Picks of the Week

The One Danger That Should Unite the U.S. and China; also see Tom Friedman’s A.I. Nightmare and What the U.S. Can Do to Avoid It
Software 2.0 a blog by Andrej Karpathy (it's from 2017, but still worth reading)
Next Time You Consult an A.I. Chatbot, Remember One Thing
Deep Neural Nets: 33 years ago and 33 years from now a blog by Andrej Karpathy
He Wants to Climb Nearly All of America’s Tallest Peaks. In a Month. by Scott Cacciola
Africa Is Big, and It Wants the World’s Maps to Show It from the New York Times
Opinion: Why EU AI Act is good for Irish innovation
Neuromatch Academy: courses on computational neuroscience, neuroAI, and deep learning.
NB: course costs are dependent on location (e.g., cost for students in Rwanda are ten times less than costs for students in Ireland).
AI 2027 D. Kokotajlo, S. Alexander, T. Larsen, E. Lifland, and R. Dean "predict that the impact of superhuman AI over the next decade will be enormous, exceeding that of the Industrial Revolution"
Irish Collectables and Memorabilia A collection of memorabilia from Irish history
A.I. Videos Have Never Been Better. Can You Tell What’s Real?
A.I. Is Starting to Wear Down Democracy New York Times
Roger Federer’s commencement speech wasn’t just a viral moment. It was masterful And here is the speech
Principles of Biological Autonomy By Francisco J. Varela, Edited by Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, Evan Thompson.
Why we decided to relocate the headquarters of our AI company from the US to Ireland An op-ed by Daryll Williams, Founder, CEO, and Chief Scientist of Partsol, articulating a visionary stance on the importance of the European AI Act, and the benefits of a symbiosis of innovation and regulation in AI, especially where trustworthy AI is paramount (pdf version here).
A.I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting Worse
‘Don’t ask what AI can do for us, ask what it is doing to us’: are ChatGPT and co harming human intelligence?
The 2025 AI Index Report and 12 Graphs That Explain the State of AI in 2025
Invasion of the Home Humanoid Robots New York Times (read carefully; it's not what it appears to be)
How Artificial Intelligence Reasons New York Times
What is the meaning of life? 15 possible answers – from a palliative care doctor, a Holocaust survivor, a jail inmate and more
An app to detect birth asphyxia in Africa
Ro'ya-CV4Africa A Grassroots Computer Vision Community for Africans and by Africans
AI Robots online version of an article in IEEE Spectrum "Where's my Robot Butler?", November 2024.
Robot Learning for Africa Workshop 2025 at the Deep Learning Indaba Rwanda
MIND Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand
You don’t need a smartphone: a practical, personal guide to downgrading your device
Science Robotics Special Issue: Highlighting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of robotics
Molmo Multimodal Open Language Model built by Ai2
Collaborative Robots with Cognitive Capabilities for Industry 4.0 and Beyond G. Sandini, A. Sciutti, and P. Morasso, AI, 5(4), 1858-1869, 2024.
IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee
Google unveils ‘mindboggling’ quantum computing chip and a deeper analysis of this breakthrough. The Limits of Quantum Computers dispels some of the hype around quantum computing
A Unified Vision for European Robotics A Strategy for Innovation, Growth and Societal Impact
Inside AI: An Algorithmic Adventure. Published by UNESCO, this is a graphic novel, i.e., a comic strip story, for young people (and old people too) who want to understand AI and its impact on society.
Note: this is an intentionally inclusive book, in all the best senses of the term. For that alone, it's worth reading.
Large Language Models explained briefly by Grant Sanderson, 3Blue1Brown
Life in The Largest Urban Slum | Delphine Nyaboke | TEDxKigali Women An inspirational TEDx talk by an engineer who triumphed against all the odds
Coderina Engaging Youth in STEM Exploration with FIRST® LEGO® League
Human memory may be unreliable after just a few seconds
How AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Bard work – visual explainer
Black in AI
‘It’s the robot we were all expecting – like C3PO’: why aren’t humanoids in our homes yet?
Gyroscopic Precession is Easier Than You Think!
AI Prompt Engineering is Dead Long live AI prompt engineering (IEEE Spectrum)
Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior
IEEE guide to the world of robots (this is a new and improved version of what was already a great website)
No god in the machine: the pitfalls of AI worship
Creating questionnaires with LaTeX from Sven Hartenstein
What Is ChatGPT Doing ... and Why Does It Work? (and a lot more besides) by Stephen Wolfram
Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI (edited extract) and An interview with the authors
Robotics in Africa Forum at IROS 2024
Beware the ‘botshit’: why generative AI is such a real and imminent threat to the way we live André Spicer
On the Origin of Deep Learning Haohan Wang and Bhiksha Raj
Cycling the Wild Atlantic Way by Rolling Resistance
Women in Robotics
AI Act Tutorial