Webtagr - Technology News Summarizer

Whisper's Embeddings Surprisingly Align with Human Brain Activity During Speech

2025-03-26

A study reveals a surprising alignment between OpenAI's Whisper speech recognition model and the neural activity in the human brain during natural conversations. By comparing Whisper's embeddings to brain activity in regions like the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG), researchers found that language embeddings peaked before speech embeddings during speech production, and vice-versa during comprehension. This suggests Whisper, despite not being designed with brain mechanisms in mind, captures key aspects of language processing. The findings also highlight a 'soft hierarchy' in brain language processing: higher-order areas like the IFG prioritize semantic and syntactic information but also process lower-level auditory features, while lower-order areas like the STG prioritize acoustic and phonemic processing but also capture word-level information.

(research.google)

AI

Groundbreaking Research: The Power Team Behind the Success

2025-03-03

This paper is the result of a close collaboration with Asaf Aharoni, Avinatan Hassidim, and Danny Vainstein. The team also extends gratitude to dozens of individuals from Google Research, Google DeepMind, and Google Search, including YaGuang Li and Blake Hechtman, for their reviews, insightful discussions, valuable feedback, and support. Their contributions were crucial to the completion of this research.

(research.google)

AI

Google AI Breakthrough: A Giant Team Effort Revealed in Acknowledgements

2025-02-19

This paper's acknowledgements reveal a massive collaborative effort involving numerous researchers from Google Research, Google DeepMind, and Google Cloud AI, along with collaborators from the Fleming Initiative, Imperial College London, Houston Methodist Hospital, Sequome, and Stanford University. The extensive list highlights the collaborative nature of the research and thanks many scientists who provided technical and expert feedback, as well as numerous Google internal teams providing support across product, engineering, and management. The sheer length of the acknowledgements underscores the massive team effort behind large-scale AI projects.

(research.google)

AI

OMG! Nearly All Binary Searches and Mergesorts Are Broken

2025-01-11

Google software engineer Joshua Bloch revealed a nearly two-decade-old bug lurking in binary search algorithms, found in both the JDK and Jon Bentley's 'Programming Pearls'! The bug stems from the line `int mid = (low + high) / 2;`, causing integer overflow and array index out-of-bounds exceptions when the sum of `low` and `high` exceeds the maximum positive integer value. This bug only manifests with massive datasets, making it particularly dangerous in today's big data world. The article explores various fixes and emphasizes that bugs can persist even with rigorous testing and proofs, urging programmers to remain cautious and humble.

(research.google)

Development algorithm bug binary search mergesort

Google Expands Global Solar Potential Assessment Using Satellite Imagery and Machine Learning

2024-12-19

Google researchers have expanded the Google Maps Platform Solar API's coverage in the Global South by applying machine learning models to satellite imagery to generate high-resolution digital surface models and roof segmentation maps. This innovation overcomes limitations in traditional methods of data acquisition and processing, providing solar potential assessment data for 1.25 billion buildings globally and accelerating the adoption of renewable energy worldwide. The project leverages satellite data to increase data update frequency and reduce costs, particularly beneficial in data-scarce regions.

(research.google)

Tech solar energy satellite imagery