Discover | Tech News

The First Life on Earth: Meet LUCA

Scientists now believe that the very first ancestor of all life on Earth, known as the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), lived around 4.2 billion years ago. This tiny single-celled organism appeared just a few hundred million years after Earth's formation (surprisingly soon) and was more complex than previously thought. These new findings change how we understand the origins of life on our planet and open up exciting possibilities for finding life beyond Earth.

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Pokémon Data Creates AI Model

Based on reports from 404 Media, Niantic, the creator of Pokémon Go, is utilizing player-generated data to develop a "Large Geospatial Model" (LGM), an AI system designed to navigate and understand the real world, raising questions about data privacy and the future of augmented reality technology.

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💻 OpenAI's Musk Control Fears

According to newly revealed emails from OpenAI's early days, co-founders Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman expressed serious concerns about Elon Musk's desire for control over artificial general intelligence (AGI), highlighting the tensions that shaped the company's tumultuous beginnings.

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✍️ AI Poetry Outperforms Humans

A recent study published in Nature Scientific Reports reveals that readers not only struggle to differentiate between AI-generated poems and those written by renowned poets but often prefer the AI-created verses. This challenges long-held assumptions about human creativity and the role of AI in poetry.

Researchers identified a phenomenon they call the "more human than human" effect in AI-generated poetry. Participants consistently rated AI poems higher in qualities like rhythm, beauty, and emotional clarity compared to human-authored work.

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🟠 Chinese Mars Rover Finds Signs of Ancient Ocean Shoreline

China's Mars rover, Zhurong, has made an exciting discovery: evidence that suggests an ancient ocean shoreline once existed on Mars. This finding comes from the planet's northern hemisphere. Reports from the Tianwen-1 mission indicate that about 3.5 billion years ago, there may have been a coastline on Mars. This discovery could change how we understand Mars's history and its potential to have once supported life.

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🟠 Dune: Space Game of Thrones

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, HBO's new series "Dune: Prophecy" is drawing comparisons to "Game of Thrones" and "House of the Dragon" for its focus on political intrigue and power struggles in a fantastical setting. While set in the expansive sci-fi universe of Frank Herbert's "Dune," the show's emphasis on scheming noble houses and organizational control over civilization has led some critics to dub it "'Game of Thrones' in space."

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Laser Light Casts Shadow

Scientists have made a surprising discovery that challenges our usual understanding of light: a laser beam can cast a visible shadow under specific conditions, much like a solid object would. As reported by Futurism, scientists using a ruby crystal and precisely configured lasers demonstrated that light can behave like an opaque object that blocks other light. This breakthrough opens up exciting possibilities for controlling and manipulating light in entirely new ways.

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📣 Hello everyone! Here's the most exciting AI news from Week 46 of 2024 in our Sunday digest.

TO READ

🎅 Coca-Cola has remade its iconic "Holidays Are Coming" commercial from 1995. The new ad is entirely generated by AI and will be broadcast globally on TV.

📱 AGI might appear in 2025, admitted CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman. In a new interview, he also talked about his first business and advised startup founders.

🐱 MeowTalk: AI cat-to-human translator. The app recognizes your pet's meows and builds a unique 'vocabulary' for your cat.

🕊 Elon Musk will head DOGE — the new Department of Government Efficiency in President Donald Trump's administration.

🤩 New 3D bioprinter developed by engineers at the University of Melbourne creates tissue 350 times faster than existing models.

💬 Using ChatGPT as a personal diary can help you navigate conflicts in your family and workplace, as well as process your inner feelings.

💡 10 revolutionary AI tools by "Time." The list includes the Nobel Prize-winning AI model and the Runway Gen-3 text-to-video.

SAVE THIS — IT'S HELPFUL

✏️ Master logo creation with FLUX. AI-powered text-to-image tool is great for creating memorable logos.

👠 Shazam for fashion. Send the AI assistant a link to a post with an outfit you like, and it will show you where to buy those items.

TO WATCH

🎬 The "Here" movie by Robert Zemeckis in which an AI rejuvenates and ages Tom Hanks. According to the director, making such a film five years ago was impossible.

📱 Top 5 discussions at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, actor Ashton Kutcher, OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla, and others discuss how AI is changing our lives.

Enjoy your Sunday 👍

AI Grandma Ties Up Scammers

Daisy, an AI-powered "granny" developed by O2 in collaboration with scambaiter Jim Browning, is designed to combat phone scammers by engaging them in prolonged conversations, thereby preventing them from targeting real victims and gathering valuable data on fraudulent tactics.

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🧬 DeepMind Releases AlphaFold Code

Google DeepMind has released the source code for AlphaFold 3, a groundbreaking advancement in protein structure prediction technology that enhances accuracy and extends its capabilities to model complex molecular interactions.

By sharing the code, DeepMind fosters transparency and collaboration in the scientific community, enabling researchers worldwide to leverage this tool.

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China's Solar Great Wall

China's "Solar Great Wall" is a massive project in Inner Mongolia that combines large-scale solar power generation with efforts to combat desertification. By 2030, it aims to produce 48 billion kilowatt-hours of clean energy annually for the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. This initiative will help reduce carbon emissions, fight the spread of deserts, create jobs, and boost local economies through technological innovation.

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🚕 Anyone in Los Angeles Can Now Order a Robotaxi

Waymo, the self-driving car company owned by Alphabet, has expanded its robotaxi service in Los Angeles. The driverless ride-hailing service is now available to the public across an 80-square-mile area, ending a waitlist of 300,000 people. Anyone with the Waymo One app can now request a fully autonomous ride 24/7.

Waymo's current fleet provides over 100,000 rides each week. The service has garnered an impressive average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars, with a remarkable 98% customer satisfaction rate.

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Altman Predicts AGI by 2025

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has stirred the tech community with his prediction that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) could be realized by 2025, a timeline that contrasts sharply with many experts who foresee AGI's arrival much later. Despite skepticism, Altman asserts that OpenAI is on track to achieve this ambitious goal, emphasizing ongoing advancements and substantial funding, while also suggesting that the initial societal impact of AGI might be minimal.

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The Beatles Make AI History with Grammy Nominations

The Beatles have made a groundbreaking return to the Grammy stage with their AI-enhanced song "Now and Then," earning nominations for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance nearly 50 years after their breakup. This historic achievement, reported by Business Today and Moneycontrol, highlights the band's innovative use of AI technology to isolate John Lennon's vocals from a decades-old demo tape.

Listen to “Now and Then”

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📣 Hello everyone! Here’s the most exciting AI news from Week 45 of 2024 in our Sunday digest.

MAIN NEWS

🖼 Flux image generator update. The new Ultra and Raw modes allow you to create photorealistic detailed images in high resolution.

🌳 The story of Flux. How did the German startup Black Forest Labs create a competitor to DALL-E and Midjourney?

SAVE THIS — IT'S HELPFUL

🎸 All our manuals on working with audio, voice, and music using generative AI. The best from 2024.

TO READ

🐶 AI-powered collar helps you talk to your dog. Texas-based startup Personifi AI has introduced a gadget for cat and dog owners: a "talking" pet collar called Shazam Band.

🧪 Scientists teleport smells using AI. A new technology from Osmo startup will allow sending scents via the Internet, like music or pictures.

🚕 EHang Holdings has received permission to conduct test flights of their air taxi in several Chinese cities. The company's vice president, Dong Wan, tested the first model, EH216.

👩‍⚕️ How doctors use AI. According to a BMJ Health and Care Informatics survey, about 20% of therapists in the UK use artificial intelligence tools in their daily work.

📱 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claims AGI is achievable with existing hardware, though many researchers believe it's still decades away.

TO WATCH

🎤 At TechCrunch Disrupt, actor and AI investor Ashton Kutcher explained why he invests in competitors and why we shouldn't fear the AI revolution.

Enjoy your Sunday 👍

🧬 South Africa Allows Human Genome Editing

South Africa has become the first country to allow scientists to modify human genes that can be passed down to future generations. This means doctors could potentially change an unborn baby's genes to prevent diseases or other conditions. While this is a major scientific breakthrough, many worry about safety risks and ethical concerns. Most other countries currently ban this type of gene editing in humans. The decision has started worldwide discussions about whether changing human genes that affect future generations should be allowed.

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🐾 Cloned Ferret's Historic Birth

A cloned black-footed ferret named Antonia just had two healthy babies at the Smithsonian's Zoo — the first time ever in the US! This is huge news for saving endangered species.

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🌲 Black Forest Labs has released Ultra and Raw modes for its text-to-image AI model Flux 1.1 [pro].

Ultra mode allows image generation at 4x higher resolution than the standard Flux 1.1 [pro] while maintaining prompt adherence and an impressive generation time of only 10 seconds per sample.

The Raw option is designed to make photorealistic images. The developers ensure that Raw mode significantly increases diversity in portraits and enhances the realism of nature images.

🔴 Flux 1.1 [ultra] is already available on @GPT4Telegrambot. You can use it in the Midjourney / Flux bundle.