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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,633

New intelligent material could become a “quantum brain”

Scientists created an intelligent material that acts as a brain by physically changing when it learns. This is an important step toward a new generation of computers that could dramatically increase computing power while using less energy.

Artificial intelligence imitates human intelligence by recognizing patterns and learning new things. Currently, it is run on machine learning software. But the “smarter” computers get, the more computing power they require. This can lead to a sizable energy footprint, which could destabilize the computer.

In the last seven years, computer usage has increased by 300,000-fold. Since 2012 the amount of computing power used to train the largest AI models has doubled every 3.4 months, the MIT Technology Review reports. And, the escalating costs of deep learning, can have environmental costs too. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, found that a common large AI model emits more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide in its lifetime, nearly five times that of the average American car.

Self-Driving Farm Robot Uses Lasers To Kill 100,000 Weeds An Hour, Saving Land And Farmers From Toxic Herbicides

The nutrient content of our vegetables is down 40% over the last two decades and our soil health is suffering due to increasingly harsh herbicide use, according to Carbon Robotics founder Paul Mikesell. And farmers are increasingly concerned about the long-term health impacts of continually spraying chemicals on their fields.

But not weeding will cost half your crop, killing profitability.

The solution?

Aquaponic farms in shipping containers: The future of food? | Challengers

Mike straight, founder & CEO of farmpod.

Up next ►► Vertical farms could take over the world https://youtu.be/J4SaSfnHK3I Instead of shipping food all around the world, imagine your own food coming from your farm in a shipping container, just outside your backdoor. That’s the vision of FarmPod, a St. Croix-based startup looking to completely redefine our relationship with food with a fully automated vertical aquaponic system. This self-contained, solar powered farming method uses a fraction of the water and space of a traditional farm, and even uses zero pesticides. The closed loop system essentially mimics nature’s ecosystems, like a pond. Lettuce, strawberries, kale, collard greens and more can grow in the pod. And, since the produce doesn’t need to be picked early to be shipped to a grocery store, the owner can enjoy their harvest at its peak nutritional value and taste. Produce isn’t all — FarmPod can provide an aquaponic home for tilapia, catfish, crayfish, koi, and freshwater prawns. FarmPod uses automated software and hardware to make their pod’s aquaponics system as easy to run as possible. Mike Straight, the creator and CEO of FarmPod, wants to provide a healthy, hyper-localized source of food with a minimal carbon footprint. “We’re trying to feed the world one pod at a time by hyper-localizing farming, and taking the farm and putting it right in front of the place that needs to use it,” says Straight. Read the full story here ►►
https://www.freethink.com/series/challengers/aquaponics ◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠Read more of our stories on aquaponics and sustainable farming:
Vertical farms could take over the world.
►► https://www.freethink.com/series/hard-reset?media_id=avWfzm8Q
How vertical farming can save the planet and feed the world.
►► https://www.freethink.com/series/make-it-count?media_id=bEIXKavd.
New startup takes vertical farming underground — literally.
►► https://www.freethink.com/environment/underground-farm ◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠About Freethink.
No politics, no gossip, no cynics. At Freethink, we believe the daily news should inspire people to build a better world. While most media is fueled by toxic politics and negativity, we focus on solutions: the smartest people, the biggest ideas, and the most ground breaking technology shaping our future.◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡Watch our original series:
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Hello Robot, Why Overly-Realistic AI Is Bad

Am I talking to a software robot or a human? It’s a question that many of us will have posed at some point when we are online interacting with a web interface chatbot with its chirpy ‘Hi! Can I help?’ message flags and discussion box.

Some of us deliberately try and second guess these bots in order to be able to work out whether we are talking to a machine or a person. We do this because we somehow hope that this knowledge will enable us to assess more accurately how much help we are likely to get — and so, perhaps, get an idea of how much effort we should put into explaining our customer issues or requests.

Right now, it is not necessarily that difficult to know if you are speaking to an Artificial Intelligence (AI) engine. The Turing test was of course established to rate the point at which people can’t tell the difference between a human and a machine. The AI software robot ‘bots’ that have passed the Turing test so far have been given quirky personality traits to mask the challenges that even the best AI engines have when dealing with human conversational challenges.

AI’s Disruption Of The Strategy Gaming Space Proves That Machines Are Getting Smarter

With the proliferation of AI programs into the strategy gaming spaces, should human players bother competing at all? In a world where artificial intelligence (AI) learns from its mistakes and progresses with every match, it’s hard to tell. A computer can learn from its mistakes in an instant and play millions of hands in seconds.

While it might take a human a lifetime to master the game of poker, an AI could become unbeatable overnight. This reality has raised a lot of questions in the world of strategy games.

AI is an ever-evolving field that can be difficult to understand. One of the most common ways for non-techies to get introduced to AI is through online poker, where humans are pitted against artificial intelligence in a game of cards. Which raises the question: when does one become indistinguishable from the other?

Becoming Immortal for 10,000$? — Upload Your Mind THIS DECADE!

Becoming Immortal through Mind Uploading sounds like something that’ll only be possible around the 2100’s. But amazingly, a group of scientists at Nectome are working on giving us the ability to live forever inside of a computer simulation by the end of this decade for around 10000$.

Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, has long predicted that people will be able to upload their entire brains to computers and become digitally immortal by 2045. Kurzweil made this claim for many years, e.g. during his speech in 2013 at the Global Futures 2045 International Congress in New York, which claims to subscribe to a similar set of beliefs. Mind uploading has also been advocated by a number of researchers in neuroscience and artificial intelligence, such as the late Marvin Minsky.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 The Future is near.
01:46 How this procedure works.
03:31 The development of this technology.
04:24 Is this actually possible to achieve?
06:58 The ethical concerns.
07:40 Last Words.
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#longevity #minduploading #bci

Carbon Map

*To date, most studies have focused on understanding how much carbon is stored above ground (in trees and other plants, for example). This research, however, revealed that when you look below ground and get into deeper levels of soil, there are massive deposits of carbon.*

Canada’s first-ever national carbon map reveals the location of billions — yes, billions — of tonnes of carbon stored in ecosystems across the country. This data, and how we use it, could alter the pace of climate change.

Over the span of two years, researchers fed data from existing soil samples collected from across the country, as well as long-term satellite data and topographic and climate variables, into a machine-learning algorithm. Researchers were able to estimate carbon at a 250-metre spatial resolution in different carbon pools (soils and plant biomass), as well as at multiple depths (1−2 metres).

Tens of thousands of field measurements were fed into a machine-learning algorithm to train satellite observations, including space-based laser scanning data, to estimate carbon stocks in plant biomass and soils across Canada. The resulting national carbon map will have a huge impact on the way conservation activities and policies are approached to prioritize nature-based climate solutions.

## ORIGINAL PAPER

Large soil carbon storage in terrestrial ecosystems of Canada

Continue reading “Carbon Map” | >