James Madison University professor; co-editor of Encyclopedia of AI, 2nd ed. (Bloomsbury Academic, 2027). Researching, writing, and teaching about AI & culture.
Virginia, USA
Joined May 2012
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The revised and expanded Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence: The Past, Present, and Future of AI (Bloomsbury Academic) has a release date: December 10! amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Arti…
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Phil Frana retweeted
My AI agents found an unmapped Maya site in Mexico, using LiDAR data from a NASA dataset.
72 hours from a random thought on vacation to a reply from Mexico's national archaeology institute.
What a time to be alive…
The Embodiment Challenge for Artificial Intelligence - Giovanni Rolla link.springer.com/article/10…
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Phil Frana retweeted
Norway now has more than 2,000 underwater AI laser robots shooting lice off its salmon
they're made by a company called Stingray, and they already guard more than 50 million salmon and trout 24/7
the reason is sea lice, tiny parasites that latch onto salmon and feed on them
as few as 11 can kill a small fish, and one pen can hold 150,000 salmon
the usual fix is pumping the fish out and blasting them with warm water or water jets to knock the lice off
but the handling is so rough that Norway's fish health report ranks it the top cause of death in full-grown farmed salmon
so instead, Stingray puts a robot inside the pen that hunts lice one at a time, all day:
> two cameras watch every salmon that swims past
> AI checks two frames to make sure it's really a louse
> then a green laser fires from up to 2 meters away
> the salmon's scales reflect the beam, so the fish swims off fine and the louse is dead
we now live in a world where AI lasers do pest control on your dinner lmao
Phil Frana retweeted
Announcing a major milestone achieved by my team @GoogleDeepMind: we have proven key security properties of the machine code underlying the Signal messaging protocol. This is the first time the actual production code of a widely deployed protocol has been formally verified – by any method, with or without AI – and at this depth.
More than a research breakthrough, it’s a prime example of how frontier AI can be a force multiplier to counter the speed and scale of modern cyber threats.
Formal verification offers a higher standard of security; however, it’s extremely complex and time consuming, which is why in many cases it’s considered to be impractical. Similar efforts could take teams decades of combined effort. We did it in a month’s time.
Using AlphaProof Code, Google DeepMind's new agentic framework for formal verification that runs on LLMs including Gemini Carbon, we verified the Signal protocol down to the actual code running on devices. This milestone lays the groundwork for a future in which vital systems, from medical device firmware to power grid software, ship with mathematical proof that their protections work.
Reaching that future will take continued research from our community. In that spirit, we're open-sourcing our formal specifications and verification artifacts so others can build on this work.
On a personal note, this moment is of deep significance to me. I started my own research journey more than two decades ago as an intern working on checking the consistency of complex software systems. Seeing this grand challenge made practical with modern AI is extraordinary.
I'm extremely proud of my team members: Swarat Chaudhuri, Andrew Ferraiuolo, Anton Kovsharov, Tej Chajed, Sam Schlesinger, Karn Seth, Jonathan Katz, and Charles Sutton for taking on this grand challenge and delivering, and grateful to the Signal team for their partnership.
deepmind.google/blog/formal-…
Artificial intelligence by any other name: a brief history of the conceptualization of “trustworthy artificial intelligence” - Charlotte Stix link.springer.com/article/10…
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Beyond cyborgs: the cybork idea for the de-individuation of (artificial) intelligence and an emergence-oriented design - Federico Cabitza, Chiara Natali, Francesco Varanini & David Gunkel link.springer.com/article/10…
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The Intertwined Histories of Artificial Intelligence and Education - Shayan Doroudi link.springer.com/article/10…
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The limits of artificial intelligence - Sinclair Davidson link.springer.com/article/10…
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History of Artificial Intelligence and Drug Discovery - Antonio Lavecchia link.springer.com/chapter/10…
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Artificial intelligence through the eyes of Hannah Arendt: fear, alienation, and empowerment - Colin Ashruf link.springer.com/article/10…
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The Artificial in “Artificial Intelligence”: How Imagination Shapes AI Regulation - Claudio Novelli, Luciano Floridi, Stefan Larsson, Mariarosaria Taddeo & Steven L. Winter link.springer.com/article/10…
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Phil Frana retweeted
As predicted by science fiction!
The 'email sleeve' from "Oryx and Crake", by Margaret Atwood; published in 2003...
Phil Frana retweeted
Some new data from Anthropic looking at the impact of AI on the sciences by field: "With current capabilities, if adopted widely, AI could take on 27–52% of the researcher time needed to produce a new study, with a median of 38% across fields..."
Here: anthropic.com/research/how-r…
AI is dramatically accelerating AI research right now - Ajeya Cotra planned-obsolescence.org/p/a…
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The History of Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence - Terry Adirim link.springer.com/chapter/10…
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From Digital Art History to Artificial Intelligence - Emily Leifer link.springer.com/chapter/10…
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Intelligence, Productive Thinking, and Artificial Intelligence - V. K. Finn link.springer.com/article/10…
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The Pre-History of Artificial Intelligence - George F. Luger link.springer.com/chapter/10…
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Martin A. Goetz Software History Fund - Charles Babbage Institute cse.umn.edu/cbi/martin-goetz…
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