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- 🤖 A.I. avatars, Alzheimer's, and the robots of the future
🤖 A.I. avatars, Alzheimer's, and the robots of the future
Neon Pulse Team
March 08, 2023
Good morning and welcome to the latest edition of neonpulse!
Here's what we have for you today:
D-ID launches A.I. avatars
The robot wars have begun
Using A.I. to detect Alzheimer’s
A.I. Avatars
Taking conversational chatbots to the next level, Israeli startup D-ID has officially launched the beta version of its new web app that allows you to engage in a conversation with a photorealistic A.I. avatar.
By combining the company’s digital avatars with ChatGPT, the technology allows users to engage in a back and fourth dialogue with the avatar, which D-ID founder Gil Perry see’s as the future of A.I. chatbots.
“The app is an easier way to use the power of AI and converse with ChatGPT,” Perry said. “We’re wired to communicate with faces, we understand the situation better when we do. We feel more comfortable and we can observe complex information better when we’re in what feels like a real scenario. Video is more effective than text, so the app increases the power of large language models by adding a face.”
And while the initial version of the product has a singular avatar named “Alice,” future iterations of the product will allow you to create custom avatars using uploaded images.
The potential for this technology is wide-ranging, from conversational chatbots for customer service, to an A.I. personal assistant, to revolutionizing education in countries with a shortage of teachers.
You can take the new chatbot for a testdrive here.
Figure comes out of stealth
Following on the heels of Elon Musk’s latest Optimus robot demo is robotics startup Figure, which has recently come out of stealth mode in order to showcase its Figure 01 model robot.
Founded by Archer co-founder Brett Adcock, the Figure team is going head to head against Tesla and Boston Dynamics yet is confident that they will be the first company to bring a “general purpose humanoid” to life.
“The team is ex-Boston Dynamics, Tesla, Apple SPG, IHMC, Cruise [and Alphabet X]. Collectively we align on building a better future for humanity through the intersection of AI and robotics,” Adcock told TechCrunch.
“We’ve been fortunate to hire the best in the world at specific skill sets in AI, Controls, Electrical, Integration, Software and Mechanical Systems. The team believes we’re at a point where we can commercialize robots that have primarily been R&D over the last two decades. This is something a lot of our team has dreamt about doing for a long time.”
Figure 01 Robot
The first version of the robot is being built for manual labor tasks where labor shortages are the most severe, including warehousing and retail applications, yet with the continued evolution of A.I., Adcock sees the market expanding far beyond basic tasks.
“We believe humanoids will revolutionize a variety of industries, from corporate labor roles, to assisting individuals in the home, to caring for the elderly, to building new worlds on other planets,” Adcock said.
You can learn more about the Figure robot on their site here.
Using A.I. to detect Alzheimer’s
A.I. and machine learning have already shown great promise in early disease detection for various types of cancers, and a team at Massachusetts General Hospital has recently harnessed the technology in order to develop a model for early Alzheimer’s detection.
Traditionally, diagnosing Alzheimer’s has been challenging, as the changes that take in place in the brain that are indicative of the disease are extremely small, often in the sub-milimeter range.
Yet by analyzing tens of thousands of MRI images, the team at Mass Generals Center for Systems Biology was able to create a model that can diagnose the illness with 90.2% accuracy, a significant improvement over the current average diagnosis rate of 77%.
“Alzheimer’s disease typically occurs in older adults, and so deep learning models often have difficulty in detecting the rarer early onset cases,” a member of the team said. “We addressed this by making the deep learning model ‘blind’ to features of the brain that it finds to be overly associated with the patient’s listed age.”
By finding Alzheimer’s and other dementia related illnesses early in their progression, doctors will be able to help patients enact lifestyle interventions that can help maintain mental function and slow the progression of the disease.
And now your moment of zen
That’s all for today folks!
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