Category Technology/Electronics

Shrinking AI for Personal Devices: An efficient small language model that could perform better on smartphones

An Android demo of PhoneLM capability. (Left) Chatting; (Right) Device control through intent invocation. Demo and code are available at https://github.com/UbiquitousLearning/mllm. Credit: Yi et al.

Large language models (LLMs), such as Open AI’s renowned conversational platform ChatGPT, have recently become increasingly widespread, with many internet users relying on them to find information quickly and produce texts for various purposes. Yet most of these models perform significantly better on computers, due to the high computational demands associated with their size and data processing capabilities.

To tackle this challenge, computer scientists have also been developing small language models (SLMs), which have a similar architecture but are smaller...

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Integrated Multimodal Sensing and Learning System could give Robots New Capabilities

A new multi-modal sensing and learning platform that could enhance robot manipulation
Soft robot fingers equipped with tactile sensors grasping an egg. The bottom-right images show the tactile sensing results. Credit: Binghao Huang.

To assist humans with household chores and other everyday manual tasks, robots should be able to effectively manipulate objects that vary in composition, shape and size. The manipulation skills of robots have improved significantly over the past few years, in part due to the development of increasingly sophisticated cameras and tactile sensors.

Researchers at Columbia University have developed a new system that simultaneously captures both visual and tactile information...

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Novel Physical Reservoir Computing Device Mimics Human Synaptic Behavior for Efficient Edge AI Processing by Tokyo University of Science

The future of edge AI: Dye-sensitized solar cell-based synaptic device
The novel physical reservoir computing device with controllable time constants mimics human synaptic behavior for efficient edge AI processing. The device can accurately detect human movement while consuming significantly low power. Credit: Takashi Ikuno / Tokyo University of Science, Japan

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly useful for the prediction of emergency events such as heart attacks, natural disasters, and pipeline failures. This requires state-of-the-art technologies that can rapidly process data. In this regard, reservoir computing, specially designed for time-series data processing with low power consumption, is a promising option.

It can be implemented in various frameworks, among which physical reservoir computing (PRC) is the most popular...

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Scientists discover ‘Toolkit’ to Fix DNA Breaks Associated with Aging, Cancer and Motor Neuron Disease

Experts discover toolkit to repair DNA breaks associated with aging, cancer and motor neuron disease
TEX264 acts at replication forks. Credit: Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-15000-w

A new “toolkit” to repair damaged DNA that can lead to aging, cancer and motor neuron disease (MND) has been discovered by scientists at the Universities of Sheffield and Oxford.

Published in Nature Communications, the research shows that a protein called TEX264, together with other enzymes, is able to recognize and “eat” toxic proteins that can stick to DNA and cause it to become damaged. An accumulation of broken, damaged DNA can cause cellular aging, cancer and neurological diseases such as MND.

Until now, ways of repairing this sort of DNA damage have been poorly understood, but scientists hope to exploit this novel repair toolkit of proteins to protect us from aging, can...

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