A 3-D-printed toilet has been invented and the surface is so slippery that nothing can leave a mark on it. Cleaning the toilet has to be one of the grimmest household chores, but thanks to new material, you may never have to scrub a loo again. The toilet is the invention of Yike Li at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, who, alongside colleagues, invented a toilet whose surface is so slippery that nothing stains it and uses less water for each flush. The team created a prototype of the toilet around 10 times smaller than a real one. It was made using 3D printing technology, where particles of plastic and hydrophobic sand grains were fused together with lasers. The surface of the toilet was lubricated with a type of silicon oil that also penetrated the surface due to the complex structure of the material. The team tested the toilet with a variety of substances, including honey, yoghurt, muddy water as well as synthetic faeces. They found that none of the substances stuck to the toilet bowl. Amazingly, the toilet was just as slippery after having been rubbed with sandpaper over 1,000 times, which Li believes is due to the oil being able to penetrate the material of the toilet. Li believes the technology would be suited for settings in which a toilet gets a lot of use, such as on modes of transport and in public toilets. He explained: “The reduced flushing volume would result in less wasted water during transportation to the processing facilities, thereby saving transportation costs.” But, before that can happen, Li says the technology needs to be adapted for use on a full-sized toilet and also needs to be cheaper to make. You can see the toilet in action below courtesy of New Scientist. Nothing can stick to this 3D-printed slippery toilet youtu.be Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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The current wave of generative AI tools like ChatGPT will soon be surpassed by “interactive artificial intelligence”, according to AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman. The co-founder of DeepMind, which was acquired by Google for $500 million in 2014, said the next generation of AI tools will be “a step change in the history of our species”, allowing people to not just obtain information but also order tasks and services to be carried out on their behalf. “The first wave of AI was about classification. Deep learning showed that we can train a computer to classify various types of input data: images, video, audio, language. Now we’re in the generative wave, where you take that input data and produce new data,” Mr Suleyman told MIT Technology Review. “The third wave will be the interactive phase. That’s why I’ve bet for a long time that conversation is the future interface. You know, instead of just clicking on buttons and typing, you’re going to talk to your AI.” This will allow users to ask these AI to perform tasks for them, which they will carry out by talking with other people and interacting with other AIs. “That’s a huge shift in what technology can do. It’s a very, very profound moment in the history of technology that I think many people underestimate,” he said. “Technology today is static. It does, roughly speaking, what you tell it to do. But now technology is going to be animated. It’s going to have the potential freedom, if you give it, to take actions. It’s truly a step change in the history of our species that we’re creating tools that have this kind of, you know, agency.” When questioned about the potential risks of giving artificial intelligence autonomy, Mr Suleyman said it was important to set boundaries for the technology and make sure that it is aligned with human interests. When Mr Suleyman was still working at DeepMind, his colleagues helped develop what became known as a “big red button” that would effectively serve as an off switch for rogue AI. A research paper titled ‘Safely Interruptible Agents’ described how any misbehaving robot could be shut down or overriden by a human operator in order to avoid “irreversible consequences”. Read More 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity

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