#AI and Brain Data

[familythings]

What Are ‘Neural Data’? Our Thoughts Can Be Recorded—Here’s What You Need to Know

Have you ever wondered if your thoughts could be tracked, recorded, or even sold? Sounds like science fiction, right? Well, it’s actually happening, and the rise of neurotechnology means that our brains are becoming a data goldmine. Some experts urge stronger protection. They refer to this as “neural data”—information collected from our brains through tech devices. So, What Exactly Are Neural…

[bixels]

As cameras becomes more normalized (Sarah Bernhardt encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use cameras because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by manufacturing companies. I paint not because I want a painting but because I love the process of painting. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

if i have to explain to you that using a camera to take a picture is not the same as using generative ai to generate an image then you are a fucking moron.

[nostalgicsneeze]

this is the only website i post art nowadays and i’ll keep doin it but DAMN…

[billiuspendragon]

omg, I somehow got recommended a video about that character ai thing and the comments were all like "ugh it's so annoying that the bots aren't creative and you have to be the one to move the role-play forward :( :( :( they should really fix that"

Like. I hate to break it to you but that is not a real person. It is a computer. You are literally role-playing by yourself with a machine.

If you want a role-play with creativity where you don't have to do all the input, then I have a fantastic suggestion for you!

Role-play with a real person!

[jcmarchi]

Non-fiction books that explore AI's impact on society  - AI News

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/non-fiction-books-that-explore-ais-impact-on-society-ai-news/

Non-fiction books that explore AI's impact on society  - AI News

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is code or technologies that perform complex calculations, an area that encompasses simulations, data processing and analytics.

AI has increasingly grown in importance, becoming a game changer in many industries, including healthcare, education and finance. The use of AI has been proven to double levels of effectiveness, efficiency and accuracy in many processes, and reduced cost in different market sectors. 

AI’s impact is being felt across the globe, so, it is important we understand the effects of AI on society and our daily lives. 

Better understanding of AI and all that it does and can mean can be gained from well-researched AI books.

Books on AI provide insights into the use and applications of AI. They describe the advancement of AI since its inception and how it has shaped society so far. In this article, we will be examining recommended best books on AI that focus on the societal implications.

For those who don’t have time to read entire books, book summary apps like Headway will be of help.

Book 1: “Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies” by Nick Bostrom

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher with a background in computational neuroscience, logic and AI safety. 

In his book, Superintelligence, he talks about how AI  can surpass our current definitions of intelligence and the possibilities that might ensue.

Bostrom also talks about the possible risks to humanity if superintelligence is not managed properly, stating AI can easily become a threat to the entire human race if we exercise no control over the technology. 

Bostrom offers strategies that might curb existential risks, talks about how Al can be aligned with human values to reduce those risks and suggests teaching AI human values.

Superintelligence is recommended for anyone who is interested in knowing and understanding the implications of AI on humanity’s future.

Book 2: “AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order” by Kai-Fu Lee

AI expert Kai-Fu Lee’s book, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, examines the AI revolution and its impact so far, focusing on China and the USA. 

He concentrates on the competition between these two countries in AI and the various contributions to the advancement of the technology made by each. He highlights China’s advantage, thanks in part to its larger population. 

China’s significant investment so far in AI is discussed, and its chances of becoming a global leader in AI. Lee believes that cooperation between the countries will help shape the future of global power dynamics and therefore the economic development of the world.

In thes book, Lee states AI has the ability to transform economies by creating new job opportunities with massive impact on all sectors. 

If you are interested in knowing the geo-political and economic impacts of AI, this is one of the best books out there. 

Book 3: “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” by Max Tegmark

Max Tegmark’s Life 3.0 explores the concept of humans living in a world that is heavily influenced by AI. In the book, he talks about the concept of Life 3.0, a future where human existence and society will be shaped by AI. It focuses on many aspects of humanity including identity and creativity. 

Tegmark envisions a time where AI has the ability to reshape human existence. He also emphasises the need to follow ethical principles to ensure the safety and preservation of human life. 

Life 3.0 is a thought-provoking book that challenges readers to think deeply about the choices humanity may face as we progress into the AI era. 

It’s one of the best books to read if you are interested in the ethical and philosophical discussions surrounding AI.

Book 4: “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” by Klaus Schwab

Klaus Martin Schwab is a German economist, mechanical engineer and founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF). He argues that machines are becoming smarter with every advance in technology and supports his arguments with evidence from previous revolutions in thinking and industry.

He explains that the current age – the fourth industrial revolution – is building on the third: with far-reaching consequences.

He states use of AI in technological advancement is crucial and that cybernetics can be used by AIs to change and shape the technological advances coming down the line towards us all.

This book is perfect if you are interested in AI-driven advancements in the fields of digital and technological growth. With this book, the role AI will play in the next phases of technological advancement will be better understood.

Book 5: “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy” by Cathy O’Neil

Cathy O’Neil’s book emphasises the harm that defective mathematical algorithms cause in judging human behaviour and character. The continual use of maths algorithms promotes harmful results and creates inequality.

An example given in  the book is of research that proved bias in voting choices caused by results from different search engines.

Similar examination is given to research that focused Facebook, where, by making newsfeeds appear on users’ timelines, political preferences could be affected.

This book is best suited for readers who want to adventure in the darker sides of AI that wouldn’t regularly be seen in mainstream news outlets.

Book 6: “The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth” by Robin Hanson

An associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a former researcher at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University, Robin Hanson paints an imaginative picture of emulated human brains designed for robots. What if humans copied or “emulated” their brains and emotions and gave them to robots?

He argues that humans who become “Ems” (emulations) will become more dominant in the future workplace because of their higher productivity.

An intriguing book for fans of technology and those who love intelligent predictions of possible futures.

Book 7: “Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it” by Martin Ford

This book was drawn from interviews with AI experts and examines the struggles and possibilities of AI-driven industry.

If you want insights from people actively shaping the world, this book is right for you!

CONCLUSION

These books all have their unique perspectives but all point to one thing – the advantages of AI of today will have significant societal and technological impact. These books will give the reader glimpses into possible futures, with the effects of AI becoming more apparent over time.

For better insight into all aspects of AI, these books are the boosts you need to expand your knowledge. AI is advancing quickly, and these authors are some of the most respected in the field. Learn from the best with these choice reads.

[hardcorehashbrown]

it’s cool being a published researcher and all but answering reviewer comments is gonna be the death of me

like ik i’m stupid but getting comments from other stupid scientists who couldn’t even be bothered to properly read the manuscript makes me want to hack into the editors email and track down the reviewers so i can yell at them in person

[whatever-you-can-give-me]

see the thing about ai is. we already taught computers to do the most interesting thing we could possibly teach them (how to play games with us at varying levels of skill) YEARS ago so everything that’s followed just feels like it’s trying to beat the hype of deep blue the robot chessmaster. nothing will be a better use of ai than that. we peaked with ai card games, just give up.

[dokkywokky]

adding to this: *this is a problem that will fucking haunt EEEEVERYTHING.* not just higher ed. it sucks. and it’s awful. but until the investment bubble commits sudoku and sam altman is (finally) drawn and quartered with silly string by Boston Spot robots as Goddess intended then you need to 👏 ask 👏 questions about things which Don’t Look Right and 👏 talk 👏 to 👏 your 👏 coworkers (or your GP! or your design lead! or your copy editor! or).

use nightshade, block “AI” freaks, and be. aware. it is a greasy little poison that will seep into everything around you and you must not let it breach your defenses. there will be some glassy-eyed soulless bean counting freak who shows up to your place of comfort or work with a mediocrity machine in a box and the world’s grimiest sales pitch and you will need to fight tooth and fucking nail to boot them out and never, ever let them back in until they have dropped the box and lit it on fire.

all LLMs are unethical. CharacterAI was built on unfathomable amounts of theft. Image recognition rests on the back of billions of unpaid man hours of gig work by people in countries where they can’t do anything else to put food on their table. Stable Diffusion is the world’s nastiest plagarist. all of it was made using inconceivable quantities of modern day slavery.

Do. Not. Let. It. In.

ur future nurse is using chapgpt to glide thru school u better take care of urself

[macgenceblog]

Brain Activity Data for AI Training is essential for advancing neuroscience, healthcare, and brain-computer interfaces. By collecting and annotating EEG, fMRI, and other neurophysiological signals, AI models can better interpret cognitive states, emotions, and neurological disorders. High-quality annotated datasets help train AI for applications like mind-controlled prosthetics, mental health diagnostics, and cognitive enhancement. Precise data labeling ensures accuracy, enabling AI to recognize patterns in brain activity effectively. At Macgence, we specialize in curating and annotating Brain Activity Data for AI Training, accelerating AI-driven innovations in neurotechnology. Partner with us to build smarter AI solutions powered by real-world neural data.

[youthchronical]

Scientists from India, UK join hands to research healthy brain aging

The Centre for Brain Research (CBR) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) on Friday launched an international partnership that will create an interconnected research ecosystem to accelerate scientific understanding and innovation in brain health. According to CBR, by integrating expertise and cutting-edge technologies including blood-based…

[jcmarchi]

Sam Altman: OpenAI to keep nonprofit soul in restructuring

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/sam-altman-openai-to-keep-nonprofit-soul-in-restructuring/

Sam Altman: OpenAI to keep nonprofit soul in restructuring

Ever wondered what happens when a company trying to build a ‘brain for the world’ needs to grow up, fast, without selling its soul? Well, OpenAI has just given us a peek as it pledges to keep its nonprofit core amid broader restructuring.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has laid out their roadmap, and the headline news is: they’re rejigging the money side of things, but their core mission to make Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) work for all of us remains bolted down.

In a letter, Altman wrote: “OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be.” It’s a bold statement, but it sets the scene for a company wrestling with how to fund world-changing tech while keeping its ethical compass pointing true north.

Cast your mind back, if you will, to OpenAI’s early days. Altman paints a picture that’s a far cry from the tech behemoth it’s becoming.

“When we started OpenAI, we did not have a detailed sense for how we were going to accomplish our mission,” he shared. “We started out staring at each other around a kitchen table, wondering what research we should do.”

Forget fancy business models or product roadmaps back then. The idea of AI dishing out medical advice, revolutionising how we learn, or needing the kind of computing power that makes your gaming PC look like a pocket calculator – “hundreds of billions of dollars of compute,” as Altman puts it – wasn’t even on the horizon.

Even the ‘how’ of building AGI was a bit of a head-scratcher. When OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit, some of the early thinkers at the company apparently thought AI should probably only be trusted to a handful of “trusted people” who could “handle it.”

That view has done a complete 180. “We now see a way for AGI to directly empower everyone as the most capable tool in human history,” Altman declared.

The big dream? If everyone gets their hands on AGI, we’ll cook up amazing things for each other, pushing society forward. Sure, some might use it for dodgy stuff, but Altman’s betting on humanity: “We trust humanity and think the good will outweigh the bad by orders of magnitude.”

Their game plan is what they call “democratic AI.” They want to give us all these incredible tools. They’re even talking about open-sourcing powerful models, saying they want us to make decisions about how ChatGPT behaves.

“We want to build a brain for the world and make it super easy for people to use for whatever they want (subject to few restrictions; freedom shouldn’t impinge on other people’s freedom, for example),” Altman explained.

And people are already getting stuck in. Scientists are crunching data faster, programmers are coding smarter, and folks are even using ChatGPT to navigate tricky health issues or get advice on tough personal situations. Here’s the rub: the world wants way more AI than they can currently churn out.

“We currently cannot supply nearly as much AI as the world wants,” Altman admitted.

This insatiable appetite for AI, and the eye-watering sums of cash needed to feed it, is why OpenAI feels it’s time for it to “evolve” beyond a strict nonprofit structure.

 Altman boiled the restructuring down to three main goals:

Getting the dough: They need to find a way to pull in the “hundreds of billions of dollars and may eventually require trillions of dollars” – yes, trillions with a ‘T’ – to make their AI tools available to everyone on the planet. Think of it like building a global superhighway for intelligence.

Supercharging the nonprofit: They want their original nonprofit arm to be the “largest and most effective nonprofit in history,” using AI to make a massive positive difference in people’s lives.

Delivering AGI that’s helpful and safe: This means doubling down on safety and making sure AI aligns with human values. Altman’s proud of OpenAI’s track record, including creating new “red teaming” methods (where they get clever people to try and break their AI to find flaws) and being open about how their models work.

So, what’s the grand plan for this evolution? Crucially, the nonprofit side of OpenAI is staying firmly in the driver’s seat. This isn’t just some vague promise; it came after serious chats with “civic leaders” and the offices of the Attorneys General of California and Delaware.

“OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit, is today a nonprofit that oversees and controls the for-profit, and going forward will remain a nonprofit that oversees and controls the for-profit. That will not change,” Altman stated.

The bit that is changing is the for-profit LLC that currently sits under the nonprofit. This will morph into a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC).

If you’re scratching your head, a PBC is a type of company that’s legally bound to consider its public benefit mission alongside making money. Think of companies like Patagonia or some ethical food brands – they want to do good while still being a business. It’s a model other AGI labs like Anthropic are using too, so it’s becoming a bit of a trend for purpose-driven tech firms.

This also means they’re ditching their old, rather head-scratching “capped-profit” system. Altman explained this made sense when it looked like one company might dominate AGI, but now, with lots of players in the game, a “normal capital structure where everyone has stock” is simpler.

The nonprofit side of OpenAI won’t just be in the driving seat; it’ll also become a big shareholder in this new PBC. According to Altman, this means the nonprofit will get a hefty chunk of resources to pour into programmes that help AI benefit different communities.

As the PBC makes more money, the nonprofit gets more cash to splash on projects in areas like health, education, and science. They’re even getting a special commission to dream up ways their nonprofit work can make AI more democratic.

Altman wrapped things up with a healthy dose of optimism, saying, “We believe this sets us up to continue to make rapid, safe progress and to put great AI in the hands of everyone.”

OpenAI is clearly trying to attract the colossal funding needed for AGI development while hard-wiring its “benefit all of humanity” mantra into its very DNA. It’s a delicate tightrope walk, and you can bet the entire tech world, and probably a good chunk of the rest of us, will be watching to see if they can pull it off.

(Image by Mohamed Hassan)

See also: Google AMIE: AI doctor learns to ‘see’ medical images

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

[plumedesnuages]

I've been very vocal about how much I despise IA... So he very discreetly installed Gemini :)

That's so cool :)

[snowtamale]

what is the polite way to tell someone i would never use generative AI because i use my brain to do thinking for me???

(not to mention the ecological/infrastructure cost of every AI query)

[mehmetyildizmelbourne-blog]

Meet Mr Sylvain Zyssman, a Tech Expert

Sylvain, from France, is the technical brain behind the Illumination Substack Mastery Boost Dear Subscribers,  As an editor, content curator, and now a founding member of the Illumination Substack Mastery community I started introducing my editor and writer colleagues. It is a great pleasure for me to do so.  My latest one was about David Mokotoff, MD. If you missed it, you can read from this…

[innonurse]

Diverse datasets advance brain–behavior machine learning models toward clinical application

- By InnoNurse Staff -

Neuroimaging research aims to link brain activity to behavior, potentially paving the way for personalized mental health treatments.

A recent Yale study highlights that predictive models trained on one dataset often falter when tested on distinct datasets, limiting their real-world applicability. However, the Yale team demonstrated that models predicting traits like language abilities and executive function could still perform well on datasets differing in demographics and clinical symptoms. Lead researcher Brendan Adkinson emphasizes that testing models on diverse datasets is crucial to their clinical relevance, especially as factors like age, ethnicity, and geography introduce unique dataset-specific traits.

Adkinson's research also highlights the need for predictive models that generalize across urban and rural populations. Since many neuroimaging datasets come from urban areas, there’s a risk that models may not accurately reflect rural populations. Adkinson, himself from a rural background, underscores the importance of developing models robust enough for diverse population needs to ensure equitable clinical benefits.

Image: Variations among the PNC, HBN, and HCPD datasets. Credit: Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2024.101464.

Read more at Yale University

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The Dangoor Health-Tech Academy launches to bridge UK healthcare and UK-Israel tech companies (CTECH)

UK healthtech startup Definition Health raises £5.75M in pre-seed funding to enhance surgical care with predictive AI (Definition Health/Globe Newswire)

UK-based Scalpel AI secures £3.8M to expand its surgical instrument tracking and validation platform (Health Tech Newspaper)

Montreal-based healthtech startup Epitopea with transatlantic connections raises $43M CAD for RNA-based cancer immunotherapies (BetaKit)

Salva Health aims to reduce breast cancer mortality with an affordable screening device (TechCrunch)

[tremolo-legato-suckas]

i feel like it is Of Interest™ that the handsome jackhammer is one of those chuck-em-and-respawn-em type guns, yada yada digistruct, right.

but that also means that you can't just destroy one??? it's set to re-construct in like 1 second.

the implications. the consequencies.