Energy
The Ethical Implications of AI in Creative Industries: A Focus on AI-Generated Art
Khatiwada, Prerana, Washington, Joshua, Walsh, Tyler, Hamed, Ahmed Saif, Bhatta, Lokesh
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to grow daily, more exciting (and somewhat controversial) technology emerges every other day. As we see the advancements in AI, we see more and more people becoming skeptical of it. This paper explores the complications and confusion around the ethics of generative AI art. We delve deep into the ethical side of AI, specifically generative art. We step back from the excitement and observe the impossible conundrums that this impressive technology produces. Covering environmental consequences, celebrity representation, intellectual property, deep fakes, and artist displacement. Our research found that generative AI art is responsible for increased carbon emissions, spreading misinformation, copyright infringement, unlawful depiction, and job displacement. In light of this, we propose multiple possible solutions for these problems. We address each situation's history, cause, and consequences and offer different viewpoints. At the root of it all, though, the central theme is that generative AI Art needs to be correctly legislated and regulated.
Hungary and AI: efforts and opportunities in comparison with Singapore
The study assesses Hungary's National AI Strategy and its implementation through the analysis of strategic documents, publicly available financial records, and expert interviews with the Hungarian AI Coalition President and Chief Strategic Advisor to the Government Commissioner for AI. 22 goals from Hungary's strategy were evaluated through conceptual, governance, temporal, and financial dimensions before being benchmarked against Singapore's National AI Strategies (NAIS 1.0 and NAIS 2.0). Key findings include an estimated total of EUR 4.65 billion in AI-related public investment in Hungary. Openly available financial data was found for only half of the evaluated goals, and just three projects made up 98\% of all documented funding. The research also reveals Hungary's implementation challenges, including fragmented execution following ministerial reorganizations and the absence of designated biennial reviews since 2020. Furthermore, the paper provides targeted recommendations for Hungary's forthcoming AI strategy, drawing on Singapore's framework as a reference point. These include adapting to the era of large language models, restructuring the existing triple helix network to foster more effective dialogue and advocacy, and positioning the country as an East-West bridge for automotive AI experimentation.
Blackout crisis looms as Americans face full month of outages plunging hospitals into deadly shutdowns
Millions of Americans may soon face nearly a full month of power blackouts each year, disrupting daily life, businesses, and critical services across the country. White House officials warned on Monday that the retiring power plants and soaring electricity demand could push the US grid to its limits, triggering over 800 hours of power outages annually. From hospitals to data centers, the ripple effects of extended blackouts could impact nearly every part of daily life for US residents. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright said: 'In the coming years, America's reindustrialization and the AI race will require a significantly larger supply of around-the-clock, reliable, and uninterrupted power. 'President Trump's administration is committed to advancing a strategy of energy addition, and supporting all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure.'
Energy-sucking AI data centers can look here for power instead
Hussain Sajwani, owner of DAMAC Properties, said his company will invest 20 billion to build data centers across the U.S. in a press conference hosted by President-elect Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Jan. 7, 2025. Artificial intelligence is expanding quickly, and so is the energy required to run it. Modern AI data centers use much more electricity than traditional cloud servers. In many cases, the existing power grid cannot keep up. One innovative solution is gaining traction: repurposed EV batteries for AI data centers.
The Download: hunting an asteroid, and unlocking the human mind
If you were told that the odds of something were 3.1%, it might not seem like much. But for the people charged with protecting our planet, it was huge. On February 18, astronomers determined that a 130- to 300-foot-long asteroid had a 3.1% chance of crashing into Earth in 2032. Never had an asteroid of such dangerous dimensions stood such a high chance of striking the planet. Then, just days later on February 24, experts declared that the danger had passed.
Optimization of Low-Latency Spiking Neural Networks Utilizing Historical Dynamics of Refractory Periods
Tao, Liying, Yang, Zonglin, Shang, Delong
With advancements in spiking neural network (SNN) training methods, low-latency SNN applications have expanded. In low-latency SNNs, shorter simulation steps render traditional refractory mechanisms, which rely on empirical distributions or spike firing rates, less effective. However, omitting the refractory period amplifies the risk of neuron over-activation and reduces the system's robustness to noise. T o address this challenge, we propose a historical dynamic refractory period (HDRP) model that leverages membrane potential derivative with historical refractory periods to estimate an initial refractory period and dynamically adjust its duration. Additionally, we propose a threshold-dependent refractory kernel to mitigate excessive neuron state accumulation. Our approach retains the binary characteristics of SNNs while enhancing both noise resistance and overall performance. Experimental results show that HDRP-SNN significantly reduces redundant spikes compared to traditional SNNs, and achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) accuracy both on static datasets and neuro-morphic datasets. Moreover, HDRP-SNN outperforms artificial neural networks (ANNs) and traditional SNNs in noise resistance, highlighting the crucial role of the HDRP mechanism in enhancing the performance of low-latency SNNs.
Enabling Robust, Real-Time Verification of Vision-Based Navigation through View Synthesis
Neuhalfen, Marius, Grzymisch, Jonathan, Sanchez-Gestido, Manuel
This work introduces VISY-REVE: a novel pipeline to validate image processing algorithms for Vision-Based Navigation. Traditional validation methods such as synthetic rendering or robotic testbed acquisition suffer from difficult setup and slow runtime. Instead, we propose augmenting image datasets in real-time with synthesized views at novel poses. This approach creates continuous trajectories from sparse, pre-existing datasets in open or closed-loop. In addition, we introduce a new distance metric between camera poses, the Boresight Deviation Distance, which is better suited for view synthesis than existing metrics. Using it, a method for increasing the density of image datasets is developed.
DK-RRT: Deep Koopman RRT for Collision-Aware Motion Planning of Space Manipulators in Dynamic Debris Environments
Chen, Qi, Liu, Rui, Mo, Kangtong, Zhang, Boli, Yu, Dezhi
Trajectory planning for robotic manipulators operating in dynamic orbital debris environments poses significant challenges due to complex obstacle movements and uncertainties. This paper presents Deep Koopman RRT (DK-RRT), an advanced collision-aware motion planning framework integrating deep learning with Koopman operator theory and Rapidly-exploring Random Trees (RRT). DK-RRT leverages deep neural networks to identify efficient nonlinear embeddings of debris dynamics, enhancing Koopman-based predictions and enabling accurate, proactive planning in real-time. By continuously refining predictive models through online sensor feedback, DK-RRT effectively navigates the manipulator through evolving obstacle fields. Simulation studies demonstrate DK-RRT's superior performance in terms of adaptability, robustness, and computational efficiency compared to traditional RRT and conventional Koopman-based planning, highlighting its potential for autonomous space manipulation tasks.
Kinetic Langevin Diffusion for Crystalline Materials Generation
Cornet, François, Bergamin, Federico, Bhowmik, Arghya, Lastra, Juan Maria Garcia, Frellsen, Jes, Schmidt, Mikkel N.
Generative modeling of crystalline materials using diffusion models presents a series of challenges: the data distribution is characterized by inherent symmetries and involves multiple modalities, with some defined on specific manifolds. Notably, the treatment of fractional coordinates representing atomic positions in the unit cell requires careful consideration, as they lie on a hypertorus. In this work, we introduce Kinetic Langevin Diffusion for Materials (KLDM), a novel diffusion model for crystalline materials generation, where the key innovation resides in the modeling of the coordinates. Instead of resorting to Riemannian diffusion on the hypertorus directly, we generalize Trivialized Diffusion Model (TDM) to account for the symmetries inherent to crystals. By coupling coordinates with auxiliary Euclidean variables representing velocities, the diffusion process is now offset to a flat space. This allows us to effectively perform diffusion on the hypertorus while providing a training objective that accounts for the periodic translation symmetry of the true data distribution. We evaluate KLDM on both Crystal Structure Prediction (CSP) and De-novo Generation (DNG) tasks, demonstrating its competitive performance with current state-of-the-art models.
Transparent Machine Learning: Training and Refining an Explainable Boosting Machine to Identify Overshooting Tops in Satellite Imagery
Mitchell, Nathan, Hoef, Lander Ver, Ebert-Uphoff, Imme, Moen, Kristina, Hilburn, Kyle, Lee, Yoonjin, King, Emily J.
An Explainable Boosting Machine (EBM) is an interpretable machine learning (ML) algorithm that has benefits in high risk applications but has not yet found much use in atmospheric science. The overall goal of this work is twofold: (1) explore the use of EBMs, in combination with feature engineering, to obtain interpretable, physics-based machine learning algorithms for meteorological applications; (2) illustrate these methods for the detection of overshooting top (OTs) in satellite imagery. Specifically, we seek to simplify the process of OT detection by first using mathematical methods to extract key features, such as cloud texture using Gray-Level Co-occurrence Matrices, followed by applying an EBM. Our EBM focuses on the classification task of predicting OT regions, utilizing Channel 2 (visible imagery) and Channel 13 (infrared imagery) of the Advanced Baseline Imager sensor of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite 16. Multi-Radar/Multi-Sensor system convection flags are used as labels to train the EBM model. Note, however, that detecting convection, while related, is different from detecting OTs. Once trained, the EBM was examined and minimally altered to more closely match strategies used by domain scientists to identify OTs. The result of our efforts is a fully interpretable ML algorithm that was developed in a human-machine collaboration. While the final model does not reach the accuracy of more complex approaches, it performs well and represents a significant step toward building fully interpretable ML algorithms for this and other meteorological applications.