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Intels AI division is one of the unsung heroes of the modern machine-learning movement. Its talented researchers have advanced the state of AI chips, neuromorphic computing, and deep learning. And now theyre turning their sights on the unholy grail of AI: the hive mind.

Okay, that might be a tad dramatic. But every great science fiction horror story has to start somewhere.

And Intels amazing advances in the area of multiagent evolutionary reinforcement learning (MERL) could make a great origin story for the Borg a sentient AI that assimilates organic species into its hive mind, from Star Trek.

MERL, aside from being a great name for a fiddle player, is Intels new method for teaching machines how to collaborate.

Per an Intel press release:

Weve developed MERL, a scalable, data-efficient method for training a team of agents to jointly solve a coordination task. A set of agents is represented as a multi-headed neural network with a common trunk. We split the learning objective into two optimization processes that operate simultaneously.

The new system is complex and involves novel machine-learning techniques, but the basic ideas behind it are actually fairly intuitive.

AI systems dont have what the French call une raison dexister. In order for a machine to do something, it needs to be told what to do.

But, often, we want AI systems to do things without being told what to do. The whole point of a machine learning paradigm is to get the machine to figure things out for itself.

However, you still need to make the AI learn the stuff you want it to and forget everything else.

For example, if youre trying to teach a robot to walk you want it to remember how to move its legs in tandem and forget about trying to solve the problem by hopping on one foot.

This is accomplished through reinforcement learning, the RL in MERL. Researchers tweak the AIs training paradigm to ensure its rewarded whenever it accomplishes a goal, thus keeping the machine on task.

If you think about AI in the traditional sense, it works a lot like a single agent (basically, one robot brain) trying to solve a giant problem on its own.

So, for an AI brain responsible for making a robot walk, the AI has to figure out balance, kinetic energy, resistance, and what the exact limits of its physical parts are. This is not only time-consuming often requiring hundreds of millions of iterative attempts but its also expensive.

Intels MERL system allows multiple agents (more than one AI brain) to attack a larger problem by breaking it down into individual tasks that can then be handled by individual agents. The agents collaborate in order to speed up learning across each task. Once the individual agents train up on their tasks, a control agent utilizes the sum of training to organize a method by which the entire goal is accomplished in our example, making a robot walk.

If this system was people instead of AI, itd be like the hit 1980s cartoon Voltron, where individual pilots fly individual vehicles but they come together to form a giant robot thats more powerful than the sum of its parts.

But since were talking about AI, its probably more helpful to view it more like the aforementioned Borg. Instead of a single AI brain controlling all the action, MERL gives AI the ability to form a sort of brain network.

One might even be tempted to call it a non-sentient hive mind.

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Researchers lay the groundwork for an AI hive mind - The Next Web

Building on its commitment to help customers improve their mental health through movement, Asics has partnered with mental health charity Mind to realize its ambition of lifting the mood of an entire town. As part of our Experienital Marketing Deep Dive, The Drum caught up with executive vice-president Gary Raucher to find out what he hopes the legacy of its attempt will be.

When the Covid-19 pandemic caused Asics to revisit its founding principle of healthy body, healthy mind, the sports brand turned to its customers to fuel its research into the power of movement on mental wellbeing.

Partnering with Mind UK, the brand will be hosting a unique day of activity in a small town in England in the hopes of getting the community moving and gaining insights into its impact through the use of its Mind Uplifter Tool.

To discern where its event would be most impactful, Asics commissioned a survey by BF Media to discern an area of the UK most motivated to improve its mental wellbeing through movement.

All surveys were conducted between May 10 and May 27 2021. The sample comprised 6,474 adults from 40 English counties, with a minimum of 150 respondents from each county. Participants were asked to score themselves out of 100 (0 being the lowest and 100 the highest) across 10 emotional (feeling composed, relaxed, positive, content, confident and resilient) and cognitive (feeling alert, calm, focused and energized) traits.

Following the research, the Asics State-of-Mind Index identified Nottinghamshire as the English county that most wanted a mental uplift (80%), with the small town of Retford being reported as one of the most motivated to improve their emotional and mental wellbeing.

We were looking for a willingness to participate alongside a desire for an uplift, explains Asics executive vice-president Gary Raucher.

On the day of the experiment, which will take place on September 25, residents of the town of Retford will be invited to partake in a series of movement initiatives and measure the collective impact on their mental wellbeing. Dr Brendon Stubbs a leading expert on movement and mental health is overseeing the experiment having helped design the events of the day.

Well be transforming the streets into a movement-inspired gym, says Raucher. People can register ahead of time in order to be assigned a time slot and go around the course in small groups.

The circuit itself is about a mile long, so its very accessible and all along the course there will be different stops where people can get involved in various exercises.

Raucher adds that alongside aiming to be accessible, the day also aims to line up with necessary Covid restrictions and concerns over the Delta variant of the virus.

What is critically important is the health and safety and well being of all participants and wed absolutely have protocols in place to ensure that were aligned with the latest governmental suggestions as well as regulations.

However, Raucher says that organizers have tried to make the event fun and memorable by incorporating the town as much as possible. The bus stop has become a bus start and the River Idle that runs through Retford has become the River Lively.

Asics sports ambassadors will also be present on the day and Raucher pledges there are plenty of surprises in store.

Not only do we hope that by participating in movement well be able to demonstrate the uplifting power of sport and the role that athletes can play in that, but were hoping that, in general, people will look back and say that theyve had a great experience, while perhaps most importantly we also want to make a lasting impact, so were in discussions with the council about sort of the legacy that we can leave behind.

Elaborating on the legacy Asics hopes for, Raucher explains it will leave behind an infrastructure both physically and mentally that will encourage the local community to keep moving, even after evening falls on the event.

We know that there are some tennis courts and also a running track that is in need of some repair, so were working with the council to really make sure that this isnt just a one off event, but that were making a commitment to helping people uplift their minds on an ongoing basis.

Back in July, to coincide with the launch of its Mind Uplifter Tool, Asics was already getting involved in local communities to encourage its uptake, such as setting up local running clubs near its store locations.

This allows us to have localized insights into what additional activities we could be setting up we have sports marketing assets, ambassadors, coaches and trainers that we can encourage to engage with local communities to encourage people to be active, Raucher said at the time.

Uptake of the Mind Uplifter Tool will be encouraged in Retford on September 25, as once a participant has registered a Mind Uplift via the tool their individual data will be combined with results across the town in order to demonstrate the uplift that movement can have on the mood of the whole town.

Every participant who captures a Mind Uplift on the day will raise funds for Minds work across the country, supporting the charitys commitment to fight for better mental health.

Raucher concludes: The last 18 months have been tough on peoples mental wellbeing, but we know exercise can be a positive source of energy. Asics has always believed that exercise is not only good for the body, but also for the mind. Now, we aim to demonstrate our brand belief in action by seeing if movement can uplift the mood of a whole town. We hope residents of Retford will lace up and be part of this unique experiment to raise spirits and raise funds for Mind.

From festivals to retail installations to unmissable activations, we examine the avenues open to marketers to reach consumers enjoying their newfound freedom in The Drums Experiential Deep Dive.

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It takes a village: how Asics got a small town to lace up and raise money for Mind UK - The Drum

Peptone is using science to build the worlds first protein engineering operating system, combining AI with computational molecular physics. Above, a 3D illustration of proteins. Photo: Getty

Life comes at you fast. At one point Peptone, a computational biophysics company, had been rejected by more than 150 investors. Now, it regularly receives approaches and buyout offers from big, institutional names.

The aim of founders Dr Kamil Tamiola and Dr Matthew Heberling is to build better drugs and change the standard of healthcare through translating the physics of complex proteins that dictate how the human body and other materials function.

This idea a new theory of making drugs has led them to be tipped by others in the market as the UK's next potential billion pound company.

Peptone is using science to build the worlds first protein engineering operating system, combining AI with computational molecular physics.

The "protein drug discovery engine" enables an automated search for non-obvious protein variants with desirable therapeutic properties and cost-effective manufacturability. The technology is already being used in a variety of pre-clinical and late-stage protein therapeutics programmes.

Instead of going after all of these typical things that pharmaceutical companies do, we can go upstream with these molecules and target the very beginning of a cascade of terrible things that cause your body to react to something. That is the superpower we have, says Tamiola.

For the last 50 years, scientists have believed that for proteins to have a function in human cells they need to have a structure and to be folded. Google DeepMind's AI tool AlphaFold, was considered to be a giant leap towards determining a proteins 3D shape from its amino-acid sequence.

Read more: Swiss clean energy firm lists on NYSE via SPAC deal

Peptone is coming at this problem from a different angle.

There are a large portion of proteins in your body that have no structure, but are still biologically relevant, says Tamiola.

These have, so far, been very difficult to study. The companys mission is to make this process easier and understand how these types of proteins behave in life-changing diseases and drugs, not just their structure.

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Proteins without a structure are particularly interesting in terms of how inflammatory diseases, such as asthma or an allergic reaction, affect the body, says Tamiola.

Combining physics, supercomputing and AI, Peptone's systems can comb through data from drug trials and work out exactly where something went wrong mistakes are often the result of an anomaly in a protein. Doing this can help stop pharmaceutical companies from making the same mistake twice or even resurrect a drug that had been discounted as not working.

Our dream is to build a sustainable company that brings a product to the market as an approved drug, says Tamiola.

Read more: IPO Watch: How to spot a unicorn

Peptone raised $2.5m (1.8m) from venture capitalists Hoxton Ventures seven months ago, from Hoxton's second fund. Four weeks after the initial fundraise the company produced data that showed their product actually works. Months on, the supercomputers are producing even more accurate data than the previous developments suggested.

It has become evident that we have a fair chance of becoming a pharma company on our own, says Tamiola.

The money raised so far is being used to build a lab in Switzerland, hire staff and eventually will buy new computers to develop proprietary experimental techniques. Peptone's long-term aim is to be able to conduct clinical trials off its own back.

Peptone co-founders Dr Kamil Tamiola and Dr Matthew Heberling. Photo: Peptone

We are professional daydreamers. We think, conceive of things in our head and are patient. People think we are nuts, but you build something and wait 25 years and you discover something like the Higgs boson, or you send someone to the moon, says Tamiola.

This is a very different approach from the rest of the people in the market. Were not looking for instant gratification.

Another thing Tamiola also does differently to other company founders if you're lucky he might play you a Bach prelude on the piano during a business development meeting. He has used time at home during the pandemic both to build the company and hone his performance of Baroque music, a skill he has used to woo potential funders alongside pitching supercomputers and drug development methods.

Peptone is wading into a market with a lot of cash up for grabs. According to Statista, as of end-2020, the total global pharmaceutical market was valued at about $1.27tn. This is a significant increase from 2001 when the market was valued at just $390bn.

As for competition, another company in this field, going after what Tamiola calls intrinsically disordered proteins, is New Equilibrium Biosciences. This company is run by Dr Virginia Burger and was founded in 2019 to discover drugs to fight cancers and neurodegenerative disorders.

Since the first fundraising round, Peptone has opened a series A fundraising round, which is currently oversubscribed.

Read more: UK M&A deals continue to rebound after pandemic

The startup has also already announced a collaboration with Nvidia (NVDA) to scale in order to meet increasing demand from the protein therapeutics market and has multiple other collaborations in the pipeline.

The founders say that to complete its mission to bring new, innovative drugs to the market, it is open to many different paths be that through an IPO or SPAC deal or a merger.

And its not just the world of pharma this new technology could help to change. The application of the problem that we are addressing goes far beyond just making drugs, says Tamiola.

Peptone could potentially use the technology to make a product that helps heal wounds, create a novel form of a detergent or washing powder that is biodegradable or use it in diagnostic blood testing.

Tamiola says that the general theme of the collaborations the company has been approached about so far concern the sustainability of goods.

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Peptone: Putting molecular physics at the heart of UK's next billion-pound pharma company - Yahoo Money