Lifeboat Foundation

Elon Musk’s Neuralink has a straightforward outlook on artificial intelligence: “If you can’t beat em, join em.” The company means that quite literally — it’s building a device that aims to connect our brains with electronics, which would enable us, in theory, to control computers with our thoughts.

But how? What material would companies like Neuralink use to connect electronics with human tissue?

One potential solution was recently revealed at the American Chemical Society’s Fall 2020 Virtual Meeting & Expo. A team of researchers from the University of Delaware presented a new biocompatible polymer coating that could help devices better fuse with the brain.

Mercedes’ new AI screen is extremely wide! Check out how it could up the stakes against Tesla.

Deep learning has come a long way since the days when it could only recognize handwritten characters on checks and envelopes. Today, deep neural networks have become a key component of many computer vision applications, from photo and video editors to medical software and self-driving cars.

Roughly fashioned after the structure of the brain, neural networks have come closer to seeing the world as humans do. But they still have a long way to go, and they make mistakes in situations where humans would never err.

These situations, generally known as adversarial examples, change the behavior of an AI model in befuddling ways. Adversarial machine learning is one of the greatest challenges of current artificial intelligence systems. They can lead to machine learning models failing in unpredictable ways or becoming vulnerable to cyberattacks.

We’re witnessing the emergence of something called “augmented creativity,” in which humans use AI to help them understand the deluge of data.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon developed an alternate method: an AI-based approach to mining the patent and research databases for ideas that could be combined to form interesting solutions to specific problems. Their system uses analogies to help connect work from two seemingly distinct areas, which they believe makes innovation faster and a lot cheaper.

Augmented creativity

Continue reading “‘Augmented creativity’: How AI can accelerate human invention” »

But the MIT report also acknowledges that while fears of an imminent jobs apocalypse have been over-hyped, the way technology has been deployed over recent decades has polarized the economy, with growth in both white-collar work and low-paid service work at the expense of middle-tier occupations like receptionists, clerks, and assembly-line workers.

This is not an inevitable consequence of technological change, though, say the authors. The problem is that the spoils from technology-driven productivity gains have not been shared equally. The report notes that while US productivity has risen 66 percent since 1978, compensation for production workers and those in non-supervisory roles has risen only 10 percent.

“People understand that automation can make the country richer and make them poorer, and that they’re not sharing in those gains,” economist David Autor, a co-chair of the task force, said in a press release. “We need to restore the synergy between rising productivity and improvements in labor market opportunity.”

U.S. Navy Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, and AI Portfolio Manager, Office of Naval Research.

Brett Vaughan is the U.S. Navy Chief Artificial Intelligence (AI) Officer and AI Portfolio Manager at the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

Continue reading “Brett Vaughan — U.S. Navy Chief AI Officer and AI Portfolio Manager, Office of Naval Research” »

At the same time, there was indeed more action. In one major victory, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM banned or suspended their sale of face recognition to law enforcement, after the killing of George Floyd spurred global protests against police brutality. It was the culmination of two years of fighting by researchers and civil rights activists to demonstrate the ineffective and discriminatory effects of the companies’ technologies. Another change was small yet notable: for the first time ever, NeurIPS, one of the most prominent AI research conferences, required researchers to submit an ethics statement with their papers.

So here we are at the start of 2021, with more public and regulatory attention on AI’s influence than ever before. My New Year’s resolution: Let’s make it count. Here are five hopes that I have for AI in the coming year.

This robot helps with the sorting of trash for recycling through AI. 😃

https://youtu.be/z_TBFRnzIiw

The Max-AI by Bulk Handling Systems (BHS) is a collaborative recycling robot that uses artificial intelligence and deep learning to help humans recycle more efficiently and reliably. (More info: https://youtu.be/z_TBFRnzIiw)

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Flying cars are fine — but why use a car when you can have a motorcycle instead? YC-backed startup JetPack Aviation wants to answer that question with the world’s first flying motorcycle, a personal aircraft dubbed “The Speeder,” a name that Star Wars fans will surely appreciate. Now, JetPack has raised a seed round of $2 million from investors indulging Draper Associates, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, YC, Cathexis Ventures and a group of angels that it says will fund the development of the Speeder’s first functional prototype.

Back in March, JetPack revealed its plans for the Speeder, which it says will provide a fully stabilized ride that’s either pilot-controlled or fully autonomous. It can take off and land vertically, and reach top speeds of potentially over 400 MPH. There are no exposed rotors systems, which make it a lot safer and easier to operate than a lot of other VTOL designs and helicopters, and the company says it can also be refueled in less than 5 minutes, which is a dramatically shorter turnaround time for powering up versus an electric vehicle.

Continue reading “JetPack Aviation raises $2M to build the prototype of its flying motorcycle” »