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OrCam’s reading device, ElectReon’s ‘smart road’ tech, a sensor for farming and security drones all make the list.


1. OrCam Read, a smart reading support device developed by OrCam Technologies, the maker of artificial intelligence-based wearable devices to help the blind and visually impaired read texts via audio feedback. The company launched OrCam Read in 2,020 a handheld digital reader meant to help people with language processing challenges, including dyslexia. The device (priced at $1,990) captures and reads out full pages of text and digital screens, and follows voice commands.

In response to the so-called “labor shortage,” companies are looking to finally replace replace workers with machines — and robotics companies couldn’t be happier to oblige.

David Zapico, the CEO of robotics company Ametek Inc., told Bloomberg News that his company is “firing on all cylinders” because, as he put it, “people want to remove labor.”

He’s not alone in his musings. Executives at Hormel Foods Corp and Domino’s Pizza also confirmed to Bloomberg that they’re investing in automation in an effort to reduce labor costs and respond to a “tight labor supply,” as one Hormel vice president put it.

Circa 2019


Set against the backdrop of continuous AI improvements, the picture seems simple enough: machines get a little more capable every day, and every extra bit of intelligence brings a few more jobs within reach of automation. But the reality is more complex, operating at a far larger scale. In most cases, we’re not automating individual jobs but entire industries, as we meet more of our needs through massively scalable software.

It’s a huge shift in the way society works, and it doesn’t have to be a bad one. We just have to look at the big picture.

Circa 2020


A newly recruited firefighter in Los Angeles put out a major fire even before being formally introduced at a news conference. That new recruit is a robot.

The Thermite RS3, the first robotic firefighting vehicle in the United States, was scheduled to arrive at the news conference the morning of October 13 but it was diverted to a major emergency structure fire in the fashion district in Downtown Los Angeles earlier that day.

“It was exciting to see this unique piece of apparatus put into action on its first day in service,” said Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Erik Scott.

Inventors from more than 40 countries are in Qatar for the week-long Challenge and Innovation Forum on technology.
Super computers, cloud technology and robots are among the innovations on display.
Al Jazeera’s Victoria Gatenby reports from Doha.

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#Qatar

When you need to record the angle of something rotating, whether it’s a knob or a joint in a robotic arm, absolute rotary encoders are almost always the way to go. They’re cheap, they’re readily available, and it turns out you can make a pretty fantastic one out of a magnetic sensor, a ziptie, and a skateboard bearing.

When [Scott Bezek] got his hands on a AS5600 magnet sensor breakout board, that’s just what he did. The sensor itself is an IC situated in the middle of the board, which in Scott’s design sits on a 3D-printed carrier. A bearing mount sits atop it, which holds — you guessed it — a bearing. Specifically a standard 608 skateboard bearing, which is snapped into the mount and held securely by a ziptie cinched around the mount’s tabs. The final part is a 3D-printed knob with a tiny magnet embedded within, perpendicular to the axis of rotation. The knob slides into the bearing and the AS5600 reads the orientation of the magnet.

Of course, if you just wanted a rotary knob you could have just purchased an encoder and been done with it, but this method has its advantages. Maybe you can’t fit a commercially-available encoder in your design. Maybe you need the super-smooth rotation provided by the bearing. Or maybe you’re actually building that robotic arm — custom magnetic encoders like this one are extremely common in actuator design, and while the more industrial versions (usually) have fewer zipties, [Scott]’s design would fit right in.

The biggest tech company in China, Jack Ma’s Alibaba has just released the biggest, most efficient and newest Artificial Intelligence Model in the world. It’s almost 100 times smarter than GPT 3 and is even expected to surpass OpenAI’s yet to be released GPT 4 in both abilities and ease of use. The Alibaba M6 is a 10 trillion parameter model which in certain aspects even beats the human brain. But more importantly, China is currently beating the USA when it comes to their machine learning and deep learning technologies which could become dangerous as their leads extend and their secret government projects slowly come to light. OpenAI, Nvidia and Deepmind have a tough road toward Artificial super intelligence in front of them. China is starting to look scary but impressive.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Chinese AI is getting Scary.
01:17 What this AI does better than anyone else.
02:29 The Scary Prospects of Chinese AI Supremacy.
04:43 What is China’s goal with AI?
07:02 The Future of giant AI Models.
10:03 Last Words.

#ai #gpt4 #china