Microsoft and Quantinuum have improved the logical error rate in quantum computing by 800x, a breakthrough the partners say has the potential to usher in a new era of qubit processing. Using ion-trap hardware from Quantinuum and a qubit-virtualization system from Microsoft, the team ran more than 14,000 experiments with no errors — a huge feat in the notoriously fickle realm of qubits. The system has error diagnostics and corrections built in, identifying which errors need to be fixed and correcting them without destroying the underlying logical qubits, according to the companies. Continue reading Microsoft, Quantinuum Tout Advance in Quantum Computing

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Adobe have unveiled a new AI acceleration tool that makes generative apps like DALL-E 3 and Stable Diffusion up to 30x faster by reducing the process to a single step. The new approach, called distribution matching distillation, or DMD, maintains or enhances image quality while greatly streamlining the process. Theoretically, the technique “marries the principles of generative adversarial networks (GANs) with those of diffusion models,” consolidating “the hundred steps of iterative refinement required by current diffusion models” into one step, MIT PhD student and project lead Tianwei Yin says. Continue reading New Tech from MIT, Adobe Advances Generative AI Imaging

Apple researchers have gone public with new multimodal methods for training large language models using both text and images. The results are said to enable AI systems that are more powerful and flexible, which could have significant ramifications for future Apple products. These new models, which Apple calls MM1, support up to 30 billion parameters. The researchers identify multimodal large language models (MLLMs) as “the next frontier in foundation models,” which exceed the performance of LLMs and “excel at tasks like image captioning, visual question answering and natural language inference.” Continue reading Apple Unveils Progress in Multimodal Large Language Models

Artificial intelligence stakeholders are calling for safe harbor legal and technical protections that will allow them access to conduct “good-faith” evaluations of various AI products and services without fear of reprisal. More than 300 researchers, academics, creatives, journalists and legal professionals had as of last week signed an open letter calling on companies including Meta Platforms, OpenAI and Google to allow access for safety testing and red teaming of systems they say are shrouded in opaque rules and secrecy despite the fact that millions of consumers are already using them. Continue reading Researchers Call for Safe Harbor for the Evaluation of AI Tools

Researchers at China’s University of Shanghai for Science and Technology have invented an ultrahigh density optical disc format they claim can store up to 1.6 petabits — more than 1,500 terabytes, or 125,000 gigabytes — of data. While the new discs are said to look like typical Blu-rays, the data is written to one hundred layers in a 3D stacking architecture by a 54-nanometer laser that is about one-tenth the size of visible light waves. The same laser is used to read the data back. The tech is said to present “a promising solution for cost effective, long-term archival data storage.” Continue reading New Chinese Optical Disc Promises Petabyte-Plus of Storage

Google has unveiled a new policy, the AI Cyber Defense Initiative, designed to harness the power of artificial intelligence to improve global cybersecurity defenses. The proposed policy aims to counteract rapidly evolving threats by using AI to improve threat detection, automate vulnerability management and enhance incident response effectiveness. The Alphabet company introduced its new plan at the Munich Security Conference, where it also announced it has a pool of $2 million to award businesses and academic institutions for research initiatives involving large language models, code verification and other AI uses for cyber offense and defense. Continue reading Google Targets Global Security with AI Cyber Defense Initiative

News site Semafor has teamed with Microsoft to create a new breaking news product called Signals it says is a template for “the newsroom of the future.” Using AI tools from Microsoft and OpenAI to assist its journalists, the multi-source Signals will offer “perspectives and insights on the biggest stories in the world as they develop,” Semafor says. Microsoft simultaneously announced deals with the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and the Online News Association. “In a year where billions of people will vote in democratic elections worldwide, journalism is critical to creating healthy information ecosystems,” Microsoft says. Continue reading Semafor Teams with Microsoft on AI-Driven Newsfeed Signals

Apple has released MGIE, an open-source AI model that edits images using natural language instructions. MGIE, short for MLLM-Guided Image Editing, can also modify and optimize images. Developed in conjunction with University of California Santa Barbara, MGIE is Apple’s first AI model. The multimodal MGIE, which understands text and image input, also crops, resizes, flips, and adds filters based on text instructions using what Apple says is an easier instruction set than other AI editing programs, and is simpler and faster than learning a traditional program, like Apple’s own Final Cut Pro. Continue reading Apple Launches Open-Source Language-Based Image Editor

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is launching a pilot program to create the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR), a shared U.S. AI research infrastructure. The move fulfills part of President Biden’s October executive order on the responsible development of artificial intelligence. Ten other federal agencies have joined the NSF in launching the program, while tech giants Microsoft, Nvidia and Google have already pledged their support, along with more than 20 other private organizations across the industry, academic and non-profit sectors. The idea is to create shared access to information and things like cloud computing resources. Continue reading Big Tech Onboard to Advance President Biden’s NSF AI Pilot

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric spoke with CTA Senior Director of Regulatory Affairs Rachel Nemeth during CES 2024 about the challenges of extending safety to products that are constantly evolving and incorporating new technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. Nemeth pointed out that the agency’s authorizing statute was enacted in 1972 and was last amended in 2008. “We’re doing a lot of good work with the statute we have,” Hoehn-Saric responded. “But we’re changing the way we operate. We talk a lot about machine learning and AI.” Continue reading CES: Championing Consumer Product Safety in the Age of AI

Apple recently announced advances in artificial intelligence research that could introduce more immersive visual experiences and enable sophisticated AI systems to run on the company’s popular mobile devices. Two new research papers highlight techniques for creating 3D avatars from video content and efficiently deploying large language models on devices challenged by limited memory. The real-time ability to create avatars and 3D scenes from an iPhone camera could bring a range of new possibilities for CE devices in areas such as synthetic media, telepresence, social interaction, virtual try-on and more. Continue reading Apple Unveils New Advances in Artificial Intelligence Research

The research division of Meta AI has developed Seamless Communication, a suite of artificial intelligence models that generate what the company says is natural and authentic communication across languages, facilitating what amounts to real-time universal speech translation. The models were released with accompanying research papers and data. The flagship model, Seamless, merges capabilities from a trio of models — SeamlessExpressive, SeamlessStreaming and SeamlessM4T v2 — into a single system that can translate between almost 100 spoken and written languages, preserving idioms, emotion and the speaker’s vocal style, Meta says. Continue reading Meta AI Seamless Translator Converts Nearly 100 Languages

Stability AI has opened research preview on its first foundation model for generative video, Stable Video Diffusion, offering text-to-video and image-to-video. Based on the company’s Stable Diffusion text-to-image model, the new open-source model generates video by animating existing still frames, including “multi-view synthesis.” While the company plans to enhance and extend the model’s capabilities, it currently comes in two versions: SVD, which transforms stills into 576×1024 videos of 14 frames, and SVD-XT that generates up to 24 frames — each at between three and 30 frames per second. Continue reading Stability Introduces GenAI Video Model: Stable Video Diffusion

Having made the leap from image generation to video generation over the course of a few months in 2022, Meta Platforms introduces Emu, its first visual foundational model, along with Emu Video and Emu Edit, positioned as milestones in the trek to AI moviemaking. Emu uses just two diffusion models to generate 512×512 four-second long videos at 16 frames per second, Meta said, comparing that to 2022’s Make-A-Video, which requires a “cascade” of five models. Internal research found Emu video generations were “strongly preferred” over the Make-A-Video model based on quality (96 percent) and prompt fidelity (85 percent). Continue reading Meta Touts Its Emu Foundational Model for Video and Editing

A second Meta Platforms whistleblower has come forward, testifying this week before a Senate subcommittee that the company’s social networks were potentially harming teens, and his warnings to that effect were ignored by top leadership. Arturo Bejar, from 2009 to 2015 a Facebook engineering director and an Instagram consultant from 2019 to 2021, told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and Law that Meta officials failed to take steps to protect underage users on the platforms. Bejar follows former Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who provided explosive Senate testimony in 2021. Continue reading Second Meta Whistleblower Testifies to Potential Child Harm