AI Secrets is your new weekly update on how AI is changing our everyday lives. Our experts will keep it clear and simple, so you can stay ahead of the game. This week we are focussing on AI in medicine.Share this with anyone you want to keep up to date.
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Would you believe that itās been another bumper week for AI in Silicon Valley? This week it was Microsoftās turn to host the big developer conference, and many big announcements were made that will have a profound impact on our day-to-day lives. You can read more about that in our recap of Microsoftās announcements, but this week, there is also far bigger news for us to focus on.
Scientists at University of Lausanne in Switzerland published a paper this week entitled 'Walking naturally after spinal cord injury using a brain-spine interface', and even put a human face to the announcement with a press conference, where they introduced the world to Gert-Jan Oskam, a 40-year-old Dutchman.
Oskam was paralyzed from the waist down in a motorcycling accident 12 years ago, but thanks to the brain-spine interface, heās now walking again. The interface works using two implants; a grid of electrodes is implanted in the skull to read the brainās electrical impulses, and this data is then transmitted to the spine, where implants stimulate the appropriate muscles into movement.
Neither of these techniques are new, but linking them together has proven challenging for scientists in the past. This is where the software comes in; the AI reads the brain signals, attempts to anticipate the intended outcome, and then delivers the appropriate electrical stimulus to the leg muscles. Crucially it does this extremely quickly, with signals reaching the spine every 300 milliseconds, and this artificially swift communication between brain and spine seems to solve many of the challenges previously faced by patients. After a year of treatment, Oskam has regained a substantial amount of mobility, and can move around his home and climb stairs without supervision.
While a remarkable outcome, itās important to stress that this technology is still in early trial stages and a long way from general availability. Nonetheless, itās hard to overstate the importance of this news or the number of questions about the future that it throws up. What are the implications of humans interfacing directly, at a neural level, with artificial intelligence? What will happen to human identity when boundaries blur between human and artificial cognition? And what other long-term dangers lie in sacrificing bodily autonomy and free will to AI controllers?
Much to think about there, but while we wait for the answers, donāt forget to catch up with more practical developments with our look at the exciting announcements from Microsoftās Build conference!
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Adobe launched Generative Fill this week, offering users more powerful object removal and replacement. The Verge tested it out on some Icelandic holiday snaps with horrifying results.
The Guardian interviews Timnit Gebru, the high-ranking AI engineer who claims she was forced out of Google after contributing to the infamous Stochastic Parrots paper warning of the dangers of AI.
Googleās Sundar Pichai is the latest CEO who wants to assure us that he believes responsible AI development āis the only race that mattersā, and heās written a snappy op-ed for the Financial Times to prove it.
Twitterās moderation policies came under scrutiny again after deepfaked images purporting to show an explosion at the Pentagon went viral - spread by paid Twitter Blue accounts impersonating news agencies.
Generative fiction firm Sudowrite has launched a new tool for writing long-form fiction called Story Engine. Users have been having fun getting it to write terrible novels and they have not been disappointed.
OpenAI has rolled out its free ChatGPT iOS app in 11 more countries, including the UK, New Zealand and Korea. Sadly, thereās still no sign of - or even word about! - the mooted Android app.
