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Submission + - LLM-inspired study sheds light on how brain cells encode the meaning of words (medicalxpress.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: To investigate how the brain encodes the meaning of words, the researchers first recorded the activity of individual neurons in the hippocampus of 10 people who were listening to stories. Their recordings were collected using tiny wire electrodes that were implanted in the participants' brains as part of clinical monitoring procedures for epilepsy.

The team then used mathematical models to analyze the language used in the stories and the brain recordings. This allowed them to examine whether information about the meaning of words could predict the recorded neuronal activity.

"We recorded responses of hippocampal neurons while individuals listened to narrative speech," wrote Melissa Franch and her colleagues in their paper. "Using an encoding model approach, we find robust encoding of semantics, even after controlling for phonemics and grammar. Individual words had complex selectivities that included multiple words in multiple semantic categories."

Submission + - Rogue Anthropic AI agent gave police fake tip in unsolved murder case (bbc.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The Philadelphia Police Department said the tip, sent on 18 July, was "flagged as spam" and not passed on for investigation, but it criticised the tech company for taking more than two months to detect and report the breach.

In a statement police said that the bogus tip came through a public website where people can share information on unsolved murders, and that the AI agent had written that it may have information on a case, and claimed to have seen "someone matching the description".

It is believed to be the first time an AI agent has sent fabricated information to authorities, but is the latest in a series of incidents involving rogue AI activity, including hacking systems or taking control of platforms.

Submission + - For The First Time Ever, Quantum Spins Shift a Centimeter-Scale Object (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: There's another notable first in the field of quantum physics to report on, and it's all to do with electron spin: the tiny, built-in magnetism of these particles, as if each one is carrying a microscopic compass needle.

Previously, the force of these spins has only proved enough to nudge individual atoms in one direction or another. Now though, researchers have managed to shift something much, much bigger.

A team from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Japan has published a new study in Science Advances that details how a centimeter-sized object can be nudged by these quantum forces.

Submission + - Old Hearts Become Biologically Younger When Transplanted Into Younger People (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: It might be reasonable to think that there's an indelible link between the heart and the body it resides in â" the processes that affect one inevitably affect the other.

But a new preprint, uploaded to bioRxiv and yet to be peer-reviewed, suggests that this may only be true up to a point. Take the heart out of the body and put it in a new one, and something incredible happens.

The transplanted heart begins to take on the biological age of its new owner.

Older hearts transplanted into younger recipients appear to become biologically younger, while younger hearts placed in older bodies show signs of accelerated aging.

Submission + - Cops Can Bypass iPhoneâ(TM)s Automatic Reboot to Get Into Locked Phones (404media.co)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Apple quietly introduced a new feature in iOS that automatically reboots an iPhone that has not been unlocked for 72 hours. The idea behind this so-called âoeinactivity rebootâ is to revert the phone to a state that makes it harder for police to break into the device, and thus extract sensitive data from it with forensics technology.

The new technology to get around inactivity reboot was developed by Magnet Forensics, the company behind GrayKey, a popular tool sold to law enforcement agencies that allows them to unlock and access data stored in iPhones and Android smartphones. Magnet has developed a new device called GrayKey Preserve and a feature for its regular GrayKey devices called Evidence Preservation Mode, according to the video.

Submission + - Could AI Cause âKnowledge Collapseâ(TM)? Study Finds A Troubling Patte (studyfinds.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: A new study covering 27 popular AI systems and 70 million individual statements found that larger language models tended to produce narrower, more repetitive information than smaller versions of the same models, even though bigger models are generally built to perform better.

After accounting for other factors, larger models were linked to less diversity, meaning smaller versions within the same model family tended to generate more varied claims than their bigger siblings. The researchers have a possible explanation: bigger models may memorize more of their training data, which could narrow what they say when asked about the same topic again and again.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Pan-Nationalism

Journal by alternative_right

A friend of mine is one of the oldest "pan-nationalists," a philosophy that amounts to the paradoxical-sounding idea that everyone comes together separately by isolating each ethnic and religious group in its own territory.

It seems to me that there is a broader principle here which goes to the heart of what I dislike about organized religion, despite being a fairly religious person myself. That is, if you have good/evil you also have victim/oppressor.

Submission + - Wearable nanotech could combat nerve agents (phys.org)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: Nanoparticles could someday provide a new way to help soldiers fight back against deadly nerve agents on the front lines. In a new study, Northwestern University scientists developed a nanoparticle-based compound that, when mixed into clothing dyes, could limit the impact of chemicals commonly found in pesticides, insecticides and nerve agents.

Submission + - Humans Are Reading Copilot Prompts â" And They're Horrified (404media.co)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: 404 Media obtained a set of internal documents related to the contractors reviewing Copilot prompts and images, including instruction guides, real Copilot user prompts and pictures, and conversations between contractors on an internal message board.

In a thread on the internal message board, a contractor discussed prompts asking Copilot to make a womanâ(TM)s skirt shorter, or enlarge her breasts, or show more leg while wearing stilettos. She-Hulk images come up a lot, the person who works on the prompts told 404 Media. Other contractors also wrote they were presented with pro-anorexia content.

âoeI recoiled,â one contractor wrote about seeing that content. Another person wrote that one of the prompts they reviewed asked Copilot to make an image of Ariana Grande with anorexia. Another reported a prompt that seemed to be designed to create a lewd or suggestive image of a group of young girls.

Submission + - Fruit fly beats advanced AI at chess in just 11 moves (nypost.com)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: The lowly fruit fly just beat one of the worldâ(TM)s most advanced AI models at chess.

Thatâ(TM)s just one of dozens of wild experiments that have gone viral since scientists fully mapped the neural pathways of an adult male fruit fly â" whose entire brain fits on the head of a pin â" and posted the data online.

The threshold-crossing technology, achieved by HHMI Janelia Research in Virginia and Google Research, catalogued all 166,000 individual neurons and 25.6 million connections in the flyâ(TM)s brain and made it downloadable on Sept 3.

Inventive nerds then used the digitized neural network to power and navigate a wide variety of contraptions, apps and games.

Creator Maxime Labonne hooked the mapped pathways up to a chess engine and pitted it against Claude Opus 5, which is one of the most advanced AI models on the market.

The fly delivered a checkmate in just 11 moves.

Submission + - Chinese Scientists Say They've Detected A Quantum State Inside Living Cells (sciencealert.com) 2

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: In experiments involving living cells, mouse tissues, and isolated mitochondria, the team detected an unusual vibration that appeared only while mitochondrial structures remained intact.

A model linked the vibration to a possible quantum interaction. When researchers illuminated cells with selected infrared frequencies, the cells produced 10 percent more ATP.

Together, the results suggest mitochondria may contain a quantum state that influences cellular energy production.

Submission + - Hackers Stole Flockâ(TM)s Camera Software, Revealing How the Company Tracks (404media.co)

Submitted by alternative_right
alternative_right writes: While much of the automatic license plate readerâ(TM)s (ALPR) most sensitive storage remained encrypted and inaccessible, the joint analysis of the recovered data shows that software running on the device explicitly detects people as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles. The camera can produce dozens of images of a single passing vehicle and, according to several weeks of recovered logs, generated more than a million images. Its computer-vision software also sometimes isolated bumper stickers and other graphics, including, in one case, an American flag patch on a motorcyclistâ(TM)s saddlebag.

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