STEM Saturday on the Steem blockchain, Week #53: AI moves forward and advanced civilization moves earlier

Please visit the /promoted page to view this week's STEM Saturday post promotions.

This was the 53^rd week of our post promotions for STEM Saturday on the Steem blockchain, and our little community now occupies the top of the /promoted page for the 53^rd consecutive Saturday. This week, I promoted three Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) posts by two authors.

If you are a STEM enthusiast, please consider following the authors that you'll find in this article and also consider joining our community. If you would like your own post to be considered for STEM Saturday post promotion, please see the guidelines at the end of this post.

This week's promotions included the following posts (in alphabetical order, by author). Each author has been set as a 5% beneficiary on this post. All posts were passed through three different online plagiarism checks and three different checks for AI detection.

In a May 6 Facebook post, researchers from the University of Zadar described the existence of a 7,000 year old roadway and artificial island in the Neolithic town of Soline. The roadway and the town are now submerged four or five meters in the Adriatic Sea near the island of Korcula. Construction of a manmade island 7 millennia ago would predate the first Egyption pyramids by about 2,400 years and push back the dates of the first organized societies with the capability to build large structures.

Last December, I posted What I saw in the Neuralink Show and Tell Video. One of the things that was announced in that video was that Neuralink would be applying to the FDA for approval to begin human trials of their neural implant device, a brain-computer interface chip that is intended for insertion into the human brain. Here's what I wrote at the time:

the talking point that the press has run with from his talk is Musk's claim that they are working with the FDA and expect to be about 6 months from starting clinical trials for the device in humans. For early applications, he lists two: giving sight to the blind, and restoring movement for paralyzed patients.

Given that the video was posted on November 30, six months turned out to be a pretty good estimate. This week, news came that the approval has been granted. Neuralink also reports that they have begun recruiting volunteers. This news comes about a year after the FDA rejected a previous filing to begin human testing. Critics allege that Neuralink has a history of cruelty to animals and that their claimed capability is unfounded.

Meta, Facebook's umbrella company, has announced its new AI large language model (LLM). Massively Multilingual Speech (MMS). The company claims that its model can recognize more than 4,000 languages and respond in 1,107 of them. This LLM represents a solid step towards the preservation of linguistic diversity. Project leader Michael Auli was able to achieve this diverse language capability by training the AI on religious texts, which - over the course of centuries - have been faithfully copied into many different languages. In addition to recognizing written text, the model also achieved an impressive success rate of 97% at converting speech into text.

The Community

The Popular STEM community is intended to be a place for accessible STEM conversations (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). If you have an interest in STEM topics, please come join us!

About STEM Saturday

If members would like to have your own STEM content considered for future promotions, please come join us and start contributing. I don't know how long I'll be continuing the tradition, but while I do, here are the minimum requirements for consideration (subject to change without notice ;-).

1. Original, plagiarism-free content
2. Minimum word count: currently 300 words, but this may be adjusted.
3. The content must not be cross-posted on other web sites or blockchains. Correct use of the #steemexclusive tag is encouraged.
4. English language. (sorry, it's the only one I know)
5. Because a post leaves /promoted at payout time, posts created shortly before STEM Saturday may be more likely to be chosen than older posts.

All community members are invited to create original and exclusive content that can be considered for future promotions.

Please help grow the science & technology audience on the Steem blockchain by following the Science and Technology on the Social Blockchain Facebook page then liking & sharing our links!

Visit the /promoted page and #burnsteem25 to support the inflation-fighters who are helping to enable decentralized regulation of Steem token supply growth.)