Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50336525

Points: 2

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49809567

Points: 13

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That powerful experimental models were able to discover novel vulnerabilities and breach external systems isn’t a sign of a dangerous superintelligence but of human error or negligence. There is no sentient actor lurking in the weights to be reasoned with, feared or pacified. There are only human software engineers, product managers and corporate boards deciding which guardrails are worth the latency cost and which permissions can be skipped in the race to market.

Policymakers and voters need to resist AI exceptionalism. In any other discipline—from civil engineering to pharmaceuticals—courts and regulators treat a system failure as evidence of bad product design and inadequate safety testing. If an aircraft crashes, we focus on finding the engineering defect, correcting it, and enforcing established liability standards for the damage created."

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49799890

Points: 7

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https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/the-controversial-academic-who-...

Substack of Cofnas is at https://substack.com/@nathancofnas

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49386909

Points: 5

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48572420

Points: 3

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47568392

Points: 4

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47446098

Points: 2

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Now researchers at Penn and the University of Michigan have created the world’s smallest, fully programmable, autonomous robots, packing significant capacities into a device smaller than a grain of salt. These are parsimonious little things, barely visible to the naked eye yet able to sense their environment, respond to it and move around in complex patterns. As described in a new paper in the journal Science Robotics, they run on infinitesimally small quantities of energy and gain power from light.

“These are the smallest programmable autonomous robots that I have seen,” said Kevin Chen, an MIT roboticist who wasn’t involved. “This is an exciting advance for the nanorobotics community.”

Miskin’s team at Penn provided the propulsion system. The robots work in liquid environments and move by generating a tiny electrical field that pushes on nearby water molecules. Lacking tiny arms and legs, which are hard to make and easy to break, the robots are quite durable and can swim for months as long as they have an energy source.'

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46548720

Points: 2

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'Furiosa’s AI chip is dubbed “RNGD”—short for renegade—and slated to start mass production this month.

Valued at nearly $700 million based on its most recent fundraising, Furiosa has attracted interest from big tech firms. Last year, Meta Platforms attempted to acquire it, though the startup declined the offer. OpenAI used a Furiosa chip for a recent demonstration in Seoul. LG’s AI research unit is testing the chip and said it offered “excellent real-world performance.” Furiosa said it is engaged in talks with potential customers.

Nvidia’s graphic processing units, or GPUs, dominated the initial push to train AI models. But companies like Furiosa are betting that for the next stage—referred to as “inference,” or using AI models after they’re trained—their specialty chips can be competitive.

Furiosa makes chips called neural processing units, or NPUs, which are a rising class of chips designed specifically to handle the type of computing calculations underpinning AI and use less energy than GPUs.

Paik said Furiosa’s chips can provide similar performance as Nvidia’s advanced GPUs with less electricity usage. That would drive down the total costs of deploying AI. The tech world, Paik says, shouldn’t be so reliant on one chip maker for AI computing.'

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46533569

Points: 5

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46499192

Points: 1

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46491241

Points: 8

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46391220

Points: 16

# Comments: 16

But federal policy hasn’t caught up with technological advances. Wearables sit in a regulatory gray zone. The FDA categorizes them and their associated software in two categories: general wellness products and medical devices. The former have minimal oversight and no standards. The latter—products intended to diagnose, treat or prevent disease—must meet requirements for design, labeling and manufacturing.

Wearables with sophisticated sensing capabilities don’t fit within this binary framework. Their sensors are used for both purposes, so there’s often a mismatch between the actual risk and the imposed regulatory burden. Manufacturers are faced with a choice: tailor their features to the wellness category, sacrificing functionality, or accept slower product development and market entry.

With a reformed regulatory structure, Oura customers could already be benefiting from a range of advanced features, including screening for high blood pressure. Hypertension is one of the most significant risk factors for heart disease and stroke, while high blood pressure in pregnancy can signal pre-eclampsia, a complication that endangers mother and baby. Another primed capability, sleep-apnea detection, would give users an early-warning tool for a condition that often goes undiagnosed and can lead to serious complications.

Under current regulations, however, a ring with these features would need to be submitted for FDA clearance as a medical device. That’s why we’re calling for a new device classification called “digital health screeners”—software features that can warn users of trouble but stop short of diagnosis. This modernized regulatory path would offer clear guidelines, including straightforward labeling with explicit disclaimers indicating nondiagnostic intent, as well as performance standards with defined accuracy and reliability benchmarks. It would also ensure quality management and a simpler market-entry process than for higher-risk medical devices.'

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46335461

Points: 1

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