Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,659

Robotic hand can crush beer cans and hold eggs without breaking them

😃

A highly dexterous, human-like robotic hand with fingertip touch sensors can delicately hold eggs, use tweezers to pick up computer chips and crush drink cans. The hand could eventually be used as a prosthetic or in robots that use artificial intelligence to manipulate objects.

Weighing 1.1 kilograms, the hand is 22 centimetres long and made of steel and aluminium. Each finger is driven by three small motors that fit within the palm and move metal parts that act like tendons around a total of 20 joints. This enables the digits to tilt sideways, to flex back and forth and to fold, giving the hand a range of movements comparable to that of a human hand.

Uikyum Kim at Ajou University in South Korea and his colleagues, who built the hand, say it can hold an egg without cracking it, pour drinks and crush aluminium cans.

In the Age of AI (full film) | FRONTLINE

A documentary exploring how artificial intelligence is changing life as we know it — from jobs to privacy to a growing rivalry between the U.S. and China.

FRONTLINE investigates the promise and perils of AI and automation, tracing a new industrial revolution that will reshape and disrupt our world, and allow the emergence of a surveillance society.

This journalism is made possible by viewers like you. Support your local PBS station here: http://www.pbs.org/donate.

Love FRONTLINE? Find us on the PBS Video App where there are more than 250 FRONTLINE documentaries available for you to watch any time: https://to.pbs.org/FLVideoApp.

Subscribe on YouTube: http://bit.ly/1BycsJW

#ArtificialIntelligence #Automation #documentary.

Continue reading “In the Age of AI (full film) | FRONTLINE” | >

Harnessing the power of mitochondria to beat Parkinson’s

Boston-based biotech Vincere Biosciences is on a mission to combat neurodegenerative disease by improving the quality of the mitochondria in our cells. The company was spun out from AI drug discovery company NeuroInitiative in 2018 after its platform identified that modulation of certain enzymes to repair mitochondrial health “may slow or stop the progression of Parkinson’s disease and other age-related disorders.”

In addition to seed funding, Vincere has received grants from the National Institutes of Health and Michael J Fox Foundation, and the company is now gearing up for a Series A funding round in early 2022.

Longevity. Technology: Mitochondria’s role in longevity is a hot topic. Often referred to as the “powerhouse of the cell”, these miniature organs within our cells play a key role in providing the energy needed for growth, repair and rejuvenation. As we age, our mitochondria begin to decline in function, and this decline is linked to a range of age-related diseases. We caught up with Vincere’s co-founder and CEO Dr Spring Behrouz to find out how her company aims to tap into the potential of these small but mighty biological players.

Neural networks can hide malware, and scientists are worried

This article is part of our reviews of AI research papers, a series of posts that explore the latest findings in artificial intelligence.

With their millions and billions of numerical parameters, deep learning models can do many things: detect objects in photos, recognize speech, generate text—and hide malware. Neural networks can embed malicious payloads without triggering anti-malware software, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Illinois have found.

Their malware-hiding technique, EvilModel, sheds light on the security concerns of deep learning, which has become a hot topic of discussion in machine learning and cybersecurity conferences. As deep learning becomes ingrained in applications we use every day, the security community needs to think about new ways to protect users against their emerging threats.

NASA Begins Testing Robotics for Daring Space Mission To Bring First Samples Back From Mars

Engineers are developing the crucial hardware needed for a series of daring space missions that will be carried out in the coming decade.

Testing has already begun on what would be the most sophisticated endeavor ever attempted at the Red Planet: bringing rock and sediment samples from Mars.

Mars is the second smallest planet in our solar system and the fourth planet from the sun. Iron oxide is prevalent in Mars’ surface resulting in its reddish color and its nickname “The Red Planet.” Mars’ name comes from the Roman god of war.

Uber Eats and Motional are working on driverless food delivery for 2022

AI doesn’t just want to eat your lunch — sometimes it wants to deliver it, too.

Driverless tech provider Motional and Uber Eats plan to add a dash of autonomy to food delivery next year in Santa Monica, serving up meal kits from select restaurants. The news was first reported by AiThority.

The plan is for food deliveries to come via Motional’s all-electric Hyundai IONIQ 5-based robotaxis. Motional said this will be the first time its vehicles are used to deliver food. It’s not clear whether humans or robots will bring the meal kits to customers’ doorsteps.

Roche, Genentech, Recursion Launch Up-to-$12B AI Drug Discovery Effort

Roche and its Genentech subsidiary have committed up to $12 billion to Recursion in return for using its Recursion Operating System (OS) to advance therapies in 40 programs that include “key areas” of neuroscience and an undisclosed oncology indication.

Recursion OS applies machine learning and high-content screening methods in what the companies said would be a “transformational” model for tech-enabled target and drug discovery.

The integrated, multi-faceted OS is designed to generate, analyze and glean insights from large-scale proprietary biological and chemical datasets—in this case, extensive single-cell perturbation screening data from Roche and Genentech—by integrating wet-lab and dry-lab biology at scale to phenomically capture chemical and genetic alterations in neuroscience-related cell types and select cancer cell lines.

Elon Musk Says No Other CEO Cares About Safety as Much as Him

Referring to Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self Driving features.

Elon Musk has claimed that no other CEO cares as much about safety as he does in an interview with Financial Times.

In the year that has seen his private wealth balloon like never before, Musk has also been showered with titles, beginning with the richest person in the world and more recently, the person of the year by Time Magazine. The Time accolade is probably one of the many titles Musk will receive as he embarks on his mission to send humanity to Moon with his space company, SpaceX.

Before we get there though, there are some issues with his other company Tesla that needs addressing. The company’s short history is peppered with incidents that have risked human lives as it pushes the boundaries of autonomous driving. The company offers features called Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) which are still in beta stages and have been involved in accidents. In August, this year, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched an investigation into the Autopilot feature that involves 750,000 Tesla vehicles.

Speaking to FT, Musk said that he hasn’t misled Tesla buyers about Autopilot or FSD. “Read what it says when you order a Tesla. Read what it says when you turn it on. It’s very, very clear,” said Musk during the interview. He also cited the high ratings Tesla cars have achieved on safety and also used SpaceX’s association with NASA to send humans into space to highlight his focus on safety. He also went a step further to say that he doesn’t see any other CEO on the planet care as much about safety as he does.

Although Musk is spot on about the high safety ratings of the cars and even NASA’s faith in SpaceX to ferry its astronauts, the Tesla website does not give the impression that the Autopilot or FSD is in beta and cannot be completely relied upon. Rather a promotional video even goes on to claim that the person in the driver’s seat is only for legal reasons and does not even have his hands on the steering wheel at all times, a requirement for enabling Autopilot. according to Tesla’s own terms.

Full Story:

Continue reading “Elon Musk Says No Other CEO Cares About Safety as Much as Him” | >

France latest to slap Clearview AI with order to delete data

Controversial facial recognition company, Clearview AI, which has amassed a database of some 10 billion images by scraping selfies off the Internet so it can sell an identity-matching service to law enforcement, has been hit with another order to delete people’s data.

France’s privacy watchdog said today that Clearview has breached Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In an announcement of the breach finding, the CNIL also gives Clearview formal notice to stop its “unlawful processing” and says it must delete user data within two months.

/* */