Some boosting algorithms, such as LPBoost, ERLPBoost, and C-ERLPBoost, aim to solve the soft margin optimization problem with the $\ell_1$-norm regularization. LPBoost rapidly converges to an $\epsilon$-approximate solution in practice, but it is known to take $\Omega(m)$ iterations in the worst case, where $m$ is the sample size. On the other hand, ERLPBoost and C-ERLPBoost are guaranteed to converge to an $\epsilon$-approximate solution in $O(\frac{1}{\epsilon^2} \ln \frac{m}{\nu})$ iterations. However, the computation per iteration is very high compared to LPBoost. To address this issue, we propose a generic boosting scheme that combines the Frank-Wolfe algorithm and any secondary algorithm and switches one to the other iteratively. We show that the scheme retains the same convergence guarantee as ERLPBoost and C-ERLPBoost. One can incorporate any secondary algorithm to improve in practice. This scheme comes from a unified view of boosting algorithms for soft margin optimization. More specifically, we show that LPBoost, ERLPBoost, and C-ERLPBoost are instances of the Frank-Wolfe algorithm. In experiments on real datasets, one of the instances of our scheme exploits the better updates of the secondary algorithm and performs comparably with LPBoost.

Building models of human decision-making from observed behaviour is critical to better understand, diagnose and support real-world policies such as clinical care. As established policy learning approaches remain focused on imitation performance, they fall short of explaining the demonstrated decision-making process. Policy Extraction through decision Trees (POETREE) is a novel framework for interpretable policy learning, compatible with fully-offline and partially-observable clinical decision environments -- and builds probabilistic tree policies determining physician actions based on patients' observations and medical history. Fully-differentiable tree architectures are grown incrementally during optimization to adapt their complexity to the modelling task, and learn a representation of patient history through recurrence, resulting in decision tree policies that adapt over time with patient information. This policy learning method outperforms the state-of-the-art on real and synthetic medical datasets, both in terms of understanding, quantifying and evaluating observed behaviour as well as in accurately replicating it -- with potential to improve future decision support systems.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Cassie the robot, invented at the Oregon State University College of Engineering and produced by OSU spinout company Agility Robotics, has established a Guinness World Record for the fastest 100 meters by a bipedal robot. Cassie clocked the historic time of 24.73 seconds at OSU's Whyte Track and Field Center, starting from a standing position and returning to that position after the sprint, with no falls. The 100-meter record builds on earlier achievements by the robot, including traversing 5 kilometers in 2021 in just over 53 minutes. Cassie, the first bipedal robot to use machine learning to control a running gait on outdoor terrain, completed the 5K on Oregon State's campus untethered and on a single battery charge. Cassie was developed under the direction of Oregon State robotics professor Jonathan Hurst with a 16-month, $1 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

The European Parliament's co-rapporteurs Dragoş Tudorache and Brando Benifei circulated two new batches of compromise amendments, seen by EURACTIV, on Wednesday (28 September), ahead of the technical discussion with the other political groups on Friday. These latest batches introduce significant changes to the regulation's scope, subject matter and obligations for high-risk AI systems concerning risk management, data governance and technical documentation. A new article has been added to extend the regulation's scope to AI system operators in specific metaverse environments that meet several cumulative conditions. These criteria are that the metaverse requires an authenticated avatar, is built for interaction on a large scale, allows social interactions similar to the real world, engages in real-world financial transactions and entails health or fundamental rights risks. The scope has been expanded from AI providers to any economic operators placing an AI system on the market or putting it into service.

A cache of grisly photographs of monkeys reportedly injured or killed in experiments with Elon Musk's Neuralink brain implant technology may not be publicly released - amid a legal battle to push a California university to do so - as the brain implant company denies animal abuse allegations. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) advocacy group says that it learned the University of California, Davis has 371 photos of the monkeys that were experimented upon inside the school's veterinary laboratory facilities. The prestigious California university is in possession of hundreds of images depicting, among other things, 'necropsies of animals killed' in the experiments, according to PCRM, which has also filed a complaint against Neuralink. Musk's plan is to link the human brain with a micron-sized device that works with'neural-lace' technology to implant tiny electrodes that could one day read a person's mind. The technology will initially be used to help people suffering from degenerative brain disorders such as ALS, but it could have wider uses as well. A cache of grisly photographs of monkeys reportedly injured or killed in experiments with Elon Musk's Neuralink brain implant technology may not be publicly released - amid a legal battle that aims to push a California university to do so The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) advocacy group says that it learned the University of California, Davis has 371 photos of the monkeys that were experimented upon inside the school's veterinary laboratory facilities Musk's plan is to link the human brain with a micron-sized device that works with'neural-lace' technology to implant tiny electrodes that could one day read a person's mind.

They Shall Not Grow Old, a 2018 documentary about the lives and aspirations of British and New Zealand soldiers living through World War I from acclaimed Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, had its hundred-plus-year-old silent footage modernized through both colorization and the recording of new audio for previously non-existent dialog. To get an idea of what the folks featured in the archival footage were saying, Jackson hired a team of forensic lip readers to guesstimate their recorded utterances. Reportedly, "the lip readers were so precise they were even able to determine the dialect and accent of the people speaking." "These blokes did not live in a black and white, silent world, and this film is not about the war; it's about the soldier's experience fighting the war," Jackson told the Daily Sentinel in 2018. "I wanted the audience to see, as close as possible, what the soldiers saw, and how they saw it, and heard it."

Recently the philosopher William MacAskill, with his book What We Owe The Future, has been popularizing the idea that the fate of humanity should be our top moral priority. His core proposition is that today's 8 billion humans are vastly outweighed in importance by the hundreds of billions of humans who could live in future generations if we can avoid wiping out humanity in the near term. MacAskill's argument is known by the slogan "longtermism," (often written as long-termism) and it has already been sharply criticized. For example, columnist Christine Emba has written in The Washington Post: "It's compelling at first blush, but as a value system, its practical implications are worrisome." In practice, she explains, it implies seeing "preventing existential threats to humanity as the most valuable philanthropic cause"--which means we should invest far more in addressing risks that threaten humanity's very long-term existence. As Emba says, this can seem impossible to disagree with.

Several months after launching DALL-E 2 as a part of a limited beta, OpenAI today removed the waitlist for the AI-powered image-generating system, which will remain in beta but let anyone sign up and begin using it. Pricing will carry over from the waitlist period, with first-time users getting a finite amount of credits that can be put toward generating or editing an image or creating a variation of existing images. "More than 1.5 million users are now actively creating over 2 million images a day with DALL-E -- from artists and creative directors to authors and architects -- with about 100,000 users sharing their creations and feedback in our Discord community," OpenAI wrote in a blog post. "Learning from real-world use has allowed us to improve our safety systems, making wider availability possible today." OpenAI has yet to make DALL-E 2 available through an API, though the company notes in the blog post that one is in testing.

The Internet-of-Things (IoT) market has grown rapidly over the past few years, with the pandemic further catalyzing its adoption across geographies. IoT impact can be assessed by the various sectoral use cases, ranging from personalized healthcare (wearable devices, etc.) to infrastructure (smart cities, home automation, etc.), including industrial applications (industrial machinery, process monitoring, etc.). According to a survey by Hewlett-Packard, more than 70% of the generic IoT solutions feature security vulnerabilities such as unencrypted data transmissions or rudimentary passwords. As the volume and velocity of threats increase, specialists are turning to AI for intelligent real-time protection of these systems. As per the study Reinventing Cybersecurity with Artificial Intelligence by Capgemini Research Institute, 53% of the executives cite leveraging AI in cybersecurity for IoT security, while 69% of the respondents claim they could not respond to cyberattacks without AI. AI-based cybersecurity for IoT is on the uptake, with industry leaders developing and deploying IoT-specific solutions.

Amazon's barrage of new hardware included something many of you might have been waiting for: a Kindle e-reader with stylus support. Yes, the Kindle Scribe comes with a magnetic stylus and a 10.2-inch, 300ppi display. You won't need to charge or sync the Scribe's stylus, and you can use it for jotting notes, journaling and annotating any books you're reading. Starting next year, you'll also be able to send Microsoft Word documents to Kindle Scribe. Kindle Scribe will start at $340 and arrives November 30th.