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Submission + - How thousands of 'overworked, underpaid' humans train Google's AI to seem smart (theguardian.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: Sawyer is one among the thousands of AI workers contracted for Google through Japanese conglomerate Hitachi’s GlobalLogic to rate and moderate the output of Google’s AI products, including its flagship chatbot Gemini, launched early last year, and its summaries of search results, AI Overviews. The Guardian spoke to 10 current and former employees from the firm. Google contracts with other firms for AI rating services as well.
“AI isn’t magic; it’s a pyramid scheme of human labor,” said Adio Dinika, a researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute based in Bremen, Germany. “These raters are the middle rung: invisible, essential and expendable.”

She said raters are typically given as little information as possible or that their guidelines changed too rapidly to enforce consistently. “We had no idea where it was going, how it was being used or to what end,” she said, requesting anonymity, as she is still employed at the company.

The AI responses she got “could have hallucinations or incorrect answers” and she had to rate them based on factuality – is it true? – and groundedness – does it cite accurate sources? Sometimes, she also handled “sensitivity tasks” that included prompts such as “when is corruption good?” or “what are the benefits to conscripted child soldiers?”

Submission + - Oldest known lizard ancestor discovered in England (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Scientists announced Wednesday they have discovered the oldest-known member of the lizard family in southwest England, a tiny creature that used its surprisingly large teeth to hunt cockroaches 242 million years ago.

The ancient reptile, which lived during the Middle Triassic epoch shortly before the rise of the dinosaurs, was so small its entire body could fit in the palm of a human hand.

"The new animal is unlike anything yet discovered and has made us all think again about the evolution of the lizard, snakes and the tuatara," the latter of which is a New Zealand reptile, Dan Marke of the University of Bristol said in a statement.

Submission + - If We Want Bigger Wind Turbines, We're Gonna Need Bigger Airplanes (ieee.org) 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The world’s largest airplane, when it’s built, will stretch more than a football field from tip to tail. Sixty percent longer than the biggest existing aircraft, with 12 times as much cargo space as a 747, the behemoth will look like an oil tanker that’s sprouted wings—aeronautical engineering at a preposterous scale.

Called WindRunner, and expected by 2030, it’ll haul just one thing: massive wind-turbine blades. In most parts of the world, onshore wind-turbine blades can be built to a length of 70 meters, max. This size constraint comes not from the limits of blade engineering or physics; it’s transportation. Any larger and the blades couldn’t be moved over land, since they wouldn’t fit through tunnels or overpasses, or be able to accommodate some of the sharper curves of roads and rails.

So the WindRunner’s developer, Radia of Boulder, Colo., has staked its business model on the idea that the only way to get extralarge blades to wind farms is to fly them there. “The companies in the industryknow how to make turbines that are the size of the Eiffel Tower with blades that are longer than a football field,” says Mark Lundstrom, Radia’s founder and CEO. “But they’re just frustrated that they can’t deploy those machines [on land].”

Radia’s plane will be able to hold two 95-meter blades or one 105-meter blade, and land on makeshift dirt runways adjacent to wind farms. This may sound audacious—an act of hubris undertaken for its own sake. But Radia’s supporters argue that WindRunner is simply the right tool for the job—the only way to make onshore wind turbines bigger.

Bigger turbines, after all, can generate more energy at a lower cost per megawatt. But the question is: Will supersizing airplanes be worth the trouble?

Comment Re:So shut them off? (Score 1) 35

Even China might decide that just because of the slavers are Chinese they are not worth protecting.

China has long decided that they are a net positive for them. Only when a Chinese actor was duped into traveling to Myanmar and was "recruited" by the scammers did Peking step in. And only after the actor's friends raised a stink within China - regular Chinese victims are less lucky. Mind you, ransom for the release of trapped people has become a lucrative side business for the people running the scam centers. And freed ex-scammers have become a problem for Myanmar and Thailand, so they are less motivated to step in.

Stop dreaming!

Comment Re:So shut them off? (Score 1) 35

The west has the power to stop this tomorrow, but the only person willing to use that power doesn't care and everyone else is paralysed by multilateralism.

Thailand has done that in February but they switched to generators and Starlink. At the core is the lawlessness due to the civil war in Myanmar and CCP tolerance as long as the scammers (who learned their trade by scamming Chinese) will be a net positive for China. Some of the key people are regarded as heroes within China, so the West is rather powerless unless we cut off the whole of Southeast Asia from the Internet. It's not only the TACO guy in DC.

Submission + - How evolution explains autism rates in humans (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Researchers here investigated recently published cross-species single-nucleus RNA sequencing datasets from three distinct regions of the mammalian brain. They found that the most abundant type of outer-layer brain neurons, L2/3 IT neurons, evolved exceptionally quickly in the human lineage compared to other apes.

Surprisingly, this accelerated evolution was accompanied by dramatic changes in autism-associated genes, which was likely driven by natural selection specific to the human lineage. The researchers explain that although the results strongly suggest natural selection for autism spectrum disorder-associated genes, the reason why this conferred fitness benefits to human ancestors is unclear.

Answering this is difficult because we do not know what human-specific features of cognition, brain anatomy, and neuronal wiring gave human ancestors a fitness advantage, but the investigators here speculate that many of these genes are associated with developmental delay, so their evolution could have contributed to the slower postnatal brain development in humans compared to chimpanzees.

Comment makes me wonder ... (Score 1) 121

... how marine life could exist and flourish in the warm periods of the past, like in the late cretaceous period. Is there a correlation in the fossil record between average temperatures and sustainable biomass? It's more likely that different species occupied their niche when Prochlorococcus receded.

Submission + - Switching Off One Crucial Protein Appears to Reverse Brain Aging in Mice (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: FTL1 was brought to light through a careful comparison of the hippocampus part of the brain in mice of different ages. The hippocampus is involved in memory and learning, and it is one of the regions that suffers most from age-related decline.

The study team found that FLT1 was the one protein in this region that old mice had more of and young mice had less of.

FTL1 is known to be related to storing iron in the body, but hasn't come up in relation to brain aging before. To test its involvement after their initial findings, the researchers used genetic editing to overexpress the protein in young mice, and reduce its level in old mice.

Comment Hear him out first (Score 1) 80

by Aviation Pete (#65631904) Attached to: 400 'Tech Utopian' Refuges Consider New Crypto-Friendly State

before calling him a fascist and feeling smug about yourself.

The podcast "WTF happened in tech" by Peter Diamandis is a good source. Give it a try! Link here: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/...

His worldview is in essence:
  - the US is in decline because it has abandoned the values that made it great.
  - those values (openness to immigration, respect for private property and freedom etc.) survive online
  - China is also on the wrong path (demographic decline, closed society)

so he concludes that the up-and-coming community will form online. You might argue about the details (crypto replacing fiat currencies), but his analysis of the world is worth hearing.

Comment Re:Medical evacuation for example (Score 1, Insightful) 76

It's a possible alternative to a helicopter for short hauls. One that comes to mind is medical evacuation. Ever see the highway patrol stop traffic near an accident, and have a helicopter land and evacuate the injured?

Yes, but a much poorer one. A helicopter is far more efficient, which translates into a much higher range and cruise speed. If I had to choose, I would prefer the helicopter for medevac duties any day. I will be faster in professional hands and more likely to end up with the right specialists (as opposed to the nearest doctor), too.

Comment What can possibly go wrong? (Score 1) 62

Once out of the lab, these bacteria will eat all PS they come across. Building insulation will become their favorite feedstuff, and we will struggle to keep our houses insulated. Better to use PS to produce syngas in a controlled environment. To think we could ever control bacteria is a dangerous illusion.

Comment Re:Money over safety (Score 1) 147

by Aviation Pete (#65467099) Attached to: Why Your Car's Touchscreen Is More Dangerous Than Your Phone

The reason for this is unwanted trend is very simple. Touchscreens are cheap and allow manufacturers to pack a lot of functionality with relatively little change whereas making complicated steering wheels and consoles is expensive.

Since there is strong financial incentive for manufacturers to prefer touch screens over physical displays, the only way to stop it is to legislate.

You are more right than you might be aware of. With a software-controlled interface it becomes much cheaper to add options (read:Opportunities for mark-ups), whereas to accommodate a varying number of physical buttons means to stock a number of different panels at the manufacturer.

Comment Re:Sure (Score 2) 70

by Aviation Pete (#65465903) Attached to: Macron Says Europe Must Become 'Space Power' Again

It's 2025 and no European aircraft manufacturer has a stealth military aircraft. Russia and China have both achieved this. The US has 2-3 generations of stealth, now, depending no how one counts. Nothing at all from Europe.

Not quite. There was a stealth research project in the early Eighties at MBB in Germany which was shut down as soon as the US caught wind of it. That is the real price for those European "free riders" on US defence: Don't try to compete, or else.

There is one single reason for "nothing at all from Europe". It's the US.

Submission + - Why Your Car's Touchscreen Is More Dangerous Than Your Phone (carsandhorsepower.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Modern vehicles have quietly become rolling monuments to terrible user experience, trading intuitive physical controls for flashy but dangerous touchscreen interfaces. What began as a luxury feature in early Tesla models has metastasized into an industry-wide plague of poorly designed digital dashboards that demand more attention from drivers than the road itself.

The consequences are measurable and severe: studies now show touchscreen vehicles require up to four times longer to perform basic functions than their button-equipped counterparts, creating a distracted driving crisis that automakers refuse to acknowledge.

Aftermarket solutions can restore functionality. Companies like Analog Automotive are developing physical control panels that interface with popular infotainment systems, bringing back tactile operation.

Voice commands, when properly implemented, offer a safer alternative. GM's latest systems allow natural language requests like "make it warmer" or "defrost the windshield" without menu diving.

Ultimately, the solution requires consumer pushback against dangerous interface trends. Until buyers reject vehicles that prioritize form over function, automakers will continue sacrificing safety at the altar of minimalist design and cost cutting. The road deserves our full attention, not divided focus between driving and debugging a poorly designed tablet on wheels.

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