An animated video posted this week includes a voiceover that sounds like a late-night TV commercial, but it's from the distant future. A robotic surgeon's octopus-like arm whirls around to remove the head of a rapidly dying man and place it on a young, healthy body.
This is BrainBridge as claimed in the animated video. “It is a world-first revolutionary concept for a hair transplant machine that uses cutting-edge robotics and artificial intelligence to perform complete head and face transplants.”
BrainBridge is not a real company and is not incorporated anywhere. But it's not just a provocative work of art. The video is better understood as the first public billboard for a highly controversial plan to overcome death that has recently gained attention among some life extension advocates and entrepreneurs. Read the full story.
—Antonio Regalado
Noise-cancelling headphones use AI to deliver a single voice.
Modern life is noisy. If you don't like it, you can use noise-cancelling headphones to reduce sounds from your surroundings. However, by indiscriminately reducing the sound, it is easy to miss the sound you actually want to hear.
A new prototype AI system for these headphones aims to solve this problem. This system, called Target Speech Hearing, gives users the ability to select whose speech they still hear even when all other sounds are canceled out.