The more we interact with robots, the more human we perceive them to become—according to new research from the University of East Anglia, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
It may sound like a scene from Blade Runner, but psychologists have been investigating exactly what makes robot interactions feel more human.
The paper reveals that playing games with robots to “break the ice” can help bring out their human side.
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google’s AI research organization DeepMind, appeared to suggest Tuesday evening that Veo 3, Google’s latest video-generating model, could potentially be used for video games.
In response to a post on X beseeching Google to “Let me play a video game of my veo 3 videos already,” and asking, “playable world models wen?” Hassabis responded, “now wouldn’t that be something.”
On Wednesday morning, Logan Kilpatrick, lead product for Google’s AI Studio and Gemini API, chimed in with a reply: “🤐🤐🤐🤐”
This is something that I often wonder about, because a model’s hardcore reasoning ability doesn’t necessarily translate into a fun, informative, and creative experience. Most queries from average users are probably not going to be rocket science. There isn’t much research yet on how to effectively evaluate a model’s creativity, but I’d love to know which model would be the best for creative writing or art projects.
Human preference testing has also emerged as an alternative to benchmarks. One increasingly popular platform is LMarena, which lets users submit questions and compare responses from different models side by side—and then pick which one they like best. Still, this method has its flaws. Users sometimes reward the answer that sounds more flattering or agreeable, even if it’s wrong. That can incentivize “sweet-talking” models and skew results in favor of pandering.
AI researchers are beginning to realize—and admit—that the status quo of AI testing cannot continue. At the recent CVPR conference, NYU professor Saining Xie drew on historian James Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games to critique the hypercompetitive culture of AI research. An infinite game, he noted, is open-ended—the goal is to keep playing. But in AI, a dominant player often drops a big result, triggering a wave of follow-up papers chasing the same narrow topic. This race-to-publish culture puts enormous pressure on researchers and rewards speed over depth, short-term wins over long-term insight. “If academia chooses to play a finite game,” he warned, “it will lose everything.”
Gabriel Dechichi, a developer you might know from his challenge of making an Unreal Engine game in 4 weeks, is building his own C engine, and he’s ready to prove it’s better than Unity, at least in web space.
Dechichi made a demo where you can add hundreds of running mannequins and see how your system reacts to the stress. The creator claims his engine is “10x faster, 10x lighter, 10x better” than other software, and 14 times quicker than Unity in particular.
It’s obvious from first glance even at 100 characters that Dechichi’s engine runs smoother, but I tested it on my MacBook Pro, and while the C engine works with 1,000 units at 250 ms and 1 FPS, Unity took forever to load so many characters at 1,300 ms and 1 FPS. So, I guess, Dechichi is right, and we’ll see a nice addition to the gamedev world soon.
A trial of an interactive game that trains people to alter their brain waves has shown promise as a treatment for nerve pain—offering hope for a new generation of drug-free treatments.
The PainWaive technology, developed by UNSW Sydney researchers, teaches users how to regulate abnormal brain activity linked to chronic nerve pain, offering a potential in-home, noninvasive alternative to opioids.
A recent trial of the technology, led by Professor Sylvia Gustin and Dr. Negin Hesam-Shariati from UNSW Sydney’s NeuroRecovery Research Hub, has delivered promising results, published in the Journal of Pain.
With smartphones, game consoles and computers, it’s easy to rack up screen time these days. Of course, this isn’t great for your eyes, as anyone who has suffered an eyestrain hangover after spending hours gaming or doomscrolling knows. Staring at screens all the time tires out the ciliary muscles in your eyes that are responsible for focusing on objects, which can cause you to become near-sighted. However, the answer to improving your vision could be… more gaming?
In a recent study, researchers at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan developed a VR game that aims to improve players’ eyesight. Although more research is needed, this game could potentially be used to help people with simple myopia (near-sightedness) bolster their vision.
It’s a relatively simple target shooting game developed in Unity for Meta Quest 2. The game features three lanes, each with a circular target on a stick. Pressing down the trigger button on the controller activates a virtual laser beam. Pointing this laser towards a lane highlights the lane and target and puts the player into “aim” mode. But to successfully hit the target, players have to move the controller’s stick in the direction indicated by the small Landolt C (a black ring shape with a gap used in Japanese eye tests) in the middle of the target.
Created by David James Armsby.
https://www.facebook.com/davidarmsbyartist/
“Rise of the Decayed” is the third film in my “SAURIA” Animated Series.
This film focuses on the dark and magical side of SAURIA. While the study of sorcery may grant the user fantastic power, this power comes with a sickness of the mind and the flesh.
While on patrol, Captain Ornithicera of the BlueSong Empire and his troop are ambushed by a mysterious and feral pack of witches and cultists. Evil and twisted things that were once powerful sorcerers before their minds and bodies were twisted by the unknown and horrifying forces of dark magic.
These illusive witch-cultists have gone by many names over the centuries… but most call them The Fell.
FULL “SAURIA” PLAYLIST:
Some sound effects from:
https://freesfx.co.uk/
Score composed by Ivan Duch.
The new gaming dimension is here. The Odyssey 3D brings stunning glasses-free 3D experience to life – making games feel more real and the action more exciting.
Discover more at http://www.samsung.com.
• Glasses-free 3D experience.
• AI 3D Video Conversion.
• 165Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time (GtG)
• Nvidia G-Sync Compatible.
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Google’s new AI tech, including Veo 3, Flow, and Gemini, was used to create films like Ancestra. Other AI movies are coming.
Our cells rely on microscopic highways and specialized protein vehicles to move everything—from positioning organelles to carting protein instructions to disposing of cellular garbage. These highways (called microtubules) and vehicles (called motor proteins) are indispensable to cellular function and survival.
The dysfunction of motor proteins and their associated proteins can lead to severe neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. For example, the dysfunction of Lis1, a partner protein to the motor protein dynein, can lead to the rare fatal birth defect lissencephaly, or “smooth brain,” for which there is no cure. But therapeutics that target and restore dynein or Lis1 function could change those dismal outcomes—and developing those therapeutics depends on thoroughly understanding how dynein and Lis1 interact.
New research from the Salk Institute and UC San Diego captured short movies of Lis1 “turning on” dynein. The movies allowed the team to catalog 16 shapes that the two proteins take as they interact, some of which have never been seen before. These insights will be foundational for designing future therapeutics that restore dynein and Lis1 function, since they shine a light on precise locations where drugs could interact with the proteins.