Cognitive neuroscience

Scientists testing coffee against plain caffeine found that plain caffeine only partially reproduces the effects of drinking a cup of coffee, activating areas of the brain that make you feel more alert but not the areas of the brain that affect working memory and goal-directed behavior.What is One Change Mark Zuckerberg Should Make to His Social Platforms? | Gizmodo InterviewFor many people, the day doesn’t start until their coffee mug is empty. Coffee is often thought to make you feel more alert, so people drink it to…

AI pioneer Yann LeCun. Jérémy Barande/Wikimedia Commons AI pioneer Yann LeCun has described talk of artificial intelligence (AI) posing an existential threat to humanity as “preposterously ridiculous.” Speaking to the BBC this week at an AI-focused event held in Paris by Meta, where he now works as the company’s chief AI scientist, Professor LeCun said: “Will AI take over the world? No, this is a projection of human nature on machines.” LeCun’s comments are in stark contrast to those made by Geoffrey Hinton and…

Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI, is considered by some to be the end goal of artificial intelligence (AI) development. Instead of having an AI that can perform specific tasks, an AGI would be able to perform any task you set it, and with enough time and computational power, do it well. Some see ChatGPT as the first example of AGI, while others consider us at least a few years away from an AI that can do anything. Really, it’s more of a debate about how exactly we define AGI, and how to know when we get there.…

GPT-5 is the expected next major LLM (Large Language Model) as released by OpenAI. Given the massive success of ChatGPT, OpenAI is continuing the progress of development on future models powering its AI chatbot. GPT-5 aims to be a major improvement over GPT-4, and even though very little is known about it. Here’s everything that’s been rumored so far. Release date OpenAI has continued a rapid rate of progress on its LLMs. GPT-4 debuted on March 14, 2023, which came just four months after GPT-3.5 launched…

The first open-source AI chatbot in the vein of ChatGPT has arrived, and it’s come at a particularly helpful time. ColossalChat is a powerful alternative that uses an RHLF pipeline similar to OpenAI’s GPT-4 model that powers ChatGPT, and it’s available for immediate use. ChatGPT, of course, remains the premier AI chatbot and keeps plenty busy. But I just tried to log in now and found it was at capacity and, therefore, unavailable. This is a common problem with the service. ColossalChat, on the other hand, is wide…

GPT-4 is only a couple of weeks old, and we’re just starting to get a glimpse of how powerful it really is. As has been documented by AI enthusiasts like Rowan Cheung on Twitter, people are stumbling upon all sorts of interesting, awe-inspiring, and downright scary things that GPT-4 can do. Learning what a new large language model can do is a process of discovery, and based on what it’s been able to generate in just these past couple of weeks, it feels like we’re only scratching the surface. Here are five things that…

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been moving at an unbelievable speed in recent months, with the launch of various tools and bots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Bard, and more. Yet this rapid development is causing serious concern among seasoned veterans in the AI field — so much so that over 1,000 of them have signed an open letter calling on AI developers to slam on the brakes. The letter was published on the website of the Future of Life Institute, an organization whose stated mission is “steering transformative…

GPT-4 may have only just launched, but people are already talking about the next version of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot technology. Now, a new claim has been made that GPT-5 will complete its training this year, and could bring a major AI revolution with it. The assertion comes from developer Siqi Chen on Twitter, who stated: “I have been told that GPT-5 is scheduled to complete training this December and that OpenAI expects it to achieve AGI.” i have been told that gpt5 is scheduled to…

Researchers studied videos of great apes spinning and found that the animals are deliberately getting dizzy; the team believes that the behavior may have implications for humankind’s occasional exploration of altered states of mind.Evidence collected from hundreds of instances of rope spinning across several great ape species demonstrated that, in some instances, the animals sought to induce dizziness. The researchers compare the behavior to spinning to induce mind-altering experiences in humans, like Sufi whirling. The…

The reconstruction of the larval fly’s brain includes 3,016 neurons and 548,000 connections, or synapses, between neurons. Scientists say it’s the most complex, complete map ever published of an animal’s brain. Gif: Johns Hopkins University/University of CambridgeTo most humans, a fruit fly larva doesn’t look like much: a pale, wriggling, rice grain-shaped maggot, just a few millimeters in length. Yet, in their own way, fly larvae lead rich and interesting lives full of sensory inputs, social behaviors, and learning. If…