A Camera-Wearing Baby Taught an AI to Learn Words

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February 06, 2024

In a fascinating new study, researchers periodically strapped a camera to a kid named Sam as the child grew from six months to 25 months old. They fed the video data from Sam's cam to a basic AI model and showed that, based on a mere 61 hours of footage, the AI could successfully match words to their corresponding images. Read more about the implications of this study in this week's top story. Enjoy!

Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor @AGawrylewski

Intelligence A Camera-Wearing Baby Taught an AI to Learn Words Most machine-learning models rely on mountains of data to replicate human text, but new research suggests the recipe for learning language might be simpler By Lauren Leffer

Quantum Computing Will Quantum Computers Upend Cryptography as We Know It? Experts are starting to plan for the moment when a quantum computer large enough to crack the backbone of the math that keeps things secret will be turned on. By Jeffery DelViscio | 10:35

Materials Science Why Is Superconductivity Research Plagued by Controversy? A materials scientist unravels the hype around research on high-temperature superconductor research like LK-99 By Dan Falk,Undark

Engineering Forgotten Electrical Engineer's Work Paved the Way for Radar Technology Sallie Pero Mead made major discoveries about how electromagnetic waves propagate that allowed objects to be detected at a distance By Erica Huang,Katie Hafner,The Lost Women of Science Initiative

Climate Change Science Is Using Mechanical Moss to Fight Climate Change on the Canary Islands On the Spanish archipelago of the Canary Islands, a group of researchers is racing to fight drought as the climate changes rapidly around them. Their defense is a new approach to a very, very old technology from nature. By Meghan McDonough

Artificial Intelligence An Alliance Calling For More Open AI Should Heed Their Own Call The word "open" is often thrown around in describing AI transparency, but the companies and groups calling for it must themselves be open about their practices By Wai Chee Dimock

Aerospace We Need Cybersecurity in Space to Protect Satellites Amid rising numbers of cyber threats, safeguarding our satellites is no longer optional but a necessity for global security and reliability By Sylvester Kaczmarek

Archaeology AI Unravels Ancient Roman Scroll Charred By Volcano AI helps decipher the text of a 2,000-year-old scroll burned at Pompeii By Jo Marchant,Nature magazine

Climate Change AI's Climate Impacts May Hit Marginalized People Hardest A Brookings Institution report warns that energy-hungry artificial intelligence tech will worsen the climate crisis By Thomas Frank,E&E News

QUOTE OF THE DAY "We showed, for the first time, that you can train an AI model to learn words through the eyes and ears of a single child." Brenden Lake, associate professor of psychology and data science at New York University

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