Lifeboat Foundation

A 20-second video from inside a Chinese humanoid robot factory is causing some consternation today around social media. It shows a range of highly realistic-looking, partially skinned humanoids under construction.

The video, uploaded by user ‘meimei4515,’ is uncredited, but shows several moving androids with human-like hair and skin – in stark contrast to most of the general-purpose humanoids we’d normally cover, which are designed to look like robots, rather than trying to fool anyone.

Continue reading “Chinese humanoid factory video plunges back into the uncanny valley” »

Borophene is already thinner and more conductive than graphene, and scientists have altered it to make it even more special.

Google DeepMind’s groundbreaking new AI predicts not only the structure of proteins, ligands, DNA, RNA and “all of life’s molecules,” but how they’ll interact. It promises a radical, revolutionary acceleration in many fields of science.

US defence giant Northrop Grumman has tested an underwater drone that looks like a monster manta ray. The drone is capable of carrying multiple payloads of various sizes, and the machine is autonomous and war-ready.

#us #defence #drone.

Continue reading “US military flaunts massive unmanned ‘Manta Ray’ | WION” »

Disruptive innovations in technology, such as humanoid robots and electric vehicles, will lead to significant changes in labor, economy, and society, posing both opportunities and challenges for the future Questions to inspire discussion What are the predictions about the future of electric vehicles? —Tony Seba and hi.

Questions to inspire discussion.

What is the potential impact of humanoid robots on human labor?
—Humanoid robots are on the verge of disrupting human labor across various industries, leading to a new era of material superabundance and prosperity within the next 10 to 20 years.

From childhood friends to two of the most important players in AI, the two Londoners have found themselves on opposite sides of an increasingly tense race between Big Tech’s oldest rivals.

Hassabis and Suleyman seem to view their relationship somewhat differently.

A team of AI researchers at Microsoft Research Asia has developed an AI application that converts a still image of a person and an audio track into an animation that accurately portrays the individual speaking or singing the audio track with appropriate facial expressions.

The team has published a paper describing how they created the app on the arXiv preprint server; video samples are available on the research project page.

The research team sought to animate still images talking and singing using any provided backing audio track, while also displaying believable facial expressions. They clearly succeeded with the development of VASA-1, an AI system that turns static images, whether captured by a camera, drawn, or painted, into what they describe as “exquisitely synchronized” animations.

The rapid progress of humanoid robot development is nothing short of astounding. Less than 12 months after introducing its 6th-gen general-purpose humanoid, Canada’s Sanctuary AI has pulled back the curtains on the next iteration of Phoenix.

Sanctuary has been working on a general-purpose humanoid robot for a few years now, with much of the development focus on building and training the upper torso to perform an array of tasks so we don’t have to – including putting labels on boxes, bagging groceries, moving packages, scanning products and soldering. However, it seems that most of the “Robots Doing Stuff” series of videos are actually showing the bots being teleoperated, which is how they’re taught to perform tasks.

Continue reading “General-purpose humanoid is faster on the uptake, works for longer” »