Category Technology/Electronics

Unfair Decisions by AI could make us Indifferent to Bad Behavior by Humans

Representation of AI
Anggalih Prasetya / Shutterstock

Artificial intelligence (AI) makes important decisions that affect our everyday lives. These decisions are implemented by firms and institutions in the name of efficiency. They can help determine who gets into college, who lands a job, who receives medical treatment and who qualifies for government assistance.

As AI takes on these roles, there is a growing risk of unfair decisions—or the perception of them by those people affected. For example, in college admissions or hiring, these automated decisions can unintentionally favor certain groups of people or those with certain backgrounds, while equally qualified but underrepresented applicants get overlooked.

Or, when used by governments in benefit systems, AI may allocate resources in ways that w...

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Non-Electric Touchpad takes Sensor Technology to Extreme Conditions

A light-coloured, silicone square touchpad with thin channels and connecting wires.
The pneumatic touchpad is made of soft silicone. It contains 32 channels, each only a few hundred micrometres wide, that adapt to touch. Pneumatic sensors can collect much data by touch.Photo: Jonne Renvall / Tampere University

Researchers at Tampere University have developed the world’s first soft touchpad that can sense the force, area and location of contact without electricity. The device utilises pneumatic channels, enabling its use in environments such as MRI machines and other conditions that are unsuitable for electronic devices. Soft devices like soft robots and rehabilitation aids could also benefit from this new technology.

Researchers at Tampere University have developed the world’s first soft touchpad that is able to sense the force, area and location of contact withou...

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A “Chemical ChatGPT” for New Medications

Three-dimensional structures of two target proteins,
Three-dimensional structures of two target proteins, – histone deacetylase 6 (blue) and tyrosine-protein kinase JAK2 (red), together with a selective inhibitor of each enzyme. The dual inhibitor in the center is active against both targets. The prediction of compounds with predefined dual-target activity is the task of the chemical language model.© Figure: Sanjana Srinivasan & Jürgen Bajorath

Researchers from the University of Bonn have trained an AI process to predict potential active ingredients with special properties. Therefore, they derived a chemical language model — a kind of ChatGPT for molecules. Following a training phase, the AI was able to exactly reproduce the chemical structures of compounds with known dual-target activity that may be particularly effective medications...

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DeepMind Researchers find LLMs can Serve as Effective Mediators

DeepMind researchers find LLMs can serve as effective mediators
The Habermas Machine generates high-quality group opinion statements that are preferred to human-written group statements, and critiquing provides further improvements. Credit: Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adq2852

A team of AI researchers with Google’s DeepMind London group has found that certain large language models (LLMs) can serve as effective mediators between groups of people with differing viewpoints regarding a given topic. The work is published in the journal Science.

Over the past several decades, political divides have become common in many countries—most have been labeled as either liberal or conservative...

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