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‘Machine Scientists’ Distill the Laws of Physics From Raw Data | Quanta Magazine

Kutz believes machine scientists are bringing the field to the cusp of what he calls “GoPro physics,” where researchers will simply point a camera at an event and get back an equation capturing the essence of what’s going on.

Source: ‘Machine Scientists’ Distill the Laws of Physics From Raw Data | Quanta Magazine

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MIT Engineers Create the “Impossible” – New Material That Is Stronger Than Steel and As Light as Plastic

The researchers found that the new material’s elastic modulus — a measure of how much force it takes to deform a material — is between four and six times greater than that of bulletproof glass. They also found that its yield strength, or how much force it takes to break the material, is twice that of steel, even though the material has only about one-sixth the density of steel.

Source: MIT Engineers Create the “Impossible” – New Material That Is Stronger Than Steel and As Light as Plastic

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The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation – Economics from the Top Down

The point of this story is to illustrate that the Dunning-Kruger effect has nothing to do with human psychology. It is a statistical artifact — an example of autocorrelation hiding in plain sight.What’s interesting is how long it took for researchers to realize the flaw in Dunning and Kruger’s analysis. Dunning and Kruger published their results in 1999. But it took until 2016 for the mistake to be fully understood.

Source: The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation – Economics from the Top Down

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MIT Researchers Just Discovered an AI Mimicking the Brain on Its Own

While AI has yet to attain human-like cognition, artificial neural networks that replicate language processing — a system thought to be a critical component behind higher cognition — are starting to look surprisingly similar to what we see taking place in the brain.

Source: MIT Researchers Just Discovered an AI Mimicking the Brain on Its Own

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Is it time to give up on consciousness as ‘the ghost in the machine’?

While it’s clear that both the experience and content of consciousness are real, we argue that, from a science explanation, they are epiphenomenal: secondary phenomena based on the machinations of the physical brain itself. In other words, our subjective experience of consciousness is real, but the functions of control and ownership we attribute to that experience are not.

Source: Is it time to give up on consciousness as ‘the ghost in the machine’?

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Google says its artificial intelligence is faster and better than humans at laying out chips for artificial intelligence • The Register

We’re told Google has used this AI system to produce the floorplan of a next-generation TPU – its Tensor Processing Unit, which the web giant uses to accelerate the neural networks in its search engine, public cloud, AlphaGo and AlphaZero, and other projects and products.

In effect, Google is using machine-learning software to optimize future chips that speed up machine-learning software.

Source: Google says its artificial intelligence is faster and better than humans at laying out chips for artificial intelligence • The Register

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Japan will send a transforming robot ball to the moon to test lunar rover tech | Space

“The transformable lunar robot will be an ultra-compact and ultra-lightweight robot that can traverse in the harsh lunar environment,” JAXA stated. The robot’s diminutive size and small mass of 250 grams, JAXA added, “contributes to a reduction in volume during transportation to the moon. Therefore, it is expected to play active roles in future lunar exploration missions as well.”

Source: Japan will send a transforming robot ball to the moon to test lunar rover tech | Space