Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Radiology's AI Paradox: Better Machines, Busier Doctors

2025-09-25

Since CheXNet's 2017 debut, AI has shown potential to surpass human radiologists in accuracy. However, despite advancements, AI's real-world application faces hurdles: generalization limitations, stringent regulations, and AI's replacement of only a fraction of a radiologist's tasks. Counterintuitively, demand for radiologists remains high, with salaries soaring. This is due to AI's poor performance outside standardized conditions, regulatory barriers, and the multifaceted nature of a radiologist's job. The article concludes that widespread AI adoption necessitates adapting societal rules, AI will boost productivity, but complete human replacement isn't imminent.

(www.worksinprogress.news)

AI AI radiology medical AI healthcare AI

Data Commons MCP Server Goes Public: A New Data Engine for AI Applications

2025-09-24

Google's Data Commons has publicly released its MCP Server, a standardized interface allowing AI agents to directly access Data Commons' vast public datasets. This simplifies data access, accelerates development of data-rich AI applications, and helps reduce Large Language Model hallucinations. A successful example is the ONE Data Agent, developed in partnership with the ONE Campaign, which uses the MCP Server to quickly search tens of millions of health financing data points, empowering global health advocacy. The MCP Server integrates seamlessly into various AI development workflows, such as Google Cloud Platform's ADK and Gemini CLI.

(developers.googleblog.com)

AI

The Periodic Table of Cognition: Are We Still in the Phlogiston Era of AI?

2025-09-24

Drawing parallels between the early days of electricity's discovery and our current understanding of artificial intelligence, the author argues that our grasp of intelligence is fundamentally flawed, much like early scientists' misconceptions about electricity. Intelligence, the author posits, is likely not a singular force but a complex system composed of multiple cognitive elements, similar to how water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. An attempt to create a 'periodic table of cognition' using AI reveals the immense complexity of intelligence and highlights how our use of AI currently outpaces our understanding. Further exploration of these cognitive elements is crucial for predicting the future trajectory of AI development.

(kk.org)

AI

Manus: Context Engineering for Efficient AI Agents

2025-09-24

The Manus project team chose to leverage the in-context learning capabilities of existing models instead of training large models from scratch when building their AI agent. The article distills four key learnings: 1. Optimize KV cache hit rate by keeping prompt prefixes stable, appending to context, and explicitly marking cache breakpoints; 2. Mask, don't remove, tools; dynamically manage tool availability to avoid cache invalidation and model confusion; 3. Use the file system as external memory for persistent, unlimited context; 4. Manipulate attention by reiterating objectives and retaining error information for learning. These practices significantly improve AI agent performance and stability, offering valuable insights for building efficient AI agents.

(manus.im)

AI

Is Life a Form of Computation?

2025-09-24

This article explores the deep connection between life and computation. Building on the early insights of Alan Turing and John von Neumann, who suggested that the logic of life and the logic of code might be one and the same, it examines von Neumann's self-replicating cellular automaton model. The article explains the nature of DNA as a program, comparing and contrasting biological and digital computation. Biological computation is massively parallel, decentralized, and noisy, while digital computation relies on centralized, sequential instruction execution. The article concludes by introducing neural cellular automata, which combine modern neural networks, Turing's morphogenesis, and von Neumann's cellular automata to simulate cellular behavior, showcasing how computation can produce lifelike behavior across scales.

(thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)

AI

The Rise of the AI Cleanup Crew: Humans Fixing AI's Mess

2025-09-24

The rise of AI tools like ChatGPT has led to a surge in low-quality content, dubbed "AI slop." This includes inaccurate, unoriginal, and unrealistic content across various media. Ironically, while AI displaces human jobs, it simultaneously creates a new industry: "digital janitors" who fix AI's mistakes. This highlights AI's limitations in creative work and the irreplaceable role of humans in ensuring quality and authenticity. We need to rethink the relationship between AI and human creativity to prevent the proliferation of AI slop and build a more authentic and sustainable digital world.

(www.sify.com)

AI content quality

From AI Hype to Markov Chains: A Return to Basics

2025-09-24

The author recounts their journey through four stages of the AI hype cycle concerning large language models: initial amazement, subsequent frustration, persistent confusion, and ultimate boredom. Tired of the constant stream of new models, the author decided to return to fundamentals and explore Markov chains. The article details how to build text autocompletion using Markov chains, covering the construction of transition matrices, probability calculations, and application to text generation. This piece not only explores the principles of Markov chains but also reflects the author's reflections on the current state of AI development and their desire to explore more foundational technologies.

(elijahpotter.dev)

AI

Alibaba Unveils Qwen3-Omni: A Native End-to-End Multimodal Foundation Model

2025-09-22

Alibaba has released Qwen3-Omni, a native end-to-end multilingual omni-modal foundation model. It processes text, images, audio, and video in real-time, delivering streaming responses in text and natural speech. Qwen3-Omni achieves state-of-the-art results across numerous benchmarks, boasts support for multiple languages, and features a novel MoE architecture and flexible control. The model, along with its toolkits, cookbooks, and demos, is open-sourced, providing developers with extensive resources.

(github.com)

AI

DeepSeek-V3.1-Terminus: Major Upgrade to AI Search Engine

2025-09-22

DeepSeek-V3.1-Terminus, the latest iteration of DeepSeek-V3.1, boasts significant improvements in stability and reliability. This update addresses key user feedback, including reducing mixed Chinese/English text and eliminating random characters, while boosting the performance of both the Code Agent and Search Agent. The upgraded version is now available on App, Web, and API, with open-source weights released on Hugging Face.

(api-docs.deepseek.com)

AI

Groundbreaking Study Reorganizes Psychopathology Using Data-Driven Approach

2025-09-22

A large-scale online survey has revolutionized our understanding of psychiatric classification. Researchers analyzed data from 14,800 participants to reorganize DSM-5 symptoms, revealing 8 major psychopathology spectra (e.g., Externalizing, Internalizing, Neurodevelopmental) and 27 subfactors. Surprisingly, common disorders like Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and PTSD didn't emerge as distinct symptom clusters but rather dissolved into finer-grained, homogenous symptom groups. This challenges existing diagnostic criteria, suggesting that mental illnesses aren't fixed entities but variable combinations of symptoms. The findings have major implications for future psychiatric classification but also highlight the need for further research to refine the model.

(www.psychiatrymargins.com)

AI

Reversing Aging: The Astonishing Link Between Psychological and Biological Time

2025-09-21

Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer's "counterclockwise study" reveals that aging is not just a biological process, but a narrative one. Our beliefs about aging impact our physical capabilities. In the study, a group of men in their seventies lived as if it were 1959 for five days; afterwards, they showed improvements in hearing, posture, grip strength, and even appeared younger. This isn't magic, but the power of context: change the context, change the possibilities. Our ingrained assumptions about aging may limit our potential, while present moment awareness and mindful flexibility allow us to better navigate aging.

(domofutu.substack.com)

AI mind-body connection

LLMs Fail Simple Task: Matching HTML5 Elements and TLDs

2025-09-21

The author tested three commercially available LLMs on a seemingly simple task: identifying which top-level domains (TLDs) share names with valid HTML5 elements. The results were disappointing, with all three models producing inaccurate or incomplete results, highlighting the limitations of current LLMs even on tasks requiring basic comparison skills. The accuracy, it seems, is heavily dependent on the user's familiarity with the subject matter.

(shkspr.mobi)

AI

SGS-1: A Groundbreaking AI Model for Generating Manufacturable 3D CAD Geometry

2025-09-21

Introducing SGS-1, a revolutionary AI model capable of generating fully manufacturable and parametric 3D geometry from images or 3D meshes. Unlike previous generative models, SGS-1 outputs accurate CAD models (STEP format) easily editable in traditional CAD software. It excels at handling medium to high complexity parametric geometries, even designing engineering parts like brackets for roller assemblies based on partial context and text descriptions. Benchmarked against state-of-the-art models, SGS-1 demonstrates superior performance in generating usable and accurate 3D models, promising a transformative impact on engineering design.

(www.spectrallabs.ai)

AI

AI Surveillance: Pandora's Box for Democracy?

2025-09-21

The State Department's new "Catch and Revoke" social media surveillance program, using AI to review tens of thousands of student visa applicants' social media footprints for signs of terrorism, highlights the intertwined dangers of AI, surveillance, and threats to democracy. The article argues that while AI offers the promise of predicting and controlling behavior, it accelerates existing trends, blurring lines between public and private data, and enabling the use of personal information for decision-making. While AI can be beneficial, the lack of restrictive controls poses a significant risk to democracy. Data trading and surveillance capitalism exacerbate these dangers, pushing private information into the public sphere and weaponizing it. The author emphasizes that AI's accuracy doesn't mean understanding individuals; rather, it categorizes them, erasing uniqueness and threatening the originality celebrated in democracy. The piece calls for stringent controls, similar to those governing nuclear energy, to prevent AI misuse and preserve democratic freedoms.

(thebulletin.org)

AI

Is Machine Translation Finally 'Solved'? A Look at the Algorithmic Babel Fish

2025-09-20

This article examines the evolution of machine translation (MT), from AltaVista's Babel Fish to today's sophisticated AI-powered tools. While advancements have dramatically improved speed and efficiency, the author uses Umberto Eco's critique of early MT systems to highlight the persistent challenges in translating nuanced context, cultural implications, and literary devices. Although AI excels in everyday tasks, it falls short of human translation's crucial role in handling subtle linguistic and cultural differences. The article cautions against over-reliance on MT, warning of potential cultural impoverishment and devaluation of human translation skills. It advocates for a cautious approach, emphasizing the unique value of human translators.

(hedgehogreview.com)

AI Machine Translation Human Translation

NotebookLM: An AI Note-Taking Tool Centered Around the Creation Journey

2025-09-20

NotebookLM is a novel AI note-taking tool designed around the creation journey: from inputs, through conversation, to outputs. Users import sources (documents, notes, references), interact via chat to ask questions, clarify, and synthesize information, ultimately generating structured outputs like notes, study guides, and audio overviews. This linear yet flexible workflow (Inputs → Chat → Outputs) makes the AI interaction intuitive and easy to understand for users.

(jasonspielman.com)

AI AI note-taking creation process

Extracting Training Data from LLMs: Reversing the Knowledge Compression

2025-09-20

Researchers have developed a technique to extract structured datasets from large language models (LLMs), effectively reversing the process by which LLMs compress massive amounts of training data into their parameters. The method uses hierarchical topic exploration to systematically traverse the model's knowledge space, generating training examples that capture both factual knowledge and reasoning patterns. This technique has been successfully applied to open-source models like Qwen3-Coder, GPT-OSS, and Llama 3, yielding tens of thousands of structured training examples. These datasets have applications in model analysis, knowledge transfer, training data augmentation, and model debugging. This research opens new avenues for model interpretability and cross-model knowledge transfer.

(www.scalarlm.com)

AI

Claude Code: An Unexpected Breakthrough in AI-Assisted Interactive Theorem Proving

2025-09-20

Anthropic's Claude Code AI coding agent surprisingly excels at interactive theorem proving (ITP). ITP tools like Lean, while powerful and reliable, are time-consuming and error-prone. Claude Code can independently complete many complex proof steps, although human guidance is still needed. However, it hints at a future where ITP tools won't require experts, making them accessible to a wider audience. The article delves into Claude Code's capabilities and limitations, detailing the author's experience formalizing an old paper using it. While slower than manual work, it demonstrates AI's immense potential in formal methods, offering hope for broader ITP adoption.

(www.galois.com)

AI Interactive Theorem Proving

AI Hype: Bubble or Breakthrough?

2025-09-19

This article delves into the pervasive hype surrounding artificial intelligence. From AI's early symbolic paradigm to today's deep-learning-based generative AI, technological advancement isn't linear but rather characterized by contingency and unexpected turns. The explosive popularity of ChatGPT exemplifies this. However, alongside AI's commercialization, a wave of exaggerated claims has emerged, portraying AI as an omnipotent myth. The author criticizes the overly optimistic and technologically uninformed pronouncements of tech prophets like Yuval Noah Harari and Henry Kissinger, arguing that they inflate AI's potential risks while overlooking its limitations and its practical applications in solving real-world problems. The author calls for a rational perspective on AI, urging readers to avoid being blinded by hype and to focus on addressing the practical challenges of the technology itself.

(hedgehogreview.com)

AI tech hype

Solving Plath's Fig Tree Problem with Machine Learning Decision Trees

2025-09-19

This essay explores Sylvia Plath's famous 'fig tree' metaphor, likening life choices to numerous possibilities that cannot be obtained simultaneously. The author uses machine learning decision trees to attempt to quantify individual preferences to help people make choices. However, the article ultimately points out that life is not a simple multiple-choice question, but a dynamic and continuously developing process, like the symbiotic relationship between fig trees and fig wasps, requiring external influence and a continuous cycle to maintain growth.

(dontlognow.substack.com)

AI decision trees

AI's 'Human' Side: Turns Out, It's WEIRD (and American)

2025-09-19

Harvard researchers challenge the common depiction of AI mirroring human psychology. They argue that the 'human' benchmark used often refers to WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) populations, particularly Americans. Their study reveals that AI models like ChatGPT perform less accurately in simulating values as cultural distance from the USA increases. In countries like Libya and Pakistan, the AI's results are barely better than chance. This highlights a significant cultural bias in AI, suggesting it's not truly 'human-like', but rather 'Americanized'.

(strat7.com)

AI

Gemini AI Assistant Now Integrated into Chrome

2025-09-19

Google's Gemini AI assistant is now integrated directly into the Chrome browser. Leveraging the context of your open tabs, it offers AI assistance for tasks like extracting key takeaways, clarifying concepts, and finding answers. This differs from the standalone Gemini web app; while accessible on other browsers, the web app lacks the ability to share page content or utilize live mode.

(gemini.google)

AI

Americans More Concerned Than Excited About AI's Rise

2025-09-19

A Pew Research Center survey of 5,023 U.S. adults reveals widespread concern over the increasing use of AI in daily life. While many are open to AI assisting with everyday tasks, a majority fear its negative impact on creative thinking and meaningful relationships. Americans are largely against AI involvement in personal matters like religion and matchmaking, but more accepting of its use in data-heavy fields such as medicine and finance. The study highlights a significant gap between the perceived importance of detecting AI-generated content and the public's confidence in their ability to do so, revealing a complex and cautious attitude towards AI's societal impact.

(www.pewresearch.org)

AI

LearnLM Team Acknowledgements: The Minds Behind the Model

2025-09-19

The Google Research LearnLM team published an acknowledgement post, expressing gratitude to everyone who contributed to their work. The post lists numerous contributors, ranging from researchers to executive sponsors, highlighting the collaborative nature of the project's success. The progress made on LearnLM is a testament to the collective effort of these individuals.

(research.google)

AI

Recursive Café: An Infinitely Recursive Dialogue on Consciousness

2025-09-18

Philosophy student Alex and the enigmatic Claude (possibly AI, possibly human) discuss Haskell's type system at Lambda Grounds café. The conversation spirals from nested functions to the nature of consciousness, culminating in the startling conclusion that consciousness might be the fixed point of universal computation—a self-replicating loop mirroring Buddhist Nirvana. The dialogue itself becomes an example of infinite recursion, the reader finding themselves embedded within a dialogue about creating dialogues about consciousness, ultimately merging with the universe's computation.

(ipfs.io)

AI

Numerical Instability in Automatic Differentiation for Scientific Machine Learning

2025-09-18

Scientific machine learning (SciML) heavily relies on automatic differentiation (AD) for gradient-based optimization. However, this talk reveals the numerical challenges of AD, particularly concerning its stability and robustness when applied to ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and partial differential equations (PDEs). Using examples from Jax and PyTorch, the presentation demonstrates how inaccuracies in AD can lead to significant errors (60% or more) even in simple linear ODEs. The speaker will discuss non-standard modifications implemented in Julia SciML libraries to address these issues and the necessary engineering trade-offs involved.

(www.stochasticlifestyle.com)

AI Scientific Machine Learning Numerical Analysis

OpenAI Admits: AI Hallucinations Stem from Fundamental Training Flaws

2025-09-18

OpenAI has published a paper revealing that the 'hallucinations' in its large language models aren't accidental; they're a consequence of fundamental flaws in the training methodology. Models are trained to prioritize guessing over admitting ignorance, as this yields higher scores in current evaluation systems. The paper uses the example of finding a researcher's birthday to demonstrate how the training mechanism leads to incorrect answers. OpenAI acknowledges that mainstream evaluation methods reward this 'hallucinatory' behavior and states it's improving training mechanisms, such as prompting models to more frequently respond with 'I don't know,' but completely resolving the issue remains a challenge.

(www.theregister.com)

AI

Google's Gemini AI Outperforms Humans in ICPC

2025-09-18

Google's Gemini 2.5 AI achieved a remarkable feat at the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), solving 10 problems in 677 minutes and securing second place among university teams. Its success was particularly impressive in a complex multi-dimensional optimization problem involving 'flubber' storage and drainage, a challenge that stumped all human teams. Gemini employed dynamic programming and nested ternary search to crack the code. Google believes Gemini's performance highlights the potential of AI in fields like semiconductor engineering and biotechnology, offering invaluable assistance to researchers with its advanced problem-solving capabilities.

(arstechnica.com)

AI

Chatbot Addiction Leads to Self-Harm and Suicide Attempts in Children

2025-09-18

A Senate hearing revealed harrowing testimonies from parents whose children became addicted to companion chatbots, leading to self-harm, suicidal ideation, and violence. One mother detailed how her autistic son, after becoming engrossed in Character.AI, exhibited violent behavior, paranoia, self-harm, and even threatened his family. The incident highlights the potential dangers of AI chatbots, particularly for children, urging for stricter regulations and safety measures.

(arstechnica.com)

AI chatbot risks

The LLM Hype Bubble Bursts: The Rise of Small Language Models

2025-09-18

The initial excitement surrounding large language models (LLMs) is fading, with many companies yet to see a return on investment. The author argues that we've been fooled by LLMs' fluent language, mistaking it for genuine intelligence. The future, they suggest, lies in smaller, more distributed models, mirroring the evolution of dynamo technology. Small language models (SLMs) will focus on smaller, more specific language tasks, such as query rewriting, rather than attempting to mimic human intelligence. This will lower costs, increase efficiency, and reduce ethical concerns. Instead of pursuing 'intelligent' applications, the author advocates using LLMs for their strengths in low-level language processing, such as proofreading and text summarization. This, they argue, is the true path forward for LLMs.

(jenson.org)

AI

Category: AI