We propose VISO-Grasp, a novel vision-language-informed system designed to systematically address visibility constraints for grasping in severely occluded environments. By leveraging Foundation Models (FMs) for spatial reasoning and active view planning, our framework constructs and updates an instance-centric representation of spatial relationships, enhancing grasp success under challenging occlusions. Furthermore, this representation facilitates active Next-Best-View (NBV) planning and optimizes sequential grasping strategies when direct grasping is infeasible. Additionally, we introduce a multi-view uncertainty-driven grasp fusion mechanism that refines grasp confidence and directional uncertainty in real-time, ensuring robust and stable grasp execution. Extensive real-world experiments demonstrate that VISO-Grasp achieves a success rate of $87.5\%$ in target-oriented grasping with the fewest grasp attempts outperforming baselines. To the best of our knowledge, VISO-Grasp is the first unified framework integrating FMs into target-aware active view planning and 6-DoF grasping in environments with severe occlusions and entire invisibility constraints.

Elon Musk has announced new changes to social media platform X (formerly Twitter) that will allow certain accounts to unlock free premium features. Posting on the platform Thursday, the 52-year old tech billionaire, and TIME's 2021 Person of the Year, said: "Going forward, all X accounts with over 2500 verified subscriber followers will get Premium features for free and accounts with over 5000 will get Premium for free." Previously, X Premium features would cost a user 8 per month and include the ability to share longer posts and video uploads, have larger reply prioritization, and see fewer adverts on their timeline. Meanwhile X Premium users have all the features of Premium with no adverts in the For You and Following timelines, as well as access to generative artificial intelligence chatbot Grok. These models are the only way users can now display a blue checkmark that once denoted a verified account before the Tesla and SpaceX CEO acquired Twitter Inc for 44bn in April 2022.

Grasping occluded objects in cluttered environments is an essential component in complex robotic manipulation tasks. In this paper, we introduce an AffordanCE-driven Next-Best-View planning policy (ACE-NBV) that tries to find a feasible grasp for target object via continuously observing scenes from new viewpoints. This policy is motivated by the observation that the grasp affordances of an occluded object can be better-measured under the view when the view-direction are the same as the grasp view. Specifically, our method leverages the paradigm of novel view imagery to predict the grasps affordances under previously unobserved view, and select next observation view based on the highest imagined grasp quality of the target object. The experimental results in simulation and on a real robot demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed affordance-driven next-best-view planning policy. Project page: https://sszxc.net/ace-nbv/.

As a venture capitalist, Jim Breyer has invested in many breakthrough technology ideas in recent decades, names we all know and interact with on a daily basis like Meta and Spotify. But the biggest one of all may be next, he says, through the combination of artificial intelligence and branches of science involved in medicine. Since 2017, Breyer says his No. 1 task as a venture investor has focused on finding the best disease and medical data from leading research hospitals such as Memorial Sloan Kettering, MD Anderson, and Johns Hopkins -- highly proprietary, significant data to license into startups Breyer Capital is backing. "AI and medicine is perhaps the most attractive new investment opportunity I've ever seen," Breyer, founder and CEO of Breyer Capital, said at last week's CNBC Healthy Returns virtual summit. Breyer says he is not alone among tech leaders holding this view, citing a fireside chat he recently conducted with Michael Dell, during which the PC pioneer agreed, and private conversations he has had with tech CEOs.

Did you miss a session at the Data Summit? Sandbox AQ, the Palo Alto, California-based enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that provides solutions at the intersection of quantum technology and artificial intelligence (AI), has emerged from Alphabet, Google's parent company, as an independent company. AQ represents AI and quantum -- the two major tools the company uses to tackle critical global issues. Sandbox AQ's mission to address global challenges in cybersecurity, healthcare, energy and more is in alignment with Gartner's Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2021. Gartner recognizes quantum technologies and AI as two of the key emerging technologies spurring innovation through trust, growth and change.

Predicting future events is hard, but it's among the most important tasks a journalist can perform. Especially if you work at a section called Future Perfect. Our mission is to explain the world around us to our readers, and it's impossible to do that without anticipating what comes next. Will inflation continue to rise in the US and Europe, or level off? Will the Supreme Court allow states to ban abortion, eliminating legal access in red states? Will Brazil's 212 million people be led by a left-wing populist, or a far-right anti-vaxxer? All of these questions matter, and preparing ourselves for potential outcomes -- and having a good sense of how likely specific outcomes are -- is a major part of explaining the world accurately. And if policymakers could rely on accurate predictions about the outcome of a foreign war or the advisability of a budget proposal, they could make much better policy decisions. Being good at predictions is a skill like any other -- you have to practice it.

As the world begins to travel again, Europe is sending migrants a loud message: Stay away! Greek border police are firing bursts of deafening noise from an armored truck over the frontier into Turkey. Mounted on the vehicle, the long-range acoustic device, or "sound cannon," is the size of a small TV set but can match the volume of a jet engine. It's part of a vast array of physical and experimental new digital barriers being installed and tested during the quiet months of the coronavirus pandemic at the 200-kilometer (125-mile) Greek border with Turkey to stop people entering the European Union illegally. Nearby observation towers are being fitted with long-range cameras, night vision, and multiple sensors.

The European Commission is being urged to publish reports on the trials of an Artificial Intelligence lie detector technology, iBorderCTRL, which has been bankrolled by the EU's long-term research and development funding mechanism, Horizon 2020. Green MEP Patrick Breyer, who is currently embroiled in a legal battle with the Commission's Research Agency for its refusal to disclose ethical assessments of the iBorderCTRL system, said on Tuesday (31 March) that the executive is also refusing to publish information on trials that have been conducted for the technology. The iBorderCTRL system has been tested on various frontiers throughout the EU and uses advanced artificial intelligence technologies to analyse micro-expressions. One of its uses is to detect whether a user is lying or not, when presented with a series of questions, in what has been termed'deception detection.' As part of the trials of the technology, MEP Breyer had sought out information on this component of iBorderCTRL and the proportion of'false positives' that had been identified by the system, following an investigation by The Intercept, which found that the technology made several errors, incorrectly identifying four out of sixteen honest answers as false. Breyer had also pressed the Commission on whether the technology discriminates against certain groups of people, including people of colour, women, the elderly, children, and people with disabilities.

Artificial intelligence is the most transformative business trend in the world today. Hold on, you say--AI is not a new idea. In the 1940s the great mathematician and code breaker Alan Turing predicted that digital computers in the future would be capable of logical reasoning. Commercial interest in AI began in the 1960s and waxed and waned over the next several decades. Why is AI a big deal now?

If your company doesn't tap into these powers, your competitor will. CEOs and boards, take note. Artificial intelligence is the most transformative business trend in the world today. Hold on, you say--AI is not a new idea. In the 1940s the great mathematician and code breaker Alan Turing predicted that digital computers in the future would be capable of logical reasoning.