Helmholtz machine and later variational autoencoder algorithms (but unlike adversarial methods) our approach learns an explicit inference or "recognition" model

We propose and study the problem of distribution-preserving lossy compression.

Neural Information Processing Systems http://nips.cc/

The new AI-DADA tool lets you create a unique Swatch design using AI prompts. You can't make a custom MoonSwatch yet--but it's not entirely off the table. Cast your mind back to 2017. In those heady days before ChatGPT and DALL-E, and Zoom calls, Swatch launched a fancy online platform that let you, the watch-buying public, design your own Swatch watch . It was called Swatch x You, and it let you tweak Swatch's standard New Gent 41-mm model by selecting one of the (surprisingly limited) preset designs, which you could then move, zoom, and rotate to fit over the watch and strap.

The two parts share the latent variables.

Plus: Donald Trump wants to outlaw individual states' right to regulate AI The International Energy Agency recently released the latest version of the World Energy Outlook, the annual report that takes stock of the current state of global energy and looks toward the future. It contains some interesting insights and a few surprising figures about electricity, grids, and the state of climate change. Let's dig into some numbers . This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review's weekly climate newsletter. Everything is a conspiracy theory now. Our latest series " The New Conspiracy Age " delves into how conspiracies have gripped the White House, turning fringe ideas into dangerous policy, and how generative AI is altering the fabric of truth.

Why an AI'godfather' is quitting Meta after 12 years Just a couple of weeks ago, one of the godfathers of artificial intelligence was in St James's Palace being handed an award from King Charles for his work in artificial intelligence (AI). Professor Yann LeCun was being honoured along with six other recipients for his contributions to the field, which have been credited as advancing deep learning. But Mr LeCun is at odds with some of the AI world over the future of the generation-defining technology. And now he is going all-in on his idea of advanced machine intelligence after announcing he is leaving his role as Meta's chief AI scientist to start a new firm. During his 12 years at the company, Prof LeCun won the prestigious Turing Award and witnessed several flurries of excitement around AI - not least the most recent boom in generative AI accelerated by rival OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.

Generative AI is making it even easier for attackers to exploit old and often forgotten network equipment. Replacing it takes investment, but Cisco is making the case that it's worth it. Aging digital infrastructure equipment like routers, network switches, and network-attached storage--has long posed a silent risk to organizations. In the short term, it's cheaper and easier to just leave those boxes running in a forgotten closet. But this infrastructure may have old, insecure configurations, and legacy tech is often no longer supported by vendors for software patches and other protections.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers says he will step back from all public commitments, adding the move is to allow him to rebuild trust and repair relationships with the people closest to me. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is stepping down from a teaching post at Harvard University and as a director of one of its business and government schools, a spokesperson said on Wednesday, after Congress released documents showing Summers shared close ties with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A spokesperson for Summers, Steven Goldberg, said Summers' co-teachers would complete the semester for three ongoing courses. Mr. Summers has decided it's in the best interest of the center for him to go on leave from his role as director as Harvard undertakes its review, he said. Summers, also a former president of Harvard University, is a director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. Summers has been under fire since the U.S. House Oversight Committee released documents detailing an ongoing personal correspondence between Summers and Epstein, who died by suicide in a Manhattan prison in 2019 as he faced sex-trafficking charges.

Manual grading of programming assignments in introductory computer science courses can be time-consuming and prone to inconsistencies. While unit testing is commonly used for automatic evaluation, it typically follows a binary pass/fail model and does not give partial marks. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) offer the potential for automated, scalable, and more objective grading. This paper compares two AI-based grading techniques: \textit{Direct}, where the AI model applies a rubric directly to student code, and \textit{Reverse} (a newly proposed approach), where the AI first fixes errors, then deduces a grade based on the nature and number of fixes. Each method was evaluated on both the instructor's original grading scale and a tenfold expanded scale to assess the impact of range on AI grading accuracy. To assess their effectiveness, AI-assigned scores were evaluated against human tutor evaluations on a range of coding problems and error types. Initial findings suggest that while the Direct approach is faster and straightforward, the Reverse technique often provides a more fine-grained assessment by focusing on correction effort. Both methods require careful prompt engineering, particularly for allocating partial credit and handling logic errors. To further test consistency, we also used synthetic student code generated using Gemini Flash 2.0, which allowed us to evaluate AI graders on a wider range of controlled error types and difficulty levels. We discuss the strengths and limitations of each approach, practical considerations for prompt design, and future directions for hybrid human-AI grading systems that aim to improve consistency, efficiency, and fairness in CS courses.