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Category: robotics/AI

Three months ago, Google announced it would in early 2017 launch support for high-end graphics processing units (GPUs) for machine learning and other specialized workloads. It’s now early 2017 and, true to its word, Google today officially made GPUs on the Google Cloud Platform available to developers. As expected, these are Nvidia Tesla K80 GPUs, and developers will be able to attach up to eight of these to any custom Compute Engine machine.

These new GPU-based virtual machines are available in three Google data centers: us-east1, asia-east1 and europe-west1. Every K80 core features 2,496 of Nvidia’s stream processors with 12 GB of GDDR5 memory (the K80 board features two cores and 24 GB of RAM).

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Anyone who watched HBO’s Westworld and came away from it with the desire to have sex with a robot is now in luck. A brothel full of sex dolls has opened up in Barcelona, Spain.

Lumi Dolls offers four models that anyone can reserve for a set amount of time. Thanks to new technology, Lumi Dolls brags that its dolls are among the most realistic on the market — and they cost around €120 per hour, which is about $127. The brothel offers other services as well, including overnight stays and options for couples, but those price quotes require a consultation. Reservations are taken online.

Each of the models come complete with a sort of character page on the Lumi Dolls website, which houses a description of the doll’s anatomy, creative inspiration, and what to look forward to in the doll’s room.

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In the self-driving future envisioned by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, car owners might be saying “goodbye” to a whole lot more than steering wheels.

Musk is so sure of the safety features bundled into Tesla vehicles that his company has begun offering some customers a lifetime insurance and maintenance package at the time of purchase.

No more monthly insurance bills. No more unexpected repair costs.

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Like all great programmers I get most of my code from StackOverflow questions. Can’t figure out how to add authentication to Flask? Easy. Want to shut down sendmail? Boom. Now, thanks to all the code on the Internet, a robot can be as smart as a $180,000 coder.

The system, called DeepCoder, basically searches a corpus of code to build a project that works to spec. It’s been used to complete programming competitions and could be pointed at a larger set of data to build more complex products.

From the paper:

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Uber Technologies’ Gary Marcus said he is stepping down from his post as head of AI Labs, four months after the unit was created.

Gary Marcus, head of the recently launched AI Labs, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that he is stepping down and will serve as a special advisor to AI Labs.

The ride-hailing app created AI Labs last year and also acquired Geometric Intelligence to form the initial AI Labs team.

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Goldcorp (NYSE: GG, TSX: G) is teaming up with one of the world’s largest computer companies to help it find more gold at its storied Red Lake mine in Ontario.

Vancouver-based Goldcorp announced on March 3 it is bringing IBM Watson technology to Canadian mining for the first time. Named after IBM’s founder, Thomas J. Watson, Watson is a supercomputer that combines artificial intelligence with analytical software. According to WhatIs, IBM Watson replicates the human ability to answer questions by accessing 90 servers with a combines data storage of 200 million pages of information. Yet it can squeeze into a space that would fit 10 refrigerators. The supercomputer memorized the “urban dictionary” in 2013.

While the High Grade Zone (HGZ) has been the backbone of the Red Lake operation, with an average gold grade over two ounces per tonne, HGZ is expected to be depleted by 2020. Thus the need for more exploration to keep the mine going.

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The Google-owned star British artificial intelligence company DeepMind is in talks with the National Grid about a potential partnership, with the possibility of using the technology to make the supply of energy across the UK more efficient.

“There’s huge potential for predictive machine learning technology to help energy systems reduce their environmental impact,” said a spokesperson for the company.

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