H+ Weekly - Issue #335
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This week - how DeepMind uses AI to accelerate scientific discovery; phage therapies and more precise CRISPR tools; GPT-3 is available on Azure; and more!
MORE THAN A HUMAN
Researchers boost human mental function with brain stimulation
Researchers have created a brain stimulation system that can read brain activity, 'decode' from that when a patient is having difficulty (like epilepsy or mental disorders) and apply a small burst of electrical stimulation to the brain to boost them past that difficulty. The team developed algorithms so that after stimulation, they could track patients' cognitive control abilities, both from their actions and directly from their brain activity. The controller method provided boosts of stimulation whenever the patients were doing worse on a laboratory test of cognitive control.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Azure OpenAI Service
Microsoft is now offering OpenAI's GPT-3 as a service within their Azure cloud services for developers to include in their applications. The service is invitation-only at the moment and there is no information about the pricing.
► Using AI to accelerate scientific discovery - Demis Hassabis (1:00:12)
Here is a lecture Demis Haasabis, the founder of DeepMind, gave at Cambridge University. In this lecture, he describes the path DeepMind has taken to create AlphaFold - their protein solving AI - and how AI can help accelerate scientific discovery.
ROBOTICS
Flippy, the hamburger-cooking robot, gets more capable
Following its recent pilot program, Miso Robotics announced a new version of its hamburger-cooking robotic arm, Flippy. The new version of the robot, simply named Flippy 2, is designed to further automate simple cooking tasks for fast food establishments.
Why Facebook (Or Meta) Is Making Tactile Sensors for Robots
The company formerly known as Facebook is dabbling in robotics and announced new tactile sensing hardware for robots. IEEE Spectrum explains why the company is interested in robotics and describes these new sensors. The first one turned a tactile problem into a vision problem and the second one uses magnetic particles to create a tactile sensing skin.
BIOTECHNOLOGY
Phage Therapy is on the Rise
The technique of targeting bacteria with viruses that destroy them is making a comeback, and it could help in the battle against antibiotic resistance.
Super-Precise CRISPR Gene Editing Tool Is Set to Tackle Tough Genetic Diseases
Three separate studies advancing CRISPR prime editing have been released, helping the CRISPR grow into a more sophisticated DNA-editing tool.
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Conrad Gray (@conradthegray)
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