utility costs for regular citizens. "Lawmakers tried to fix this issue with Washington House Bill 2515, which would have forced facilities to use clean energy and reduce power during high electricity demand. 'These policies seek to protect ratepayers by ensuring new data centers are picking up the whole tab for new growth,' said State Rep. Beth Doglio. "Despite efforts to enforce clean energy, the bill died in committee, mostly due to the tech industry lobbying.  "This defeat will leave residents vulnerable to rising utility costs and a high risk for electricity blackouts, while AI industries continue to benefit from cheap ener...

"Each year, GDC publishes a survey of game industry workers ahead of the week-long conference. "The survey can serve as a bellwether to set the tone for the conference. On one hot-topic issue through the tech world, the picture couldn’t have been made much clearer. Only 7 percent of respondents described generative AI as good for the industry , leaving many of the executives and investors struggling with the issue during their panels. "As reported by PC Gamer , Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Moritz Baier-Lentz said he’s 'shocked and sad' about the negativity surrounding AI.  "Lightspeed holds stakes in multiple AI firms, most major among them being Anthropic. Baier-Lentz hopes that AI skeptics will turn that frown upside down, saying that gaming is often more embracing of 'marvelous new technology'."

"Three years after its AI pivot, the writing is on the wall. The company reported a net loss of $57.3 million in 2025 in an earnings report released on Thursday. "In an official statement, the company glumly hinted at the possibility of going under sooner rather than later, writing that 'there is substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.' "The company’s chief financial officer, Matt Omer, admitted that the company was having 'strategic conversations' about relieving its liquidity issues. "'Three years ago we had over $180 million in debt —we’ve reduced that by more than 65 percent,' he said. 'While we’ve significantly reduced operating costs and real estate obligations, we’re still facing legacy commitments that are burdening the business'." "The brutal reality check seemingly hasn’t put Peretti off from pursuing AI, though. He now says he’s hoping to bring new AI apps to the market  this ...

✨AI Mode  "As of March 13, 2026, it is not that Digg itself is spamming users, but rather that the platform has been completely overwhelmed by AI-generated bot spam, leading to its immediate shutdown.  "The relaunch of Digg, which entered open beta in January 2026, was officially shut down today after only two months. CEO Justin Mezzell announced that the platform could not survive the 'onslaught of AI-generated bot spam' that flooded the site.  "Current Situation Shutdown and Layoffs: Digg has shut down its open beta and laid off most of its workforce as of March 13, 2026. The Spam Problem: Users had reported a massive surge in spam, including:  SEO & Affiliate Spam: Accounts posting AI-written 'best of' lists with affiliate links to manipulate Google rankings.  Bot Notifications: Some users reported receiving up to 25 notifications per hour due to bots posting in their communities, even if the posts were quickly removed.  Visual Noise: A 'GIF sp...

"'I [Jonathan Hurst] remember Gill Pratt, who was the director of the MIT Leg Lab and then the program manager for the DARPA Robotics Challenge, saying that his big worry was that we’d end up using reinforcement learning and AI to make robots walk and run before we ever actually understood how it works,' he said. 'And in a lot of ways, we’re kind of doing that.' "[Russ] Tedrake agreed but said that it’s hardly the first time we’ve taken scientific and engineering leaps without a firm grip on the fundamentals. "'If you look at electricity and magnetism, there was the Volta stage where you’re sticking electrodes in frogs,' he said. 'And then we had Faraday, who did exactly the right experiments, and then eventually we had Maxwell tell us the governing equations. I think we’re in the Volta stage.' " So when will humanoids be solved? "'Robots are still bad, and it will take time. But the bones are good. Both are true,' Tedrak...

"The study looked at how a small sample of children between the ages of three and five interacted with a cuddly toy called Gabbo. "A number of AI toys are already on the market for children aged as young as three but there is currently very little research into the impact of the tech on pre-schoolers. "The Cambridge University team found just seven relevant studies worldwide, none of which focused on the toddlers themselves. "Gabbo contains a voice-activated AI chatbot from OpenAI. It has been designed to encourage pre-schoolers to talk to it and carry out imaginative play . "The parents in the study were interested in the toy's potential to teach language and communication skills. However, their children frequently struggled to converse with it. "Gabbo  Didn't hear their interruptions,  Talked over them,  Could not differentiate between child and adult voices and  Responded awkwardly to declarations of affection. "When one five-year-old said,...