Rebroadcast: The Robohattan Project

Jul 23, 2021

In COVID-related AI news, Andy and Dave discuss survey results from Algorithmia, which shows that IT directors at large companies are looking to spend more money on AI/ML projects due to the pandemic. In regular AI news, the bipartisan Future of Defense Task Force releases its 2020 report, which includes the suggestion of using the Manhattan Project as a model to develop AI technologies. The US and UK sign an agreement to work together on trustworthy AI. Facebook AI releases Dynabench as a way to dynamically benchmark the performance of machine learning algorithms. Amsterdam and Helsinki launch AI registers that explain how they use algorithms, in an effort to increase transparency. In research, the Allen Institute of AI, University of Washington, and University of North Carolina publish research on X-LXMERT (learning cross-modality encoder representations from transformers), which trains GPT-3 on both text and images, to then generate images from scratch by providing descriptions (e.g., a large clock tower in the middle of a town). Researchers at Swarthmore College and Los Alamos National Labs demonstrate the challenges that neural networks of various sizes have in learning Conway’s Game of Life. Maria Jeansson, Claudio Sanna, and Antoine Cully create a stunning visual infographic on the “automated futures” technologies. And Joshua Epstein, a longtime expert in agent-based modeling, provides the European Social Stimulation Association Award Keynote speech.