👨🏻‍✈️AI as air traffic controller

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Disclaimer - Hey folks, apologies for yesterday's subject line mix-up! Thanks for bearing with us! 

Today we will discuss-

• 🐕‍🦺How AI is helping humans talk to animals

• ✈️UK researchers develop AI to improve air traffic control

• ⚡Harry Potter helps researchers train GenAI models

• ⚙️9 amazing AI tools you might not have heard of

All this and more - Let's dive in!

👩‍🍳What’s cooking in the newsroom?

AI opens door to a new understanding of animal behavior

📰News - Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a new way through AI to decode bat vocal communication. This could revolutionize the way we understand animal language, as it could help us to decode the complex and nuanced ways that animals communicate with each other.

🤯What was the process like? To understand the information conveyed by bat vocalizations, researchers at Tel Aviv University constructed a unique open-air colony of bats. This unique setup allowed researchers to examine bats from the day they were born. Their voice was recorded around the clock.

🧐What’s more? To create an AI that can communicate with bats, researchers created a large database of audio and video recordings of bat vocalizations. They spent hours labeling the data and training a voice recognition program to analyze the sounds. The algorithm was able to match the sounds with specific social interactions, revealing that bats use complex language to communicate with each other.

The research process is still ongoing and the team has been successful so far. The researchers are now discovering new ways to have long-term social interaction between bats in the lab.

UK researchers develop AI-powered air traffic control system

📰News - UK researchers have created a computer model of air traffic control wherein AI system would be responsible for making all of the decisions about where to route aircraft, how to space them out, and when to give them clearance to take off and land.

The system, known as Project Bluebird, is a partnership between National Air Traffic Services (NATS), the Alan Turing Institute, and Exeter University. It is funded by the UK government through UK Research and Innovation.

🫣How was it trained though? The researchers used the airspace over England to train the AI systems on data from 10 million flights. Thus, making it the most complete database of its kind.

There is a plan to test the system in real life in 2026 - the researchers will let the AI agents control planes based on real-time air traffic data. If the tests are successful, the system could be used to help air traffic controllers and eventually replace them.

👩‍🏫Reasons to involve AI in air traffic control? The technology can direct aircraft along more fuel-efficient routes to reduce the environmental impact of aviation. It can help to cut delays and congestion, particularly at busy airports. It will also relieve the workload on human air traffic controllers, who take three years to train.

Harry Potter books help researchers experiment with GenAI technology

🧙🏻‍♂️News - After over two decades since J.K. Rowling first introduced Harry Potter to the world, the bestselling books are helping researchers experiment with GenAI technology.

🪄How so? In a recent development, Microsoft researchers Mark Russinovich and Ronen Eldan authored a paper titled "Who's Harry Potter?" showcasing a technique for large language models to selectively forget information. Here, researchers used the books to showcase that AI models can be edited to remove knowledge, including characters and plots, without sacrificing their decision-making and analytical abilities, addressing concerns about the use of copyrighted content in the AI industry.

In another study, researchers from the University of Washington, UC Berkeley, and the Allen Institute for AI introduced Silo, a language model aimed at reducing legal risks by removing data. They found that Silo's performance suffered when trained solely on low-risk text, such as non-copyrighted books or government documents. Using Harry Potter books, the researchers investigated the impact of individual text pieces on the AI system's performance, creating different datastores. When removing the Harry Potter books, the model's accuracy, measured by perplexity, deteriorated.

✨But why are researchers choosing Harry Potter books? Over the past decade, AI studies have increasingly referenced Harry Potter as technologists focus on natural language processing. The series, with its abundance of scenes, dialogues, and emotional moments, has proven particularly relevant for training AI tools in this specific area. 

Additionally, the series' universal familiarity simplifies the evaluation of research results for individuals within the research community.

🙆🏻‍♀️What else is happening?

• Robotics startup Figure raises $675 mln from Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI

• OpenAI wins order blocking tech entrepreneur's 'Open AI' website

• Microsoft tailors AI for finance teams in specialized 'Copilot' strategy

• Google Cloud links up with Stack Overflow for more coding suggestions on Gemini

• Report: Second type of prostate cancer identified by AI

🤖Casual AI banter

• Humane AI, a company revolutionizing digital wearables, has recently introduced a screenless AI-pin device that is equivalent to a mobile phone. Experts believe it could even replace iPhones.

• AI perceives time in a very different way than humans do. The algorithms process a year's worth of data in a matter of seconds. This, usually, gives AI the impression that time is passing much more quickly than it is for humans.

• AI is poor at taking accountability because it is not programmed to understand the concept of responsibility. AI can be programmed to follow rules and complete tasks, but it cannot understand why those rules are important.

👩🏼‍🚒Discover mind-blowing AI tools

1. Arcwise - An AI-first data analytics platform in your Google Sheet. Instant insights, zero CSV imports, one-click reports (Free Trial)**

2. MagicProspect - An AI-powered prospecting tool designed to assist sales teams in closing deals ($10/100 credits) 

3. SwapMyFace - A web-based service that allows users to superimpose their faces onto any picture ($9/70 credits)

4. MagicSchool.ai - Designed to assist educators in various tasks, such as lesson planning, differentiating instruction (Free)

5. GPT Lab - Allows users to create custom AI companions for various purposes, such as life coaching, career coaching, or writing assistance (Free)

6. Stillgram - An AI travel camera app for iPhone that removes background crowds from photos (Free, $2.99/month) 

7. CrowdPrisma - A survey analysis engine that allows users to analyze free-text responses in a quick and meaningful way (Free)

8. WriteHuman - A powerful content rewriter that allows users to bypass AI detection and tracking ($9/month)

9. SmartLinked - A user-friendly platform that helps individuals improve their LinkedIn profiles (Free)

🤹🏻‍♀️Technical jargon simplified

• Diffusion is a technique that uses a computer program to create images, text, or other creative content. It works by starting with a random image or text and then gradually adding more detail to it.

• Algorithm is a set of instructions that tells a computer how to solve a problem. Algorithms can be used to perform a wide variety of tasks, such as sorting data, searching for information, and playing games.

• Reinforcement learning is a type of machine learning where a system learns to behave in an environment by trial and error. The algorithm is rewarded for taking actions that lead to desirable outcomes and penalized for taking actions that lead to undesirable results.

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