Digital Technologies

Aligning superhuman AI with human behaviour: chess as a model system | the morning paper


AI models can learn to perform some tasks to human or even super-human levels, but do they then perform those tasks in a human-like way? And does that even matter so long as the outcomes are good? If we’re going to hand everything over to AI and get out of the way, then maybe not. But where humans are still involved in task performance, supervision, or evaluation, then McIlroy-Young et al. make the case that this difference in approaches really does matter.

Source: Aligning superhuman AI with human behaviour: chess as a model system | the morning paper

Biomedical Applications

A stretchy stick-on patch can take blood pressure readings from deep inside your body


The last time you had your blood pressure checked, it was probably at a doctor’s office with a bulky cuff wrapped around your arm. One day soon, perhaps, you will just need a simple stick-on patch on your neck, no bigger than a postage stamp. That’s the goal of Sheng Xu and his team at the…

Source: A stretchy stick-on patch can take blood pressure readings from deep inside your body

Digital Technologies

Now any business can access the same type of AI that powered AlphaGo


A startup called CogitAI has developed a platform that lets companies use reinforcement learning, the technique that gave AlphaGo mastery of the board game Go. Gaining experience: AlphaGo, an AI program developed by DeepMind, taught itself to play Go by practicing. It’s practically impossible for a programmer to manually code in the best strategies for winning. Instead, reinforcement…

Source: Now any business can access the same type of AI that powered AlphaGo

A detour from business as usual

Data-mining medieval text reveals medically bioactive ingredients


The Lylye of Medicynes is a 15th-century manuscript residing in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. It is a Middle English translation of an earlier Latin treatise on disease, containing case studies and treatment recipes. It was an influential text thought to have originally belonged to Robert Broke, personal apothecary to the English monarch Henry…

Source: Data-mining medieval text reveals medically bioactive ingredients