Would you vote AI for mayor?

Hello, and happy Wednesday! We’re halfway through the week—let’s celebrate with some fresh AI news. 🗞️

🤯 MYSTERY AI LINK 🤯

(The mystery link can lead to ANYTHING AI-related: tools, memes, articles, videos, and more…)

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AI RUNS FOR MAYOR IN WYOMING 🗳️

Mayors are really against plastic straws these days. In fact, one adamantly remarked, “This is the last straw!” 🥤

What’s up? Victor Miller is running for mayor in Cheyenne, Wyoming, but he is proposing to co-lead the city with an AI bot named Vic (Virtual Integrated Citizen). The election in the city of 65,000 people takes place this week.

How would this work? Vic, Miller’s customized ChatGPT bot, has vowed to provide unbiased decision-making, while Miller would handle the legal and practical aspects of governance. Miller claims this “hybrid approach” to governance would blend AI’s data-driven insights with human judgment, offering a novel way to manage city affairs. Wyoming’s Secretary of State challenged the legality of an AI bot’s involvement, but city officials confirmed that Miller, not Vic, would be listed on the ballot. Despite skepticism, Miller continues to champion AI as a transformative tool for local government, urging voters to embrace what he calls “a new intelligence in town.”

Why is this significant? Projections say that Vic and Miller’s chances of winning are severely slim, reflecting that this approach might not sit well with the public right now. However, this approach will likely be duplicated and eventually adopted elsewhere in the future. Who knows—maybe we will have an AI president someday!

STARTUP TO SLASH AI POWER COSTS 🦾

I just opened my water bill and electricity bill at the same time. It was shocking. ⚡️

What’s new? AI chip and software startup Recogni has unveiled a new computing method that promises to significantly improve the efficiency of AI systems, increasing power and reducing costs for tech players of all sizes.

Want the details? The new, patented system, called “Pareto,” leverages a logarithmic approach to outperform traditional methods in running large AI models, both in terms of energy consumption and hardware size. Unlike current AI systems, which require extensive power-hungry operations, Pareto simplifies these processes by converting complex multiplication tasks into addition, drastically reducing power consumption while preserving accuracy. The startup is now in discussions with data center companies to make Pareto widely accessible.

GOOGLE AI CAN IDENTIFY DISEASES THROUGH COUGHS 😷

A decade ago, you would cough to cover up a fart. Now, with COVID-19, you fart to cover up a cough. 💨

What’s going on? A team in India is using Google’s AI model, Health Acoustic Representations (HeAR), to identify respiratory diseases like tuberculosis (TB) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by analyzing cough sounds.

How does this work? Launched in March, HeAR was trained on 300 million audio samples, including 100 million coughs, to discern patterns in health-related sounds. The model’s potential to identify diseases associated with sounds extends beyond cough analysis, as it also shows promise in detecting conditions like dementia by analyzing speech patterns.

How is it being used in India? The HeAR technology is being used by Salcit Technologies, a respiratory healthcare company. The company is using HeAR as a part of its Swaasa app to analyze cough sounds and detect tuberculosis in patients.

“WATCH THIS” WEDNESDAY 👀

This video explores how AI, including models like Long Short Term Memory networks (LSTMs) and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), is being utilized to predict stock prices. Check it out:

HAS AI REACHED SINGULARITY? CHECK OUT THE FRY METER BELOW: