Category: Technology

San Francisco, Aug 6 (IANS): Meta’s AI research labs have reportedly created a new state-of-the-art chatbot and the tech giant is letting members of the public talk to the system to collect feedback on its capabilities.

According to The Verge, the bot is called BlenderBot 3 and can be accessed on the web. Though, right now, it seems only residents in the US can do so.

“We are committed to publicly releasing all the data we collect in the demo in the hopes that we can improve conversational AI,” Kurt Shuster, a research engineer at Meta who helped create BlenderBot 3, was quoted as saying.

BlenderBot 3 is able to engage in general chitchat, said Meta, but also answer the sort of queries you might ask a digital assistant, “from talking about healthy food recipes to finding child-friendly amenities in the city,” the report said.

The bot is a prototype and built on Meta’s previous work with what are known as large language models or LLMS — powerful but flawed text-generation software of which OpenAI’s GPT-3 is the most widely known example.

Like all LLMs, BlenderBot is initially trained on vast text datasets, which it mines for statistical patterns to generate language.

Such systems have proven extremely flexible and have been put to a range of uses, from generating code for programmers to helping authors write their next bestseller.

However, these models also have serious flaws: they regurgitate biases in their training data and often invent answers to users’ questions (a big problem if they are going to be useful as digital assistants).

Hello Nintendo fans, and welcome to the latest recap. This was a rather busy week for Nintendo. First, we had a Pokémon Presents that explained upcoming events for multiple Pokémon games and also gave us greater insight into Scarlet and Violet. In other news, Nintendo’s latest financial report revealed some surprising information. We also finally learned when the highly-anticipated Minecraft amiibo will be releasing. There’s more to discuss, so let’s dive in.

Pokémon Presents shows off new Pokémon, rideable Legendaries, and more

The latest Pokémon Presents took place Wednesday morning and announced several updates for various Pokémon titles across different platforms. After talking about the Pokémon Unite’s one-year anniversary and the return of Mewtwo in Pokémon Cafe Remix, the presentation ended with a focus on what everyone really wanted to hear about — Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.

We finally saw that the Legendary Pokémon — Koraidon (Scarlet) and Moraidon (Violet) — operate as vehicles that can wheel you across the land, climb up cliffs, swim in the water, or fly through the air. The presentation even showed that players can ride next to each other in multiplayer and explore the world as they defeat gyms in whatever order they want.

Two new Pokémon, as well as a new regional variant, were also revealed, with one of them stealing the hearts of the online community. There’s Paldean Wooper, a Poison/Ground-Type variant; Cetitan, an Ice-type land whale; and Fidough, the best wittle donut dog anyone could ask for. It only took minutes for Twitter to erupt in a shower of Fidough fan art.

While it was nice to see new faces, we got no official number for how many Pokémon would be in the Gen 9 Pokédex. However, many familiar Pokémon were shown off in the video, which doubled the number of all confirmed Pokémon we know will show up in the game.

The main gimmick for Gen 9 was also revealed. The Terastal phenomenon allows Pokémon to shine like gems with ridiculously large glittering crowns on their heads. As @Olivart_ on Twitter illustrated in their meme, imagine a Ring Pop on a Pokémon’s dome and you’ve basically got the idea.

Why it matters: In 2019, a leaked paper claimed physicists at Google used their quantum computer, Sycamore, to run a calculation that would overwhelm the world’s most powerful supercomputer. Chinese scientists recently challenged that they claim by successfully running the identical computation in a matter of hours using the computing power of today’s GPUs. Their results prove a supercomputer using today’s technology could likely beat Sycamore’s previous record.

Google’s quantum computing researchers originally ran the complex calculation in 200 seconds (just over three minutes), a feat they claimed would have taken the fastest supercomputer upwards of 10,000 years. Based on this result, the team claimed they had reached a significant milestone known as quantum supremacy. Quantum supremacy is the point at which a quantum device can solve problems that otherwise cannot be solved by classical technology in any reasonable amount of time.

Not everyone was a believer in Google’s self-proclaimed supremacy in 2019. Another major player in the quantum computing space, IBM, challenged Google’s claims from the start. Researchers there claimed the same task could be performed in a matter of days with the right amount of available resources, invalidating Google’s claim of quantum supremacy.

Chinese scientists successfully proved IBM’s point by attacking the original problem using advanced algorithms and compute power from today’s GPUs to complete the calculation. According to a report by science.org, the effort used 512 GPUs, a number that is far from unfathomable when considering how many units have been used in cryptocurrency mining operations over the last several years.

Chinese scientists successfully proved IBM’s point by attacking the original problem using advanced algorithms and compute power from today’s GPUs to complete the calculation. A report in Science notes that the effort used 512 GPUs — a number that is far from unfathomable when considering how many units cryptocurrency mining operations sometimes use.

The GPU compute power combined with advanced algorithms completed the same calculation within several hours. The results, which were unthinkable according to the leaked 2019 research findings, provide evidence to back claims that a large enough supercomputer could, in fact, rival Sycamore’s earlier achievement.

Conventional computing relies on bits, the most basic information units in computing. These bits can exist as only one of two values, either a 0 or 1.

Quantum computing relies on quantum bits, or qubits, comprised of a superposition of 0 and 1. Like a bit, a qubit can equal 0 or 1. However, it has the added property of equaling 0 and 1 simultaneously, resulting in vastly increased computing potential.

The achievement does not invalidate Google’s previous quantum achievements, nor does it mean that standard processing hardware can “catch up” to quantum’s capabilities. Google Quantum AI’s principal scientist, Sergio Boixo, said the original 2019 paper acknowledged the likely future improvement to classical algorithms but doesn’t believe today’s classical computing approach can keep pace with quantum technologies.

Boixo’s statement is accurate given the rate of quantum growth since 2019. Google’s original Sycamore was a 53-qubits processor. In 2021 IBM unveiled their 127-qubit Eagle, and their quantum roadmap looks to break the 1,000-qubit barrier sometime in 2023.

Back in 2019, Google proudly announced they had achieved what quantum computing researchers had sought for years: proof that the esoteric technique could outperform traditional ones. But this demonstration of “quantum supremacy” is being challenged by researchers claiming to have pulled ahead of Google on a relatively normal supercomputer.

To be clear, no one is saying Google lied or misrepresented its work — the painstaking and groundbreaking research that led to the quantum supremacy announcement in 2019 is still hugely important. But if this new paper is correct, the classical versus quantum computing competition is still anybody’s game.

You can read the full story of how Google took quantum from theory to reality in the original article, but here’s the very short version. Quantum computers like Sycamore are not better than classical computers at anything yet, with the possible exception of one task: simulating a quantum computer.

It sounds like a cop-out, but the point of quantum supremacy is to show the method’s viability by finding even one highly specific and weird task that it can do better than even the fastest supercomputer. Because that gets the quantum foot in the door to expand that library of tasks. Perhaps in the end all tasks will be faster in quantum, but for Google’s purposes in 2019, only one was, and they showed how and why in great detail.

Now, a team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences led by Pan Zhang has published a paper describing a new technique for simulating a quantum computer (specifically, certain noise patterns it puts out) that appears to take a tiny fraction of the time estimated for classical computation to do so in 2019.

Not being a quantum computing expert nor a statistical physics professor myself, I can only give a general idea of ​​the technique Zhang et al. used. They cast the problem as a large 3D network of tensors, with the 53 qubits in Sycamore represented by a grid of nodes, extruded out 20 times to represent the 20 cycles the Sycamore gates went through in the simulated process. The mathematical relationships between these tensors (each its own set of interrelated vectors) was then calculated using a cluster of 512 GPUs.

An illustration from Zhang’s paper showing a visual representation of the 3D tensor array they used to simulate Sycamore’s quantum operations. Image Credits: Pan Zhang et al.

In Google’s original paper, it was estimated that performing this scale of simulation on the most powerful supercomputer available at the time (Summit at Oak Ridge National Laboratory) would take about 10,000 years — though to be clear, that was their estimate for 54 qubits doing 25 cycles; 53 qubits doing 20 is considerably less complex but would still take on the order of a few years by their estimate.

Zhang’s group claims to have done it in 15 hours. And if they had access to a proper supercomputer like Summit, it might be accomplished in a handful of seconds — faster than Sycamore. Their paper will be published in the journal Physical Review Letters; you can read it here (PDF).

These results have yet to be fully vetted and replicated by those knowledgeable about such things, but there’s no reason to think it’s some kind of error or hoax. Google even admitted that the baton may be passed back and forth a few times before supremacy is firmly established, as it’s incredibly difficult to build and program quantum computers while classical ones and their software are being improved constantly. (Others in the quantum world were skeptical of their claims to begin with, but some are direct competitors.)

Google offered the following comment acknowledging the march of progress here:

In our 2019 paper we said that classical algorithms would improve (in fact, Google invented the method used here for random circuit simulation in 2017, and the methods for trading fidelity for computational costs in 2018 and 2019) — but the key point is that quantum technology improves exponentially faster. So we don’t think this classical approach can keep up with quantum circuits in 2022 and beyond, despite significant improvements in the last few years.

As University of Maryland quantum scientist Dominik Hangleiter told Science, this isn’t a black eye for Google or a knockout punch for quantum in general by any means: “The Google experiment did what it was meant to do, start this race.”

Google may well strike back with new claims of its own — it hasn’t been standing still either. But the fact that it’s even competitive is good news for everyone involved; this is an exciting area of ​​computing and work like Google’s and Zhang’s continues to raise the bar for everyone.

Elden Ring is without a doubt the frontrunner for GOTY at this point, but it’s been fairly locked at its $89 price point since it launched months and months ago, but that all changes today. It’s available for $62 including free shipping from Amazon right HERE. It’s only the PS5 version of the game, with the Xbox version still being quite a bit more expensive.

We gave the game a 9.5/10 in our review and said: While it feels like the impact of Breath of the Wild is waning as the open world genre starts to stagnate again, Elden Ring stands out as not only an achievement in FromSoftware’s hall of fame, but also as an open-world RPG. Elden Ring is without a doubt, FromSoft’s most ambitious undertaking yet, and like Dark Souls before it, I believe it will leave a permanent mark on both the open-world genre and the games industry in general.

The game also has a 96 on Meteoritic currently which is not only the best for the year, but also goes close to being the best game of all time in the eyes of the reviewers on Metacritic.

It’s expected that the game will get an expansion at some point, but this hasn’t been revealed or even hinted at in terms of a release date yet, but there’s no better time than now in this current gaming lull to jump in and play the game.

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Fitbit is discontinuing support for PC and Mac syncing. On a spotted by , the company said it would remove the option for users to sync their trackers over its Connect app on October 13th, 2022. After that date, the only way to transfer your data off your Fitbit wearable will be through the Fitbit mobile app. While the shutdown is unlikely to affect many people, it does mean there will be one less way to transfer your favorite songs to your wearable for offline playback.

“On October 13, 2022, we’re removing the option to transfer playlists to your Fitbit watch through your computer,” the company says on a . “You can continue to play personal music stored on your watch and transfer music to your watch with the Deezer app and Pandora app.”

In other words, if you use your Fitbit tracker or smartwatch for listening to music, you’ll need to depend on two music services that aren’t the most popular options out there. With the set to offer deep Fitbit integration, that probably won’t be much of an issue with new Fitbit wearables, but it is something current users will have to consider.