Author: Angel City Editorial Team
A sudden increase in stone tool complexity in the fossil record suggests a sudden increase in human knowledge around 600,000 years ago, and helps explain how modern humans and our ancestors became particularly capable of adapting to new environments. This potentially dates “to the divergence of Neanderthals and modern humans and could represent a derived feature shared by both lineages,” explain anthropologists Jonathan Page of the University of Missouri and Charles Perrow of Arizona State University, who report the discovery in a new paper. The researchers analyzed stone tool-making techniques spanning 3.3 million years of human evolution, ranking 62 stone…
Levallois Core, Late Pleistocene Algeria. Technological features dating back 600,000 years (phase 3). Credit: Watt, Emma. 2020. Levallois Core, Algeria. Stone Tool Museum. Retrieved June 10, 2024. Source: une.pedestal3d.com/r/JMVajqyz29 Each of us is the product of thousands of generations passed down uninterruptedly. Our cultures and technologies today are the result of cultural knowledge accumulated and reintegrated over millennia. But when did our earliest ancestors begin to make the connections that set us apart from other primates, building on the knowledge of others? Cumulative culture, the accumulation of technological changes and improvements over generations, has allowed humans to adapt to diverse…
Humanoid robots that can drive cars may one day be used as chauffeurs, but their creators acknowledge that this could be at least 50 years away. Most driverless cars work completely differently than a human driver, using artificial intelligence and custom mechanical systems to directly control the steering wheel and pedals. This approach is much more efficient and simpler than using a humanoid robot to drive, but it needs to be customized for each specific car. Takehito Kawarazuka of the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have developed a humanoid robot called Musashi that can drive a car just like…
WWDC 2024 kicked off on Monday with a packed keynote that revealed a variety of upcoming Apple Intelligence technologies, including iOS 18, macOS Sequoia, and more. We’ve highlighted the key announcements below, but be sure to also check out our video highlights and our summary article, which includes links to all of our coverage of this important day. Apple unveils iOS 18 with customizable home screen, control center and more Apple unveiled iOS 18 this week with a wide range of new features and changes for iPhone, including new customization options for the Home Screen and Control Center, a redesigned…
In case you missed it, CTV News London has compiled all of this week’s top local stories in one video. You can also read each story at the links below. London police have identified a suspect who set fire to a Muslim family’s home. The spring graduation season kicks off as pro-Palestinian camps continue at Western University. Three people were injured in a fire at an old farmhouse in Middlesex County. A motorcyclist was killed in a collision with an SUV. Police have determined the death of a man in Byron is “not suspicious” after receiving a report from the…
Should artificial intelligence be used to improve decision-making in courts? A new working paper finds that one example of an AI algorithm not only fails to improve the accuracy of judicial decisions, but the technology itself performs worse than humans. “Many researchers have focused on whether algorithms are biased or whether AI is biased,” said co-author Kosuke Imai, a professor of government statistics. “What they haven’t really looked at is how the use of AI might affect human decisions.” While AI recommendations are used in several fields, including criminal justice, healthcare, and even business, the final decision maker is usually…
Artificial intelligence (AI) should be designed to incorporate and balance human oversight, ownership, and accountability for decisions throughout the AI lifecycle. IBM’s first principle of trust and transparency states that the purpose of AI is to augment human intelligence. Augmented human intelligence means that human intelligence is enhanced through the use of AI, not operated independently from or replacing human intelligence. All of this means that AI systems should not be treated as humans, but rather viewed as support mechanisms that can enhance human intelligence and potential. AI augments human intelligence, but maintains human responsibility for decision-making even when supported…
Enlarge / AI-generated image of a girl lying on the grass using Stable Diffusion 3. On Wednesday, Stability AI released the Stable Diffusion 3 Medium weight, an AI image synthesis model that turns text prompts into AI-generated images. But the model’s launch has been met with ridicule online because it generates images of humans in a way that seems like a step back from other state-of-the-art image synthesis models, such as Midjourney and DALL-E 3. As a result, it’s easy to create anatomically inaccurate visual anomalies. A Reddit thread asked, “Is this release supposed to be a joke?” [SD3-2B]” details…
This week’s most viewed articles. These articles were brought to readers’ attention last week. Why we love libraries: 23 famous authors and celebrities share their joysSLJ Staff They are the soul of the community, the “cathedrals of who we should be as a society” and much more. Librarians are good people: Abbott Elementary’s John Oliver on an institution worth fighting for | Editor’s noteCathy IshizukaCan exposure in popular media bring about change? Given the sheer impact of these shows, it’s hard to imagine that they aren’t raising awareness of libraries and the big issues they’re currently involved in. Q&A: Mo…
At the forefront where computer science meets the mysteries of the human brain, neuromorphic computing represents an exciting fusion of technology and biology.Designed to mimic the way humans process information, this technology has the potential to revolutionize everything from artificial intelligence to robotics. But what exactly is neuromorphic computing, and why is it attracting so much attention now?The origins of neuromorphic computingThe concept of neuromorphic computing was first coined in the 1980s by scientist Carver Mead, who proposed creating electronic systems inspired by the neural structure of the human brain. Mead, a professor at the California Institute of Technology, proposed…