🚀Entretien exclusif ; humanity's first space battle ; impressive bionic hand ; buy this flying car in 2024 ; AI you can wear & more
Lasers to build roads on the moon & more
Bonjour,
Vous recevez la newsletter Parlons Futur : une fois par semaine au plus, une sélection de news, mêlant sources anglophones et francophones, résumées en bullet points sur des sujets tech 🤖, science 🔬, éco 💰, géopolitique 🌏 et défense ⚔️ pour mieux appréhender le futur 🔮.
Je m'appelle Thomas, plus d'infos sur moi en bas d'email.
Voici donc ma dernière sélection !
L’apéro
Mon dernier podcast : un entretien exclusif avec Pierre Bellanger, le fondateur et PDG du groupe Skyrock
Un long entretien avec Pierre Bellanger, lecteur de cette newsletter, et que je remercie encore :)
J'ai bien détaillé le minutage des questions dans la description du podcast
Ne ratez pas notamment :
00:00:35 : comment Pierre Bellanger est passé d'un diplôme en biologie au lancement d'une des première radios libres en passant par l'écologie militante
01:10:00 : sur la radio Skyrock Pour Les Militaires (avec d'ailleurs aujourd'hui même 10 novembre un entretien avec le Chef d'État-major des armées à écouter ici à 18h)
01:26:50 : quel avenir pour la radio face à des acteurs comme Spotify, Deezer ?
01:48:50 : la genèse de la nouvelle aventure de Pierre Bellanger, la messagerie peer-to-peer Skred, la première messagerie sécurisée mondiale avec 17 millions de comptes activés
02:22:50 : Pierre Bellanger est à l'origine de l'adoption en France du dispositif Alerte Enlèvement, il nous raconte sa démarche
02:30:50 : Pierre Bellanger revient sur un épisode singulier de sa carrière, le lancement de M-Radio, la première radio privée en URSS en 1989
Le podcast peut être trouvé sur Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, Spotify, ou en tapant Parlons Futur dans n'importe quelle appli de podcast :)
Great news: First malaria vaccine slashes early childhood mortality (Science.org)
Huge analysis in Africa shows it decreased toddler deaths by 13%
Humanity Just Witnessed Its First Space Battle (source)
In what may be the first known instance of combat occurring in space, an Israeli defense system destroyed a ballistic missile above Earth’s atmosphere likely sent from Yemen.
Amazon is investing millions in training a massive LLM codenamed 'Olympus' to rival OpenAI.
Olympus is reported to have 2 trillion parameters, which could make it one of the world's largest AI models (GPT-4 = 1 trillion).
Amazon also plans to integrate Olympus into Alexa.
3 Main take-aways of the AI safety summit in the UK:
AI companies agree to government tests on their technology to assess national security risks.
Yoshua Bengio (one of the 3 original godfathers of modern AI) will chair the “State of the Science” report on the capabilities and risks of frontier AI.
28 nations sign the 'Bletchley Declaration' agreeing upon the risks posed by AI. (including European Union, China and the US)
dont “We are especially concerned by such risks in domains such as cybersecurity and biotechnology, as well as where frontier AI systems may amplify risks such as disinformation.”
Euh?? "The biggest challenge I’m still thinking of: what are LLMs truly useful for, in terms of helpfulness?"
...said Cathy Pearl, a Google user experience lead who works on the company's Bard AI. (source)
ChatGPT plus perspicace que les médecins généralistes face aux patients dépressifs ?
Une étude montre que ChatGPT s'avère particulièrement efficace dans le diagnostic des dépressifs, ces choix étant souvent plus éclairés que ceux des médecins. (source)
Deepmind co-founder: There’s a 50% Chance We’ll Hit Artificial General Intelligence in Just 5 Years (source)
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Twitter: “I expect AI to be capable of superhuman persuasion well before it is superhuman at general intelligence”
OpenAI Chief AI Architect Ilya sutskever: “One possibility is that many people will choose to become part AI.” Sutskever is saying this could be how humans try to keep up. “At first, only the most daring, adventurous people will try to do it. Maybe others will follow. Or not.” (source)
Elon Musk announces Grok AI (a name that means “to understand” in tech circles) (x.ai)
"A unique and fundamental advantage of Grok is that it has real-time knowledge of the world via the 𝕏 platform. It will also answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems." (euhhh…what can go wrong?)
On some benchmarks, "Grok-1 displayed strong results, surpassing all other models in its compute class, including ChatGPT-3.5. It is only surpassed by models that were trained with a significantly larger amount of training data and compute resources like GPT-4."
Not yet available for all though
Someone used AI voice cloning to create a cover of the late Johnny Cash singing Taylor Swift's "Blank Space", quite impressive, listen to it here
Amazing: A new Beatles song, "Now and Then", has just been released after 45 years — with help from AI (source, official music video, The Last Beatles Song - Short Film)
John Lennon recorded a demo of the song with piano and vocals in 1978.
AI software was used to clean up Lennon’s vocals and feature them on the track.
Marc Andreessen in his latest Techno-Optimist Manifesto (un must-read)
“We believe that if we make both intelligence and energy “too cheap to meter”, the ultimate result will be that all physical goods become as cheap as pencils. Pencils are actually quite technologically complex and difficult to manufacture, and yet nobody gets mad if you borrow a pencil and fail to return it. We should make the same true of all physical goods.”
Quel est l'animal ou la machine la plus efficace, économe, en terme de quantité d'énergie consommée par gramme transporté par km ?
Un être humain sur un vélo ! Graphique comparatif intéressant avec autres animaux et machines, qui a inspiré l'idée de "computer as bicycle for the mind" à Steve Jobs
Another example of AI use in hospitals (source)
Use recorded discussions between doctors and interns as they make their hospital rounds, combined with a given patient’s charts and the updates to them—to identify missing actions or overlooked questions.
The AI component could then produce a summary of its findings for review by the medical staff. According to some estimates, doctors currently spend 33% of their time writing up reports and the decisions made; such a system could reduce that time by up to 80%.
Scientists reveal plan to use lasers to build roads and landing pads on the moon by melting the lunar soil into a more solid, layered substance (source)
The Moon’s surface is a tough place to land and live. The dust of the soil tends to get kicked up by landers – and the low gravity means that it floats around after it is disturbed, potentially finding its way into equipment.
The idea is to use a laser beam to make hollow (creux) triangular shapes that could be locked together to create solid surfaces.
May be possible as well to use a big lens of more than 2m2, which would have to be transported from Earth, to concentrate sunlight, rather than using a laser, and so allow the material to be created with relatively small equipment.
Company founded by Frenchman François Dubrulle and with offices in Toulouse, Houston and Singapore raises $100M to to develop tech for the moon (Techcrunch)
The company aims to send its ZeusX spacecraft to the moon in just four years, with a second mission in 2029.
How Disney Packed Big Emotion Into a Little Robot
“The adorable robot packs an enormous amount of expression into its child-size body, from its highly expressive head and two wiggly antennae to its stubby little legs.
What sets this robot apart from other small bipeds is how it walks—it’s full of personality, emoting as it moves in a way that makes it seem uniquely alive.”
With its robots, Disney has shown just how much a robot is able to communicate through character without sacrificing functionality, and this can be useful in robotics more broadly.
See the 1-min demo video, source article
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À table !
Tens of Thousands of People Can Now Order a Waymo Robotaxi Anywhere in San Francisco (source)
Now, the full San Francisco service area will be available to all current Waymo One users—amounting to tens of thousands of people, according to TechCrunch.
San Francisco has proven a challenging environment, with aggressive urban drivers, steep hills, and at-times narrow, winding streets.
In early September, Waymo released a report coauthored with insurance giant Swiss Re claiming its cars are safer than human drivers.
after several million miles driven by both Cruise and Waymo, most documented collisions were low-speed and and often the fault of another driver. This was especially true for Waymo, which he found had a comparatively cleaner safety record.
A flying car that anyone can use will go on sale in 2024, priced at $190,000 (The Economist)
Helix is a single-seat vehicle, so “flying motorbike” might be a more accurate appellation.
It has been crafted by its maker, Pivotal, based in Silicon Valley, to be within America’s rules for microlight aircraft. That means anyone, pilot’s licence or not, can fly it over non-built-up areas.
Fitted with a parachute
Top speed of 100km/h, its range is only 30km. Takes 4h30min to charge
Woman's Experimental Bionic Hand Passes Major Test With Flying Colors (source)
The Mia Hand prosthetic, fused with bone and connected to the nervous system, has given its owner a new lease on life and much less phantom pain.
The woman suffered an injury that took much of her right arm over 20 years ago.
The bionic limb can perform about 80% of a typical hand’s functions
It’s outfitted with state-of-art technology, including AI.
Much like a real flesh-and-blood hand, it’s controlled by Karin’s nervous system and provides sensory feedback.
Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, General Valery Zaluzhny: “Just like in the first world war we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate (impasse)” he says. (The Economist)
The general concludes that it would take a massive technological leap to break the deadlock. “There will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”
General Zaluzhny’s assessment is sobering: there is no sign that a revolutionary technological breakthrough, whether in drones or in electronic warfare, is around the corner.
The implication is that Ukraine is stuck in a long positional war
"Russia should not be underestimated. It has suffered heavy losses and expended a lot of ammunition. But it will have superiority in weapons, equipment, missiles and ammunition for a considerable time." he says
"If Ukraine is to escape from that trap, we will need all these things: air superiority, much-improved electronic-warfare and counter-artillery capabilities, new mine-breaching technology and the ability to mobilise and train more reserves. We also need to focus on modern command and control—so we can visualise the battlefield more effectively than Russia and make decisions more quickly—and on rationalising our logistics while disrupting Russia’s with longer-range missiles."
Humane’s Ai Pin is a $700 Smartphone Alternative You Wear All Day (Wired)
If you’re willing to clip the Ai Pin to your chest, you can talk, gesture, and tap to take photos or summon a powerful virtual assistant.
Humane’s device, called the Ai Pin, can take photos and send texts, uses a laser to project a visual interface onto a person’s palm, and comes with a virtual assistant that can be as sharp as ChatGPT. By always being ready to search the web and communicate, it is supposed to quash dependency on smartphones.
Mmmm:To put on the Ai Pin involves placing a magnetic battery pack on the inside of a shirt or other piece of clothing, and letting a magnet on the Pin itself hold the system in place. It’s altogether about 55 grams, nearly the weight of a tennis ball.
The Ai Pin’s most distinctive features reside in the curved top of the device, which houses an ultrawide camera, light and depth detectors, and a laser projector.
Like Clips and Meta’s smart glasses, Humane’s Pin has a "trust light" that indicates to people nearby when the microphone or camera is activated.
Tapping the Pin and then moving a palm into its field of view activates its laser, which projects images and text onto a user’s hand. Tilting the hand navigates between displayed options and a swatting gesture swipes to a different menu. Users “click” on an option by tapping their thumb and index finger together and close their hand briefly to return to a home screen.
Ken Kocienda, Humane’s head of product engineering, who worked on touchscreen typing and autocorrect for Apple’s first iPhone, says he often talks to Ai Mic over breakfast with his wife and at red lights on his drive home as questions pop into mind. “It keeps you in the moment with the people you are with and it feels really lightweight and fun,” he says. About 100 of Humane's 260 or so employees worked at Apple at some point, according to LinkedIn profiles.
Chaudhri says while the Pin supports Bluetooth headphones, its built-in speakers are designed to create a bubble of sound around the user that provides an intimate experience when turned down low. “People in the office use it and we can’t really tell,” he says.
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Quelques mots sur le cuistot
J'ai écrit plus de 50 articles ces dernières années, à retrouver ici, dont une bonne partie publiés dans des médias comme le Journal du Net (mes chroniques ici), le Huffington Post, L'Express, Les Échos.
Je suis CEO et co-fondateur de l'agence digitale KRDS, nous avons des bureaux dans 6 pays entre la France et l'Asie, ainsi que de Yelda, “A voice assistant to answer every call” (notre itw sur BFM Business “À la mairie de Plaisir, c'est l'intelligence artificielle qui répond au téléphone”), une des Future 40 startups de Station F, notre étude de cas vidéo bluffante d’1 minute avec Best Western.
Je suis basé à Singapour (mon Linkedin, mon Twitter), également membre du think tank NXU.
Merci, et à bientôt !
Thomas