All sensations—hunger, feeling pain, seeing red, falling in love—are the result of physiological states that an LLM simply doesn’t have. Consequently we know that an LLM cannot have subjective experiences of those states. In other words, it cannot be sentient. An LLM is a mathematical model coded on silicon chips. It is not an embodied being like humans. It does not have a “life” that needs to eat, drink, reproduce, experience emotion, get sick, and eventually die. It is important to understand the profound difference between how humans generate sequences of words and how an LLM generates tho ..read more

A new study, recently published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, suggests that people who participate in extreme exercise may live longer. Researchers tracked a select group of elite runners capable of running a sub-4-minute mile and found they may live five years longer on average than the general population. Read more ..read more

New research has shown that frozen human brain tissue can be revived without damage. Using a new approach, scientists have successfully frozen and thawed brain organoids and cubes of brain tissue from someone with epilepsy, which could enable better research into neurological conditions. By Christa Lesté-Lasserre Read more ..read more

AI has already started replacing voice agents’ jobs. Now, companies are exploring ways to replace the existing computer-generated voice models with synthetic versions of human voices. Truecaller, the widely known caller ID service, is the latest to take this approach with its announcement that it will now allow customers to use its AI-powered Assistant to answer phone calls in their own voice. The new experience comes via a partnership with Microsoft that allows the Swedish company to use the Redmond giant’s Personal Voice technology, introduced in November as part of Azure AI Speech. By usin ..read more

More funding is being poured into startups focused on AI. DeepL, which builds automated text translation and writing tools that compete against the likes of Google Translate and Grammarly, said on Wednesday that it has raised an additional $300 million. It is now valued at $2 billion, post-money. This round, led by Index Ventures, underscores the frenetic interest that investors have in AI startups at the moment and how companies are capitalizing on that opportunity while they can. DeepL, which is still not profitable, was valued at $1 billion in January 2023, when it raised just over $100 mi ..read more

NY-based startup and EV infrastructure specialist Gravity has launched a new line of universal EV charger “trees” it hopes will bring convenient charging sessions curbside on city streets. The deployment will start modestly, but Gravity is targeting a street charging network that is” more expansive than Tesla’s current Supercharger network.” Gravity Inc. is a startup focused on sustainable fleets and the infrastructure required to operate them efficiently. In 2021, Gravity began rolling out a fleet of all-electric Mustang Mach-E yellow cabs around New York City while partnering with building ..read more

Editor’s note: This story is part of ‘Meet a UChicagoan,’ a regular series focusing on the people who make UChicago a distinct intellectual community. Read about the others here. When asked to explain the difference between recyclable plastics, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering graduate student Sam Marsden pulled out a paperclip chain and a length of small strings crudely knotted together. The paperclip chain represented a highly recyclable plastic like the polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, found in soda bottles and the fibers in clothes. These can be broken down to the molecular lev ..read more

An electric car doesn’t need a clutch, but GM’s potentially developing one anyway. Read more ..read more

NVIDIA’s Blackwell GB200 AI servers are anticipated to see major traction, reaching 2 million units shipped in 2025 & utilizing new packaging tech. NVIDIA To Overcome CoWoS Supply Chain Bottlenecks By Shifting To The Newer “PFLO” Standard, 420K Units Shipping This Year With Up To 2 Million Anticipated For 2025 The success of NVIDIA’s Hopper AI products last year not only uplifted the company’s economics to new heights but also revealed massive flaws in the supply chain. Due to these flaws, the products became victims of long order backlogs. The main culprits at that time were HBM & Co ..read more

It’s called the magnetotail, of course. Read more ..read more