News of the week selected by Impactscool – April 6th
6 April 2020 | Written by La redazione
Mining bitcoins with physical activity
Imagine going for a run and that the data collected by your smartwatch – heart rate, breath, kilometers traveled – is used to mine bitcoins. This is the concept behind a patent filed recently by Microsoft for a technology capable of converting the activity carried out by doing a specific task, such as going for a jog, a “proof-of-work”, or data usable for perform the calculations necessary to extract bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies. The system would be able to manage data from different sources: from the aforementioned biometric data during a race to brain activity that is generated by watching an advertisement.
Artificial intelligence meets urban art
It’s called <MEISTERSTÜCKE>, a masterpiece in German, and is a project that sees the collaboration of 12 artists from all over the world with artificial intelligence to create unpublished works of art. Through an algorithm created by the Berlin design studio Waltz Binaire the machine is able to recognize patterns and images and to experiment and play with them in search of new shapes and combinations. In this way 12 works and an instagram filter were born.
Translating thoughts into words with AI
Create a “linguistic prosthesis”, a device that can allow those who have lost the ability to speak to be able to have contact with the outside world again. This is the incredible goal of a research by the University of California. The researchers have developed artificial intelligence capable of analysing the electrical impulses generated by the brain and translating them into language. To train AI, researchers provided him with data collected from epileptic patients who already had neural implants used to monitor their attacks. The system then recorded the brain waves while the participants had to read several sentences aloud. The AI could therefore combine the thought generated by pronouncing the words to the words themselves, learning how to translate brain activity into words. The accuracy of the system was surprisingly high, with some patients having an error rate of less than 3%. The research is still in an embryonic phase and will have to be experimented without the participants speaking loudly. It will still take some time before this technology can be applied, but it is still a small step towards a more inclusive world.
The smart surface that enhances WiFi
University of California engineers have developed a low-cost, low-power smart surface that bounces and boosts the WiFi signal. Through a series of small antennas powered by a small battery, the original signal is collected and sent to areas normally not reached by WiFi. This will allow you to expand your network without having to spend large amounts of signal repeaters.
