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Archive for the ‘robotics/AI’ category: Page 1159

Nov 27, 2021

New AI-based theory explains your weird dreams

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Dreams are weird. According to a new theory, that’s what makes them useful.

Nov 27, 2021

A deep learning method to automatically enhance dog animations

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin and University of Bath have recently developed a model based on deep neural networks that could help to improve the quality of animations containing quadruped animals, such as dogs. The framework they created was presented at the MIG (Motion, Interaction & Games) 2021 conference, an event where researchers present some of the latest technologies for producing high-quality animations and videogames.

“We were interested in working with non-human data,” Donal Egan, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “We chose for practicality reasons, as they are probably the easiest animal to obtain data for.”

Creating good quality animations of dogs and other animals is a challenging task. This is mainly because these animals move in complex ways and have unique gaits with specific footfall patterns. Egan and his colleagues wanted to create a framework that could simplify the creation of quadruped animations, producing more convincing content for both animated videos and videogames.

Nov 27, 2021

Meet the robot that can write poetry and create artworks

Posted by in categories: information science, robotics/AI

When people think of artificial intelligence, the images that often come to mind are of the sinister robots that populate the worlds of “The Terminator,” “i, Robot,” “Westworld,” and “Blade Runner.” For many years, fiction has told us that AI is often used for evil rather than for good.

But what we may not usually associate with AI is art and poetry — yet that’s exactly what Ai-Da, a highly realistic robot invented by Aidan Meller in Oxford, central England, spends her time creating. Ai-Da is the world’s first ultra-realistic humanoid robot artist, and on Friday she gave a public performance of poetry that she wrote using her algorithms in celebration of the great Italian poet Dante.

The recital took place at the University of Oxford’s renowned Ashmolean Museum as part of an exhibition marking the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. Ai-Da’s poem was produced as a response to the poet’s epic “Divine Comedy” — which Ai-Da consumed in its entirety, allowing her to then use her algorithms to take inspiration from Dante’s speech patterns, and by using her own data bank of words, create her own work.

Nov 27, 2021

China backs UN pledge to ban (its own) social scoring

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

UNESCO member countries endorse plan for ‘ethical AI,’ calling for clear red lines.

Nov 27, 2021

AI That Tries To Be Funny Is Not Necessarily A Laughing Matter, Especially When Used By Self-Driving Cars

Posted by in categories: humor, robotics/AI, transportation

Humor can be quite useful.

Let’s see how.

Suppose you are having a bad day (I realize this seems a bit dour and gloomy, but the venerated gallantry of well-placed humor will turn this around, wait and see).

Continue reading “AI That Tries To Be Funny Is Not Necessarily A Laughing Matter, Especially When Used By Self-Driving Cars” »

Nov 27, 2021

The Epistemology of Deep Learning — Yann LeCun

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Deep Learning: Alchemy or Science?

Topic: The Epistemology of Deep Learning.
Speaker: Yann LeCun.
Affiliation: Facebook AI Research/New York University.
Date: February 22, 2019

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Nov 27, 2021

Time: Do the past, present, and future exist all at once? | Big Think

Posted by in categories: alien life, information science, mobile phones, neuroscience, physics, robotics/AI, time travel

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Everything we do as living organisms is dependent, in some capacity, on time. The concept is so complex that scientists still argue whether it exists or if it is an illusion. In this video, astrophysicist Michelle Thaller, science educator Bill Nye, author James Gleick, and neuroscientist Dean Buonomano discuss how the human brain perceives of the passage of time, the idea in theoretical physics of time as a fourth dimension, and the theory that space and time are interwoven. Thaller illustrates Einstein’s theory of relativity, Buonomano outlines eternalism, and all the experts touch on issues of perception, definition, and experience. Check Dean Buonomano’s latest book Your Brain Is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time at https://amzn.to/2GY1n1z.

Continue reading “Time: Do the past, present, and future exist all at once? | Big Think” »

Nov 27, 2021

Can AI Truly Give Us a Glimpse of Lost Masterpieces?

Posted by in categories: media & arts, robotics/AI

Recent projects used machine learning to resurrect paintings by Klimt and Rembrandt. They raise questions about what computers can understand about art.

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IN 1945, FIRE claimed three of Gustav Klimt’s most controversial paintings. Commissioned in 1,894 for the University of Vienna, “the Faculty Paintings”—as they became known—were unlike any of the Austrian symbolist’s previous work. As soon as he presented them, critics were in an uproar over their dramatic departure from the aesthetics of the time. Professors at the university rejected them immediately, and Klimt withdrew from the project. Soon thereafter, the works found their way into other collections. During World War II, they were placed in a castle north of Vienna for safekeeping, but the castle burned down, and the paintings presumably went with it. All that remains today are some black-and-white photographs and writings from the time. Yet I am staring right at them.

Continue reading “Can AI Truly Give Us a Glimpse of Lost Masterpieces?” »

Nov 27, 2021

SmartFarm harvests air moisture for autonomous, self-sustaining urban farming

Posted by in categories: food, robotics/AI, space, sustainability

Advanced hydrogel used in SmartFarm was also tested for space-based agriculture.

Nov 27, 2021

Machine learning solves the who’s who problem in NMR spectra of organic crystals

Posted by in categories: chemistry, particle physics, robotics/AI

Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy—a technique that measures the frequencies emitted by the nuclei of some atoms exposed to radio waves in a strong magnetic field—can be used to determine chemical and 3D structures as well as the dynamics of molecules and materials.

A necessary initial step in the analysis is the so-called chemical shift assignment. This involves assigning each peak in the NMR spectrum to a given atom in the molecule or material under investigation. This can be a particularly complicated task. Assigning chemical shifts experimentally can be challenging and generally requires time-consuming multi-dimensional correlation experiments. Assignment by comparison to statistical analysis of experimental chemical shift databases would be an alternative solution, but there is no such for molecular solids.

A team of researchers including EPFL professors Lyndon Emsley, head of the Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, Michele Ceriotti, head of the Laboratory of Computational Science and Modeling and Ph.D. student Manuel Cordova decided to tackle this problem by developing a method of assigning NMR spectra of organic crystals probabilistically, directly from their 2D chemical structures.