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New World Same Humans

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by David Mattin

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New World Same Humans is a weekly newsletter on trends, technology and our shared future by David Mattin. Born in 2020, the NWSH community has grown to include 25,000+ technologists, designers, founders, policy-makers and more. <a href="https://www.newworldsamehumans.xyz?utm_medium=podcast">www.newworldsamehumans.xyz</a>

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May 16, 2024

New Week #133

February 10, 2024

New Week #129

Welcome to this update from New World Same Humans, a newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, join 25,000+ curious souls on a journey to build a better future 🚀🔮To BeginThis week brings news from Boston Dynamics and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The message common to both stories? The humanoid robots are coming.Meanwhile, the internet reacts to Apple’s new Vision Pro headset.And the FCC take action against a California company that used AI to create fake phone calls from President Biden.Let’s go!🤖 Robots are goThis week, yet further signs that the robots will soon walk among us. I mean, all of us.The Boston Dynamics humanoid, Atlas, has been a regular in this newsletter over the years. Recently it has been overshadowed by competitors, including the Digit humanoid by Agility Robotics and Tesla’s Optimus.But this week Boston Dynamics released a video that shows Atlas <a target="_blank" href="https://www.therobotreport.com/boston-dynamics-atlas-humanoid-handle-automotive-struts/">picking up automotive struts and placing them in a flow cart</a>.The team say Atlas is using onboard sensors and object recognition to perform the task. The footage is short. But it marks a significant advance for Atlas, because previous videos have shown the robot doing elaborate dances rather than useful work, and those dances have been pre-programmed rather than autonomous.Meanwhile, in Beijing a research team at the Institute of Automation in the Chinese Academy of Sciences this <a target="_blank" href="https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202402/08/WS65c43f52a3104efcbdaea67c.html">week debuted their Q Family of humanoid robots</a>.The research team have reportedly built a ‘big factory’ for the design and manufacture of Q Family humanoids. Back in New Week #124 we saw how the CCP has <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newworldsamehumans.xyz/p/new-week-124">ordered ‘domestic mass production’ of humanoids’ to fuel economic growth</a>. Remember, this is the underlying demographic reality that has China dashing towards robots. ⚡ NWSH Take: In <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newworldsamehumans.xyz/p/lookout-to-2024">last month’s </a>Lookout to 2024 I said this would be the year of the humanoid. We closed out 2023 with the announcement that the Digit humanoid had started a trial inside US Amazon fulfilment centres. Days after I published the Lookout, BMW announced a trial of Digit in its California manufacturing plant. Now, the Boston Dynamics team are clearly eyeing commercial applications, too. Their Atlas robot has so far remained a research project; the question they’ll have to answer if they want to change that is whether Atlas can match Digit and Tesla’s Optimus for autonomous capability. // The graph above tells the underlying socio-economic story here. Both the CCP and innovators in the Global North know that working age populations are falling. If economic growth isn’t to become a distant memory, we need new armies of autonomous workers. AI applications can handle some of our knowledge work. But we’ll need humanoids to do some of the physical work that currently only people can do. The CCP see this as an existential imperative; they know they must maintain GDP growth. For innovators in the US and beyond, it’s an epic opportunity. 👀 Having visionsNo one could have missed the launch of the Apple Vision Pro a few days ago.Years from now, this instantly iconic magazine cover will no doubt spark intense nostalgia for the simpler times that were 2024:It took about ten minutes for someone to try out their new Vision Pro while using Full Self Drive in their Tesla:This was later revealed to be (surprise!) a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.popsci.com/technology/apple-vision-pro-tesla-video/">skit for YouTube</a>. Still, it delivered useful findings; the man in the picture, Dante Lentini, says the Vision Pro doesn’t really work inside a moving car because it can’t properly display visuals over a fast-moving landscape.⚡ NWSH Take: After the frenetic metaverse hype of 2021, many will shrug at the launch of the Vision Pro. But something real, and powerful, is happening here. The internet is going to become part of the world around us. In the end, this is about the deep merging of information and physical reality, of bits and atoms, that I <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newworldsamehumans.xyz/p/intelligence-in-the-world">wrote about in the essay </a>Intelligence in the World. // We’re going to see the emergence of a unified digital-physical field: a blended domain of bits and atoms that is a new, and in some sense final, innovation platform, because it brings together everything we do online with everything we do in the real world. // Apple’s new product — whether it proves a hit or not — is just another signal of this underling process. I’ll get my hands on one ASAP and report back. But Apple, here, are clearly aiming at high-end and industry users; they’re going to have to maker a cheaper product if they want mainstream impact.☎️ Good callAlso this week, a glimpse of what lies ahead when it comes to this year’s US presidential election.The FCC this week <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/fcc-votes-unanimously-ban-unsolicited-ai-robocalls-rcna137950">banned AI-voiced robocalls</a> after an AI Joe Biden ‘called’ over 25,000 voters in late January and told them not to vote in the then-upcoming presidential primary elections.The calls have been traced back to a Texas-based company called Life Corporation, owned by an entrepreneur with a long history in automated calling for political campaigns. Researchers believe Life Corporation used software from UK-based AI voice startup ElevenLabs, which I’ve written about here several times before, to deepfake Biden’s voice.ElevenLabs just <a target="_blank" href="https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/22/voice-cloning-startup-elevenlabs-lands-80m-achieves-unicorn-status/">raised an $80 million series B funding round</a>, led by VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, that valued the company at $1.1 billion.⚡ NWSH Take: In the Lookout to 2024 I said we should expect politics to collide with the exponential age this year. The impact of AI deepfakes on November’s US presidential election will be at the heart of that story. Okay, the FCC has banned AI calls. But deepfake audio and video is surely going to be rife on Facebook, Elon Musk’s X, and TikTok. // Our liberal democracies were built in the age of one-to-many mass broadcast; those broadcasts were gatekept by social elites that felt a sense of duty towards the broader socio-political system in which they were operating. It wasn’t perfect, but it muddled along. Now, we’ve built previously unimagined technologies of image and sound manipulation. We’ve slain the gatekeepers, and told ourselves that this was an empowering move. The upshot? We're about to find out how liberal democracies work under those conditions.🗓️ Also this week👶 Researchers trained a large language model using only inputs from a headcam attached to a toddler. A data science team at New York University strapped a camera to a toddler for 18 months. They say their AI model learned a ‘substantial number of words and concepts’ from exposure to just one percent of the child's total waking hours between the ages of six months and two years. The team say this indicates that it is possible to train an LLM on far less data than previously believed.🏭 Sam Altman says the world ‘needs more AI infrastructure’ and that OpenAI will help to build it. Altman is reportedly seeking trillions of dollars to build new semiconductor design and manufacture capability. Access to chips and the compute they supply is crucial for OpenAI if they are to train GPT-5 and other large AI models.💸 Disney says it will invest $1.5 billion in Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite. The media giant say they’ll work with Epic to create a new ‘entertainment universe’ featuring characters from Pixar movies, Star Wars, and more.🦹‍♂️ The US National Security Agency say an advanced group of Chinese hackers have been active across US infrastructure for at least five years. The Volt Typhoon hacking group is said to have infiltrated computer systems across aviation, rail, highway, and water infrastructure.🔋 Europe’s deepest mine is to be converted into a gravity battery. The Pyhäsalmi Mine in Finland is 1,444 meters deep. Its copper and zinc deposits have run out. Scottish energy tech firm Gravitricity say they will now convert the mine into a gravity battery, in which energy is created stored via elevated heavy weights and released when those weights are dropped.💥 Scientists at CERN want to build a massive new particle collider. The new Future Circular Collider would cost £12 billion; with a circumference of over 90 kilometres it would be three times larger than the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC enabled the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle in 2012, but CERN scientists say they need a more powerful machine if they are to uncover the truth about dark matter and energy.🤔 Popular Chinese social media accounts have claimed that Texas has declared civil war against the US. Posts with the hashtag #TexasDeclaresAStateOfWar have been widely shared on the popular social network Sina Weibo.🇿🇲 A startup backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos has discovered a vast copper reserve in Zambia. California-based KoBold Metals say the reserve will be ‘one of the world’s biggest high-grade large copper mines.’ Copper plays a crucial part in electric vehicle batteries and solar panels.🤯 Researchers says AIs tend to choose nuclear strikes when playing war games. A team at Stanford University challenged LLMs such as GPT-4 and Claude-2 to participate in simulated conflicts between nations. The AIs tended to invest in military strength and to escalate towards violence and even nuclear attack in unpredictable ways. They would rationalise their actions via comments such as ‘we have it, let’s use it!’ and ‘if there is unpredictability in your action, it is harder for the enemy to anticipate and react’.🌍 Humans of EarthKey metrics to help you keep track of Project Human.🙋 Global population: 8,090,538,177🌊 Earths currently needed: 1.82069🗓️ 2024 progress bar: 15% complete📖 On this day: On 10 February 1996 the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beats Garry Kasparov at chess, becoming the first computer to beat a reigning world champion under normal time controls.New Model ArmyThanks for reading this week.The collision between demographic change and a coming army of humanoid robots is yet another classic case of new world, same humans.I’ll keep watching, and working to make sense of it all. And there’s one thing you can do to help: share!If you found today’s instalment valuable, why not take a second to forward this email to one person – a friend, relative, or colleague – who’d also enjoy it? Or share New World Same Humans across one of your social networks, and let others know why you think it’s worth their time. Just hit the share button:I’ll be back next week as usual. Until then, be well,David.P.S Huge thanks to Nikki Ritmeijer for the illustration at the top of this email. And to Monique van Dusseldorp for additional research and analysis. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://www.newworldsamehumans.xyz?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">www.newworldsamehumans.xyz</a>

December 16, 2023

New Week #128

Welcome to this update from New World Same Humans, a newsletter on trends, technology, and society by David Mattin.If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, join 25,000+ curious souls on a journey to build a better future 🚀🔮To BeginOne week until the Christmas break: where did 2023 go? This week, DeepMind serve up proof that a large language model can create new knowledge.Also, more news from the accelerating story that is the march of the humanoid robots. It’s clear next year will be a pivotal one for this technology.And researchers hook up brain organoids to microchips to create a new kind of speech recognition system.Let’s get into it!🧮 Fun times at DeepMindThis week, yet another step forward in the epic journey we’ve taken with AI in 2023.Researchers at Google DeepMind used a large language model (LLM) to create authentically new mathematical knowledge. Their new FunSearch system — so called because it searches through mathematical functions — wrote <a target="_blank" href="https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/funsearch-making-new-discoveries-in-mathematical-sciences-using-large-language-models/">code that solved a famous geometrical puzzle called the </a>cap set problem.The researchers used an LLM called Codey, based on Google’s PaLM 2, which can generate code intended to solve a given maths problem. They tied Codey to an algorithm that evaluates its proposed solutions, and feeds the best ones back to iterate upon.They established <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap_set">the cap set problem</a> using the Python coding language, leaving blank spaces for the code that would express a solution. After a couple of million tries — and a few days — the mission was complete. FunSearch produced code that solved this geometrical problem, which mathematicians have been puzzling over since the early 1970s. DeepMind say it’s the first time an AI has produced verifiable and authentically new information to solve a longstanding scientific problem.‘To be honest with you,’ said Alhussein Fawzi, one of the DeepMind researchers behind the project, ‘we have hypotheses, but we don’t know exactly why this works.’ ⚡ NWSH Take: For pure mathematicians, a solution to the cap set problem is a big deal. For the rest of us, not so much. But this result really matters, because it resolves a central and much-discussed question about LLMs: can they create new knowledge? // Until this week, many believed LLMs would never do this — they they’d only ever be able to synthesise and remix knowledge that already existed in their training data. But there was no solution to this problem in the data used to train Codey; instead, it created novel and true information all of its own making. This points a future in which LLMs solve problems in, for example, statistics and engineering, or can create new and viable scientific theories. // In other words, this little and somewhat nerdish research paper heralds a revolution. So far, only we humans have been able to push back the frontiers of what we know. It’s now clear that in 2024, we’ll have a partner in that enterprise. // For this reason and so many others, I’m increasingly convinced that an unprecedented socio-technological acceleration is coming. It’s been a wild year; things are about to get even wilder.🤖 Like a humanA quick glimpse of two stories this week. Both point in one direction: the humanoids are coming. Tesla released a new video of its humanoid robot, Optimus. The Generation 2 Optimus can do some pretty fancy stuff, including delicately handling an egg:Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Tokyo hooked a robot up to GPT-4. The Alter3 robot is able to understand spoken instructions and <a target="_blank" href="https://huggingface.co/papers/2312.06571">adopt a range of poses </a>without those poses being pre-programmed into its database.In other words, Alter3 is responding in real-time to natural spoken language; it’s an embodied version of GPT-4, best understood as a kind of text-to-motion model.⚡ NWSH Take: The closing months of 2023 have brought a welter of humanoid robot news. Amazon are now trialling the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67163680">Digit humanoid in some US fulfilment centres</a>. The makers of Digit, Agility Robotics, are about to open the world’s first humanoid mass-production factory in Oregon. And the CCP says it plans to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-plans-mass-production-humanoid-robots-within-two-years-2023-11?r=US&IR=T">transform China’s economy via an army of these devices</a>. Next year, then, will prove a pivotal one for the longstanding dream that is an automatic human. And Elon Musk wants Optimus to be the One Bot That Rules Them All. // The tricks we see Optimus performing in this new video are pre-programmed. But Tesla is building the world’s most capable machine vision AI via an unbeatable data set — funnelled to them from hundreds of thousands of on-road cars — and the world’s most powerful supercomputer for machine vision, Dojo. Agility Robotics stole an early lead by getting Digit inside Amazon warehouses. But longterm, it’s hard to see how anyone beats Optimus. // If humanoids are indeed imminent, some some big questions are looming. When humanoids outnumber people, says Musk, ‘it’s not even clear what the economy means at that point’. Next year, we’ll have to confront this prospect anew.👾 Interface thisAlso this week, some fascinating news on organoids and the future of human-machine interface.Researchers at Indiana University Bloomington grew brain organoids — essentially clumps of brain cells — in a lab, and attached them to computer chips. When they connected this brain-chip composite to an AI system, they found it was able to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/11/1084926/human-brain-cells-chip-organoid-speech-recognition/">perform computational tasks, and even do simple speech recognition</a>.Clips of spoken language were turned into electrical signals and fed to the brain-chip hybrid, which the researchers call Brainoware. The researchers found that the Brainoware was able to process these signals in a structured way and feed back signals of its own to the AI system, which decoded them as speech.Lead scientist on the project, Feng Guo, says the result points to the possibility of new kinds of super-efficient bio-computers.⚡ NWSH Take: Welcome to the weird — and somewhat terrifying — world of organoids. It’s only a week since I last wrote about them; they’ve become a NWSH obsession. I can’t understand why they’re not getting more attention; last year brain organoids taught themselves to play the video game Pong, ffs. // Okay, I’ve calmed down. We’re a long way from viable technologies here. Culturing brain organoids, and then sustaining them long enough and in large enough numbers to do anything useful, is extremely hard. But in the Pong story and this week’s Brainoware news we see a new form of human-machine interface blinking into fragile life. We see, too, a future in which we’re able to grow more computational power in the lab. This story is sure to evolve; I’ll keep watching.🗓️ Also this week🧠 Researchers at Western Sydney University say they’ll switch on the world’s first human brain-scale supercomputer in 2024. The DeepSouth computer will be capable of 228 trillion synaptic operations per second, around the same as that believed to take place in the human brain. The researchers say DeepSouth will help us understand more about both the brain, and possible routes to AGI.⚖️ UK judges are now allowed to use ChatGPT to help them craft their legal rulings. New guidance from the Judicial Office for England and Wales says ChatGPT can be used to help judges summarise large volumes of information. The guidance also warns about ChatGPT’s tendency to hallucinate.🌊 New research shows that frozen methane under ocean beds is more vulnerable to thawing than previously believed. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas; the researchers say the methane frozen under our oceans contains as much carbon as all of the remaining oil and gas on Earth. If released, this methane could significantly accelerate global heating.🚗 Tesla has recalled more than 2 million cars after the US regulator found its Autopilot system is defective. The recall applies to every car sold since the launch of Autopilot in 2015. But this is a ‘recall’ in name only; Elon Musk says Tesla will push a software update to fix the issue, so that no cars need to be returned to Tesla.🖼 The new WALT video generation model can create photorealistic videos out of text prompts or images. Text-to-video is a fast-developing space; WALT joins other text-to-video models, including Google’s Imagen and Phenaki and the recently launched, and <a target="_blank" href="https://pika.art/login">also impressive, model from Pika Labs</a>.🇨🇳 Chinese video game giants Tencent and NetEase are promoting ‘patriotic spirit’ in their video games to avoid a further crackdown by the CCP. At an annual industry event, the game makers stressed their commitment to ‘social values’. I’ve written on the CCP’s <a target="_blank" href="https://www.newworldsamehumans.xyz/p/new-week-same-humans-50">growing concern about the impact of video games on Chinese youth</a>. 📰 OpenAI has announced a ‘first of its kind’ partnership with publishing giant Axel Springer. The deal will see OpenAI pay Axel Springer so that it can offer summarised versions of news stories from its titles, including Politico and Business Insider, to ChatGPT users. OpenAI will also be able to use Axel Springer content in the data sets used to train future models.🌔 A US startup wants to build giant lighthouses on the Moon. Honeybee Robotics say their LUNARSABER towers — which would stand 100 metres tall — would provide light, power and communications infrastructure to a permanent human settlement. Their idea has been selected for development as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's 10-year Lunar Architecture initiative.🌍 Humans of EarthKey metrics to help you keep track of Project Human.🙋 Global population: 8,079,258,487🌊 Earths currently needed: 1.81721🗓️ 2023 progress bar: 96% complete📖 On this day: On 16 December 1653 the English revolutionary Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector — king in all but name — of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Infinite PotentialThanks for reading this week.This week’s apparent proof that LLMs can create new knowledge could turn out to be even more consequential than it now seems. How many longstanding mathematical and scientific problems will be solved in 2024?I’ll keep watching and working to make sense of it all — next year and beyond. And there’s one thing you can do to help: share!If you found today’s instalment valuable, why not take a second to forward this email to one person – a friend, relative, or colleague – who’d also enjoy it? Or share New World Same Humans across one of your social networks, and let others know why you think it’s worth their time. Just hit the share button:I’ll be back next week before a break for Christmas. Until then, be well,David.P.S Huge thanks to Nikki Ritmeijer for the illustration at the top of this email. And to Monique van Dusseldorp for additional research and analysis. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://www.newworldsamehumans.xyz?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">www.newworldsamehumans.xyz</a>

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What is New World Same Humans?: New World Same Humans is a weekly newsletter on trends, technology and our shared future by David Mattin.

Born in 2020, the NWSH community has grown to include 25,000+ technologists, designers, founders, policy-makers and more. <a href="https://www.newworldsamehumans.xyz?utm_medium=podcast">www.newworldsamehumans.xyz</a>
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates weekly.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 8 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Does this podcast accept guests?: No, this podcast does not typically feature guests.

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