Staff and students at Kettle Moraine High School have rallied against the ban, saying it contradicts with the school’s “learning without boundaries” motto.
The sheriff of the Nomad decentralized finance project has plastered the walls of the internet with wanted posters over a recent $190 million hack of the company’s systems. Nomad is attempting to play nice about the heist, and it’s asking the dozens of ne’er do wells to voluntarily hand in their share of the…
Ferrari and The Little Car Company teamed up to create replicas of one of the former’s classic racing cars. Here’s why this version is truly one of a kind.
More than half a decade after Microsoft’s truly monumental Taye debacle, the incident still stands as stark reminder of how quickly an AI can be corrupted after exposure to the internet’s potent toxicity and a warning against building bots without sufficiently robust behavioral tethers. On Friday, Meta’s AI Research division will see if its latest iteration of Blenderbot AI can stand up to the horrors of the interwebs with the public demo release of its 175 billion-parameter Blenderbot 3.
A major obstacle currently facing chatbot technology (as well as the natural language processing algorithms that drive them) is one of sourcing. Traditionally, chatbots are trained in highly-curated environments — because otherwise you invariably get a Taye — but that winds up limiting the subjects that it can discuss to those specific ones available in the lab. Conversely, you can have the chatbot pull information from the internet to have access to a broad swath of subjects but could, and probably will, go full Nazi at some point.
“Researchers can’t possibly predict or simulate every conversational scenario in research settings alone,” Meta AI researchers wrote in a Friday blog post. “The AI field is still far from truly intelligent AI systems that can understand, engage, and chat with us like other humans can. In order to build models that are more adaptable to real-world environments, chatbots need to learn from a diverse, wide-ranging perspective with people ‘in the wild.'”
Meta has been working to address the issue since it first introduced the BlenderBot 1 chat app in 2020. Initially little more than an open-source NLP experiment, by the following year, BlenderBot 2 had learned both to remember information it had discussed in previous conversations and how to search the internet for additional details on a given subject. BlenderBot 3 takes those capabilities a step further by not just evaluating the data it pulls from the web but also the people it speaks with.
When a user logs an unsatisfactory response from the system— currently hovering around 0.16 percent of all training responses — Meta works the feedback from the user back into the model to avoid it repeating the mistake. The system also employs the Director algorithm which first generates a response using training data, then runs the response through a classifier to check if it fits within a user feedback-defined scale of right and wrong.
“To generate a sentence, the language modeling and classifier mechanisms must agree,” the team wrote. “Using data that indicates good and bad responses, we can train the classifier to penalize low-quality, toxic, contradictory, or repetitive statements, and statements that are generally unhelpful.” The system also employs a separate user-weighting algorithm to detect unreliable or ill-intentioned responses from the human conversationalist — essentially teaching the system to not trust what that person has to say.
“Our live, interactive, public demo enables BlenderBot 3 to learn from organic interactions with all kinds of people,” the team wrote. “We encourage adults in the United States to try the demo, conduct natural conversations about topics of interest, and share their responses to help advance research.”
BB3 is expected to speak more naturally and conversationally than its predecessor, in part, thanks to its massively upgraded OPT-175B language model, which stands nearly 60 times larger than BB2’s model. “We found that, compared with BlenderBot 2, BlenderBot 3 provides a 31 percent improvement in overall rating on conversational tasks, as evaluated by human judgments,” the team said. “It is also judged to be twice as knowledgeable, while being factually incorrect 47 percent less of the time. Compared with GPT3, on topical questions it is found to be more up-to-date 82 percent of the time and more specific 76 percent of the time.”
Do you remember how your parents tried to convince you to eat your vegetables as a kid by promising they were good for your health? That’s the same tactic a lot of wearable makers are using today, by adding health-tracking features to devices like smartwatches. Now, researchers have developed a way for earbuds to…
Jim Lee’s designs for the X-Men are burned into the minds of X-Fans like the Phoenix Force itself—whether you devoured comics, fell in love with the animated series, or, perhaps, just collected some of the iconic trading cards of the era. If you’re the latter, then we’ve got some very good news.
But Russia strongly warned Washington against publicizing the issue.
Modeled after the band’s ninja star logo, the Pro-Ject x Metallica Ninja Star Turntable is a record player in the form of a throwing star, complete with pointy edges. As far as record players go, it’s certainly one of the more aggressive-looking ones I’ve seen. And isn’t that what you look for in a turntable?
Just go ahead and put your wallet back in your pocket because the turntable costs a pretty penny – $1,599 to be exact, presumably priced to help the band recoup its losses from the illegal downloading of its music off Napster circa 2000. Something I know absolutely nothing about because it’s not like I was a broke college student at the time or anything.
The turntable features a mirror finish metal top plate and glass platter, perfect for playing translucent vinyl records like the red one in the photo. Don’t have any translucent vinyl? Start collecting! You just dished out $1,600 for a record player; surely you can drop a couple of extra hundred on vinyl. Me? Money’s a little tight right now, so I’m afraid I’ll be sticking to my first-generation iPod.
[via DudeIWantThat]
Sony’s LinkBuds S are now particularly tempting if you’re looking for true wireless earbuds with a dash of intelligence. Amazon is selling the LinkBuds S at a new low price of $148, well below the usual $200. That’s even better than the Prime Day discount, and could make them an easy choice if you want major-brand audio without paying a stiff premium.
Buy LinkBuds S at Amazon – $148
The LinkBuds S’ signature feature is their smart playback. They can automatically start or resume music based on your activity — you can specify a playlist when you go for a walk, for instance. They’re also billed as the smallest and lightest wireless earbuds to support both active noise cancellation (ANC) and high-resolution audio. That’s worth considering if comfort is paramount, especially if you intend to listen for the claimed six hours per charge (another 14 hours is available through the case).
As the middle ground between the top-tier WF-1000XM4 and budget WF-C500, the LinkBuds S involve some compromises. The auto playback feature works for both Android and iOS users, but it’s limited to Spotify and the soundscape app Endel. ANC isn’t quite as powerful as it is in the WF-1000XM4, and the case doesn’t support wireless charging. The sale price makes these omissions easier to forgive, though, and Sony has touted after-launch upgrades like a low-latency mode for gamers.
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The theory and practice of marginal gains is to find and fix hundreds of small things that, in aggregate, add up to something vast. Asics believes that there are gains to be made in what runners wear when they’re at home as much as what they’re wearing on the track. That’s the pitch for the Actibreeze 3D, a pair of 3D-printed sandals with a lattice structure designed to improve cooling and breathability. The idea is to stop your extremities from getting too sweaty and tense after a run, so you’re that much more prepared for your next one. I’ve been wearing a pair for a couple of days now, and while they do keep your feet cool and dry, they’re not perfect.
Taking them out of the box, you’ll first notice how heavy they are, with each sandal – although they’re more like slippers – weighing 350 grams (12 oz) for my size 11s. They’re a lot bigger than your average pool slide, too, thanks to the overbuilt sole and lattice going over the top of your foot. Obviously, this is to help get air flowing under your feet to cool them down after a long run, and I experienced this after a fairly intensive gym session. It helped that we’re enduring a climate change-enhanced heatwave right now, to really ram home the lack of sweating. It’s a far nicer experience wearing these than what I’d normally use, which is a $15 pair of Havaianas.
The 3D lattice is designed to provide the maximum amount of “step-in comfort” available, which means they’re pretty bouncy. Not in a I’m-walking-on-air way, but in that whenever you step, you can feel the sole compressing and bouncing back as you walk. I don’t know if the effect is more pronounced here than on other 3D-printed soles on the market, or if it’s magnified because you’re barefoot rather than wearing socks. Certainly, it takes a little mental calibration to compensate for the level of travel you’ll experience during each step. Maybe those folks who wear those novelty moon boots will find these no big deal, but if you’re coming from something flat, it is a noticeable change.
Here’s the issue – obviously 3D-printed stuff is made of springy plastic, but it’s still plastic, with its mostly hard, not-particularly-yielding structure. Wear these for an hour and the soles of your feet will look like you’ve been standing on a colander, the skin covered in a grid of little squares. Whatever benefits your feet are getting on the macro level, it requires you to tolerate the small annoyance of having your skin fed through a mesh. And, on a similar theme, because it’s a hard, waterproof plastic, it’s not the ideal surface to put your feet in close contact during a heatwave. That’s perhaps the one area that my $15 Havaianas have the edge, since there’s so little material coming into contact with the top of my feet. But if you’re only wearing these for the two or three hours after you’ve had a running session, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Asics’ Actibreeze 3D are listed on the company’s website for $80, although they are currently not out for delivery. The company tells me that the stock will be available in selected markets once again this Autumn.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
