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Category: robotics/AI

By John Frank Weaver — Slate

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Not that long ago, Google announced something unheard of in the auto industry—at least in the part of the auto industry that makes moving cars. A car without a steering wheel or gas and brake pedals. To Google, this was the next step in self-driving cars. Why bother with a steering wheel if the driver isn’t driving? Some observers questioned whether this feature in the proposed the test vehicle violated the autonomous vehicle statute in California (where the vehicle would be tested), which required that the driver take control of the self-driving vehicle in case the autonomous system malfunctions. Google claimed that it installed an on/off button, which satisfied the California law.

California recently weighed in: Google, you’re wrong. The state has released regulations requiring that a test driver be able to take “active physical control” of the car, meaning with a steering wheel and brakes.

To this I say—good for you, California.

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By — Slate

140910_FT_Superintelligence

n the recent discussion over the risks of developing superintelligent machines—that is, machines with general intelligence greater than that of humans—two narratives have emerged. One side argues that if a machine ever achieved advanced intelligence, it would automatically know and care about human values and wouldn’t pose a threat to us. The opposing side argues that artificial intelligence would “want” to wipe humans out, either out of revenge or an intrinsic desire for survival.

As it turns out, both of these views are wrong. We have little reason to believe a superintelligence will necessarily share human values, and no reason to believe it would place intrinsic value on its own survival either. These arguments make the mistake of anthropomorphising artificial intelligence, projecting human emotions onto an entity that is fundamentally alien.

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By: — USNI News

Boeing concept for F/A-XX. Boeing Image

Artificial intelligence will likely feature prominently onboard the Pentagon’s next-generation successors to the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor.

“AI is going to be huge,” said one U.S. Navy official familiar with the service’s F/A-XX effort to replace the Super Hornet starting around 2030.

Further, while there are significant differences between the U.S. Air Force’s vision for its F-X air superiority fighter and the Navy’s F/A-XX, the two services agree on some fundamental aspects about what characteristics the jet will need to share.

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By Shahin Farshchi — IEEE Spectrum

Ever faster processors, cheaper sensors, abundant open-source code, ubiquitous connectivity, and the advent of 3D printing are some of the forces behind the recent proliferation of robots. As I see things, these forces will only get stronger, and as more robots become part of our lives—in homes, offices, factories, hospitals, and many other places—we’ll inevitably face challenges involving our adoption and use of robots.

Some observers are voicing their fears about a decline in human-human interaction, while others warn of an irreversible and senseless loss of jobs, with robots taking over tasks that, they argue, should not be performed by machines (such as caring for the elderly). Trade-offs will certainly be part of our growing reliance on robotics and automation. And it will be up to us to manage these trade-offs, just as we have with other technologies such as electricity, the automobile, aviation, nuclear power, computers, and the Internet.

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by Ben Medlock — CityAM
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Think Artificial Intelligence and the first thing that comes to mind is probably robots. Thanks to popular culture, AI is considered distinctly un-human, and can prompt people to worry about the role of technology in our daily lives and who is really in control. However, there’s a new wave of technology fighting to put the human back at the heart of the experience, one that is designed to make the technology that you use every single day learn from you personally.
Called Machine Learning, it underlies technology that constantly evolves to adapt to every individual, anticipating what you want to do next and staying one step ahead. Machine Learning is about building software capable of learning how to perform tasks that are too complex to be solved by traditional programming techniques. During my PhD research at the University of Cambridge, for example, I built programs that could recognise topics in news articles and filter spam email.

Ariel Schwartz — Fast Company


BPM 31510 is just another cancer drug in human development trials, except for one thing. Scientists didn’t toil away in labs to come up with it; artificial intelligence did.

The cancer drug development process is costly and time-consuming. On average, it takes 24 to 48 months and upwards of $100 million to find a suitable candidate. Add that to the fact that 95% of all potential drugs fail in clinical trials, and the inefficiencies of the whole drug-discovery machine really become apparent.

Backed by real estate billionaire Carl Berg, eponymous biotech startup Berg wants to use artificial intelligence to design cancer drugs that are cheaper, have fewer side effects, and can be developed in half the time it normally takes. BPM 31510 is the first of Berg’s drugs to get a real-world test.

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Tom Cheredar — Venture Beat
Robot cyborg war machine via Shutterstock
When a billionaire investor responsible for disrupting credit/payments, automotive, and space travel industries communicates a warning to the world about a trend in new technologies, it’s best just to listen.

Case in point, yesterday SpaceX and Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk told people to be careful when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), which he said could be “potentially more dangerous” than nuclear weapons, according to a tweet sent yesterday. (The tweet came just an hour after Musk offered his thoughts on Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movie, so take that however you will.)

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Written By: — Singularity Hub
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Japan likes robots. And while some Americans raised on a confusing sci-fi diet of Star Wars, Terminator, and iRobot are perhaps a little wary of advanced AI and robotics—Japan simply can’t wait for the “robot revolution.”

In a recent tour of Japanese robotics firms, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe declared his intention to create a government task force to study and propose strategies for tripling the size of Japan’s robotics industry to $24 billion.

And one more thing, Abe said, “In 2020, I would like to gather all of the world’s robots and aim to hold an Olympics where they compete in technical skills.”

While mere mortals compete in the 2020 summer Olympics in Tokyo—in a stadium somewhere nearby, the world’s most advanced robots may go head to head in events showcasing their considerable prowess (hopefully by then, right?).

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— Beta Boston
Montreal street art meunierd / Shutterstock.com

Looking back to 1950s predictions of what robots might be capable of in the year 2000 is nothing short of humorous — unless you’re in the field of robotics, where the lack of consumer progress can be frustrating. Besides the Roomba, home robotics still has not hit the mainstream, but that might be set to finally change.

The secret to the latest push for home robotics is the technology already sitting in our pocket. The mobile phone.

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