NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

Could Robots Soon Be Performing Your Surgery?

A team of researchers from Johns Hopkins University has achieved a significant breakthrough in medical robotics by training a surgical robot to perform procedures with the proficiency of a human surgeon. 🤯

• Utilizing imitation learning, the robot was taught to execute tasks such as needle manipulation, tissue lifting, and suturing by analyzing hundreds of surgical videos.

• This approach eliminates the need for manual programming of each movement, bringing the prospect of fully autonomous robotic surgeries closer to reality.

The truth is we need this help in the operating theater because of the global shortage of skilled surgeons and healthcare professionals. 😔

And robotic surgeons may soon move beyond specific tasks and conduct all parts of the operation.

• The team will next train the robots on comprehensive surgical videos to enable them to perform entire surgical procedures autonomously, not just single tasks like suturing.

• By doing so, robots can learn the intricate flow and decision-making processes inherent in complete operations and perform them with minimal human intervention.

Umm, so what will be the new role of surgeons?

• Like everything related to AI, human oversight will remain essential.

• Surgeons will play a critical role in ensuring patient safety, managing unexpected complications, and making crucial decisions during surgery.

This shift calls for a new era of surgical training. Every medical student and aspiring surgeon should be equipped with the skills to work seamlessly with these advanced robotic systems.

Is AI Going to Keep Getting Smarter? Yes, No, Maybe 😬

The AI world is buzzing with a surprising development: the leading tech companies are hitting unexpected roadblocks in their pursuit of ever smarter AI.

OpenAI's upcoming model, Orion, shows only modest improvements over GPT-4, raising doubts about the effectiveness of current methods. Google, too, is struggling to achieve significant performance gains with its latest AI models.

What's happening?

The prevailing belief, known as "scaling laws," was that AI models improve with increased size and training data. However, this big debate is whether this approach is hitting a wall. Simply throwing more resources at the problem isn't yielding the expected results. 😬

So here’s how they are trying to fix it:

• Exploring innovative training techniques and architectural designs to overcome these limitations. For instance, OpenAI's recent o1 model incorporates methods that emulate human-like reasoning, aiming to enhance performance during the inference phase.

• Developing more efficient algorithms, leveraging in-memory computing to reduce latency and energy consumption as training larger AI models is becoming exorbitantly expensive.

• Rethinking data strategies as high-quality training data is becoming a rare commodity, necessitating the exploration of new and diverse sources beyond readily available internet data.

So no, this doesn’t spell the end of AI getting smarter, but it is a bump in the road, and researchers and tech giants will have to think about how to level AI up to stay competitive (and justify their massive valuations... #justsayin’) 😎

WOMAN IN TECH

Meet Sandra L. Rivera, CEO of Altera

Celebrating this week's Woman in Tech 🥳: Meet Sandra L. Rivera, CEO of Altera, a company acquired by Intel in 2015 for $16.7 billion.

Born to Colombian parents, Rivera earned her bachelor's in electrical engineering from Pennsylvania State University.

Her career journey:

• Started at Westinghouse Corp. and Catalyst Telecom

• Joined Intel in 2000 for a 23-year journey, where she led their Data Center & AI Group, steering Intel's artificial intelligence strategy. Under her leadership, Intel developed special AI chips called Gaudi that compete with NVIDIA's popular AI processors

• In 2024, when Intel spun off Altera as an independent company, Rivera was chosen as CEO

At Altera, Rivera is pushing the boundaries of its reprogrammable chips (called FPGAs). These chips are crucial in many industries because they can be updated and modified even after they're installed in devices - making them perfect for rapidly evolving technologies like 5G networks, autonomous vehicles, and industrial automation.

Rivera's ambitions and expertise are clear in how she’s targeting a market expected to reach $55B, competing with AMD's similar division called Xilinx.

TIME Magazine recognized Rivera's influence in AI by naming her one of the industry's most influential people in 2023.

I love Rivera’s powerful quote that speaks to being a minority in tech leadership: "You are not going to be in a majority, you will be remembered for how you showed up in that room because you're so different from most of the other participants. So be remembered for something good."

Is a $4,700 Smart Bed Worth It for a Good Night’s Sleep? 🛌💸

Eight Sleep’s new Pod 4 Ultra cover lets you customize each side’s temperature, tracks your sleep, and even has a built-in snore-detecting feature that can gently lift the bed to help you breathe better.

With advanced sleep tech and an AI-powered “Autopilot” feature that adjusts temperature throughout the night, it promises perfect sleep.

Sleep optimization is a major trend these days. Check out "sleepmaxxing" on TikTok. This movement encourages individuals to prioritize and enhance their Zs using a variety of methods.

But at $4,700 plus a $199 yearly subscription, are you ready to fall asleep counting not just sheep but your dollars flying away?

I was delighted to speak in beautiful New Zealand on how Singapore's use of AI for smart cities is human-centered and why empathy, equity, and ethics are so important to me when it comes to AI.

It was wonderful to meet my fellow speakers, Tom Gruber, Co-founder of Siri, and Edmundo Ortega, Managing Partner of Machines & Partners.

I've been totally inspired to do collaborations on data and AI in New Zealand now! 😊

ps. Let's be friends on LinkedIn and Instagram, if you like this newsletter, share it with your friends and family here.

Until next time!

Ayesha ♥️