All posts tagged: Avatars

Talk to Your Own Personal Isaac Newton With Ailias’s Hologram Avatars

Talk to Your Own Personal Isaac Newton With Ailias’s Hologram Avatars

Published by skeptic

It’s the classic awkward icebreaker: If you could invite anyone, dead or alive, to a dinner party, who would it be? Aristotle? Ailias is a company based in Surrey, UK, which promises to make that hypothetical a reality. It can reanimate historical and current legends with 3D hologram avatars that are fully conversational, knowledgeable, and can be delivered to you in a box. The technology isn’t bespoke. Many companies provide life-size hologram displays for events and parties, everything from floating 3D displays of Santa’s sleigh or 3D Holo-Trucks. The physicist Dennis Gabor even won a Nobel Prize in 1971 for his work that led to holography, even though a life-size Elon Musk isn’t probably the result that he (or anyone) had in mind. What sets Ailias apart is the company’s playful focus on history and education, which the company describes as “ultra character creation.” The company focuses on animating dead notable personalities into real-feeling conversational holograms, designed for interaction rather than spectacle. Ailias’ holograms can juggle, do squats, or even breakdance, making your party, exhibition …

Dr. Oz wants AI avatars to replace rural health workers. Critics are wary : NPR

Dr. Oz wants AI avatars to replace rural health workers. Critics are wary : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz speaks at an Action for Progress event about plans to transform behavioral health, on Feb. 2, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Heather Diehl/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Heather Diehl/Getty Images Dr. Mehmet Oz is pitching a controversial fix for America’s rural health care crisis: artificial intelligence. “There’s no question about it — whether you want it or not — the best way to help some of these communities is gonna be AI-based avatars,” Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said recently at an event focused on addiction and mental health hosted by Action for Progress, a coalition aimed at improving behavioral health care. He said AI could multiply the reach of doctors fivefold — or more — without burning them out. The AI proposal is part of the Trump administration’s $50 billion plan to modernize health care in rural communities. That includes deploying tools such as digital avatars to conduct basic medical interviews, robotic systems for remote diagnostics, and drones to …

NASA’s Artemis 2 astronauts will fly around the moon with these ‘avatars’

NASA’s Artemis 2 astronauts will fly around the moon with these ‘avatars’

Published by skeptic

When the Artemis II spaceship carries four astronauts around the moon, it will also bring four miniature proxies of the crew made from their own cells.  Alongside crew commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen will fly lab-grown tissue samples designed to mimic parts of the crew’s bodies, particularly bone marrow, a key component of the immune system. The NASA experiment, called AVATAR — short for A Virtual Astronaut Tissue Analog Response — aims to show how living human cells respond to deep-space radiation and weightlessness. Before launch, which could occur as early as March 6, doctors will draw blood from each crew member. Scientists will then grow cells from those samples and place them into chips about the size of a computer thumb drive. During the 10-day mission, the chips will soak up the same radiation and microgravity as their human counterparts.  “This is a small experiment, but it could lead to really big impacts for healthcare, both for our astronauts, but also people here back on the earth,” said Jacob …

How to invent a language — like that of Avatar’s Na’vi

How to invent a language — like that of Avatar’s Na’vi

Published by skeptic

alien: (in astronomy) Life on or from a distant world. ancestor: A predecessor. It could be a family forebear, such as a parent, grandparent or great-great-great grandparent. Or it could be a species, genus, family or other order of organisms from which some later one evolved. For instance, ancient dinosaurs are the ancestors of today’s birds. (antonym: descendant) anthropologist: A social scientist who studies humankind, often by focusing on its societies and cultures. audio: Having to do with sound. blog: Short for web log, these internet posts can take the form of news reports, topical discussions, opinionated rants, diaries or photo galleries. census: An official count or survey of a population. code: (in computing) To use special language to write or revise a program that makes a computer do something. (n.) Code also refers to each of the particular parts of that programming that instructs a computer’s operations. cognitive: A term that relates to mental activities, such as thinking, learning, remembering and solving puzzles. colleague: Someone who works with another; a co-worker or team member. common ancestor: …