—Rhiannon Williams
Earlier this summer time, I visited the AI firm Synthesia to provide it what it wanted to create a hyperrealistic AI-generated avatar of me. The corporate’s avatars are a good barometer of simply how dizzying progress has been in AI over the previous few years, so I used to be curious simply how precisely its newest AI mannequin, launched final month, may replicate me.
I discovered my avatar as unnerving as it’s technically spectacular. It’s slick sufficient to cross as a high-definition recording of a chirpy company speech, and if you happen to didn’t know me, you’d in all probability assume that’s precisely what it was.
My avatar exhibits the way it’s turning into ever-harder to differentiate the synthetic from the actual. And earlier than lengthy, these avatars will even be capable to speak again to us. However how significantly better can they get? And what would possibly interacting with AI clones do to us? Learn the complete story.
How Trump helps China lengthen its huge lead in clear vitality
On a spring day in 1954, Bell Labs researchers confirmed off the primary sensible photo voltaic panels at a press convention in New Jersey, utilizing daylight to spin a toy Ferris wheel earlier than a surprised crowd.
The photo voltaic future appeared shiny. However within the race to commercialize the know-how it invented, the US would lose resoundingly. Final 12 months, China exported $40 billion value of photo voltaic panels and modules, whereas America shipped simply $69 million, in response to the New York Instances. It was a surprising forfeit of an enormous technological lead.
Now, due to its insurance policies propping up getting older fossil-fuel industries, the US appears decided to repeat the error. Learn the complete story.