This Week’s Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 13) – Singularity Hub

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Epic Games MetaHuman Creator Lets Developers Create Realistic Digital Humans Within MinutesDean Takahashi | VentureBeatEpic Gameshas unveiled its MetaHuman Creator, a new browser-based app that enables game developers and creators of real-time content to slash the time it takes to builddigital humansfrom weeks to less than an hour. And as you can see from the images in this story, the tools can create highly realistic human characters.

Jack Dorsey and Jay Z Invest 500 BTC to Make Bitcoin Internets CurrencyManish Singh and Tege Kene-Okafor | TechCrunchTwitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey and rapper Jay Z have created an endowment to fund bitcoin development initially in Africa and India, Dorsey said on Friday. The duo is putting 500 bitcoin, which is currently worth $23.6 million, in the endowment called trust. The mission of the fund is to make bitcoin the internets currency, a job application describes.

Listen to an 18,000-Year-Old Instrument Sing Once MoreMatt Simon | Wiredresearchers from several universities and museums in France describe how they used CT scans and other imaging wizardry to show that a person during the Upper Paleolithic age took great care to modify the shell, the oldest such instrument ever found. They even got a musician to play it for us, revealing sounds that have not rung out for millennia.

Artificial Human Genomes Could Help Overcome Research Privacy ConcernsIsaac Schultz | GizmodoA team of geneticists and computer scientists have been using neural networks to construct novel segments of human genomes, according to a paper published in the journal PLOS Genetics. iFor most properties, they are not distinguishable from other genomes from the biobank we used to train our algorithm, except for one detail: they do not belong to any gene donor,isaid co-author Luca Pagani, a geneticistat the University of Tartu.

Mighty Buildings Nabs $40M Series B to 3D Print Your Next HouseMary Ann Azevedo | TechCrunchMighty Buildings can then 3D print elements like overhangs or ceilings without the need for additional supporting formwork. That way, its able to fully print a structure and not just the walls. Robotic arms can post-process the composite, which combined with the companys ability to automate the pouring of insulation and the 3D printing gives Mighty Buildings the ability to automate up to 80% of the construction process, the company claims.

Shell, in a Turning Point, Says Its Oil Production Has PeakedStanley Reed | The New York TimesRoyal Dutch Shell on Thursday made the boldest statement among its peers about the waning of the oil age, saying its production reached a high in 2019 and is now likely to gradually decline. Shells total oil production peaked in 2019 and will now drop 1 or 2 percent annually, the company said in a statement.

Theres a Tantalizing Sign of a Habitable-Zone Planet in Alpha CentauriNeel V. Patel | MIT Technology ReviewThe planet in question hasnt even been named yet, and its existence has not been verified. The new signal would suggest its the size of Neptune. That means were not talking about an Earth-like world but a warm gas planet five to seven times larger than Earth. If its home to life, it would probably bemicrobial life hanging out in the clouds.

How Vulnerable Is the World?Nick Bostrom and Matthew van der Merwe | AeonSooner or later a technology capable of wiping out human civilization might be invented. How far would we go to stop it? We call this the vulnerable world hypothesis. The intuitive idea is that theres some level of technology at which civilization almost certainly gets destroyed, unless quite extraordinary and historically unprecedented degrees of preventive policing and/or global governance are implemented.

OpenAI and Stanford Researchers Call for Urgent Action to Address Harms of Large Language Models Like GPT-3Kyle Wiggers | VentureBeatThe paper looks back at a meeting held in October 2020 to consider GPT-3 and two pressing questions: What are the technical capabilities and limitations of large language models? and What are the societal effects of widespread use of large language models? Coauthors of the paper described a sense of urgency to make progress sooner than later in answering these questions.i

Microsofts Big Win in Quantum Computing Was an Error After AllTom Simonite | WiredIn a 2018 paper, researchers said they found evidence of an elusive theorized particle. A closer look now suggests otherwise. Three years later, Microsofts 2018 physics fillip has fizzled. Late last month, Kouwenhoven and his 21 coauthors released a new paper including more data from their experiments. It concludes that they did not find the prized particle after all.

Image Credit: SplitShire /Pixabay

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This Week's Awesome Tech Stories From Around the Web (Through February 13) - Singularity Hub