Lifeboat Foundation

Tuomas Sandholm, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, is not a poker player—or much of a poker fan, in fact—but he is fascinated by the game for much the same reason as the great game theorist John von Neumann before him. Von Neumann, who died in 1957, viewed poker as the perfect model for human decision making, for finding the balance between skill and chance that accompanies our every choice. He saw poker as the ultimate strategic challenge, combining as it does not just the mathematical elements of a game like chess but the uniquely human, psychological angles that are more difficult to model precisely—a view shared years later by Sandholm in his research with artificial intelligence.

“Poker is the main benchmark and challenge program for games of imperfect information,” Sandholm told me on a warm spring afternoon in 2018, when we met in his offices in Pittsburgh. The game, it turns out, has become the gold standard for developing artificial intelligence.

Tall and thin, with wire-frame glasses and neat brow hair framing a friendly face, Sandholm is behind the creation of three computer programs designed to test their mettle against human poker players: Claudico, Libratus, and most recently, Pluribus. (When we met, Libratus was still a toddler and Pluribus didn’t yet exist.) The goal isn’t to solve poker, as such, but to create algorithms whose decision making prowess in poker’s world of imperfect information and stochastic situations—situations that are randomly determined and unable to be predicted—can then be applied to other stochastic realms, like the military, business, government, cybersecurity, even health care.

The future Russian soldier is going to be able to control drone swarms, have landmine proof boots and an exoskeleton/suit to enhance their physical abilities and situational awareness.

Russia will integrate the ability to control small size attack drone swarms, robots, and exoskeletons into its next-generation soldier gear, in a development that feels more like a videogame update than reality.

I wish I could ride a robot. 😃

Weighing 15 tons and standing 17 foot tall, Megabots are a cross between Robot Wars on steroids and the ultimate demolition derby.

We piloted one for the first time.

Continue reading “Megabots Are Totally Wild” »

Online health care and medtech AI have risen in prominence in the country as the government seeks more equal access to medicines and treatment for its citizens, spread across a vast land mass. The urgency has been heightened by the impact from Covid-19 – with Indonesia recently overtaking the Philippines as the hardest-hit country in Southeast Asia.

Indonesia’s fast-growing manufacturing sector also presents opportunities for medtech innovation as well as research and development.

The robodog is now going to places where humans and real dogs cannot.

The robot helped create 3D maps of radioactivity.

“What will the next generation of artificial intelligence look like? Which novel AI approaches will unlock currently unimaginable possibilities in technology and business? This article highlights three emerging areas within AI that are poised to redefine the field—and society—in the years ahead. Study up now.”

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If anything, this breakneck pace is only accelerating. Five years from now, the field of AI will look very different than it does today. Methods that are currently considered cutting-edge will have become outdated; methods that today are nascent or on the fringes will be mainstream.

Continue reading “The Next Generation Of Artificial Intelligence” »

Today, we already have humans and robots working together. Kuka has deployed a new type of heavy industrial robots that can work and collaborate with humans, side-by-side.

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You got a little too caught up in Instagram and lost track of time. You dash over to your home office to quickly log into to work hoping no one will notice your tardiness. Alas, as soon as you connect, you get an immediate message from your boss: “You’re 17 seconds late to work! Your performance score will be impacted.” Ugh! It’s tough working for an AI boss.

Continue reading “Worried About AI Taking Your Job? More Likely, It Will Becomes Your Boss” »

MIT looked at the original Roboat as “quarter-scale” option, with the Roboat II being half-scale; they’re slowly working up to the point of a full-scale option that can carry four to six passengers. That bigger version is already under construction in Amsterdam, but there’s no word on when it’ll be ready for testing. In the meantime, Roboat II seems like it can pretty effectively navigate Amsterdam — MIT says that it autonomously navigated the city’s canals for three hours collecting data and returned to where it left with an error margin of less than seven inches.

Going forward, the MIT team expects to keep improving the Roboat’s algorithms to make it better able to deal with the challenges a boat might find, like disturbances from currents and waves. They’re also working to make it more capable of identifying and “understanding” objects it comes across so it can better deal with the environment it’s in. Everything the half-scale Roboat II learns will naturally be applied to the full-scale version that’s being worked on now. There’s no word on when we might see that bigger Roboat out in the waters, though.

Elon Musk has extended his thanks to Tesla owners who received the company’s limited Full Self-Driving beta last week. The information Tesla is gathering from early access FSD beta testers will be invaluable as the company’s AI team continues to enhance and refine the EV automaker’s autonomous driving software.

The founder of Tesla Owners Club Vancouver Islands James Locke asked Elon Musk about his view on the content early access FSD testers were sharing. “Yes, very helpful,” said the Tesla CEO. “Thanks to all beta testers.”

Last week, Musk announced that Tesla plans to roll out the FSD beta to the general public later this year. Tesla will need all the information it can get to make sure that the full release of the Full Self-Driving beta goes smoothly.