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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,676

Digital Technology Demands A New Political Philosophy

Men like Zuckerberg and Musk are the subject of fascination. Their character, their genius, their flaws — all are treated to feverish scrutiny. Since Musk’s bid for Twitter, there has been a predictable flurry of speculation: does he know what he’s doing? Is he a troll or a revolutionary? Will he improve conditions of free speech? What, if anything, will he do about online harassment and extremism?

Though valuable and interesting, it is possible that these kinds of questions obscure the deeper issue, or at least the longer-term one. At root, the big question for the future of powerful technologies is this: whether they are ultimately economic entities which should be governed according to market principles, or whether they are in fact political in nature, and so should be governed by democratic norms and principles. In the long run, the answer we provide to this question will significantly affect the course of democracy around the world — more, in any event, than whether Musk himself understands the concept of “free speech absolutism.”

Many other advanced democracies are tacking toward the political/democratic option. The UK is considering a landmark Online Safety Bill, which will place strict duties on social media platforms. Off the back of the General Data Protection Regulation, the EU is readying a swathe of new measures — an Artificial Intelligence Act, a Digital Services Act, a Digital Markets Act — all of which will curb the power of tech firms.

Researchers demonstrate significant energy savings using neuromorphic hardware

For the first time TU Graz’s Institute of Theoretical Computer Science and Intel Labs demonstrated experimentally that a large neural network can process sequences such as sentences while consuming four to sixteen times less energy while running on neuromorphic hardware than non-neuromorphic hardware. The new research based on Intel Labs’ Loihi neuromorphic research chip that draws on insights from neuroscience to create chips that function similar to those in the biological brain.

The research was funded by The Human Brain Project (HBP), one of the largest research projects in the world with more than 500 scientists and engineers across Europe studying the human brain. The results of the research are published in Nature Machine Intelligence (“Memory for AI Applications in Spike-based Neuromorphic Hardware”).

The close-up shows an Intel Nahuku board, each of which contains eight to 32 Intel Loihi neuromorphic research chips. (Image: Tim Herman, Intel Corporation)

Cathie Wood Sees This Technology Accelerating GDP Growth To 50% Per Year

Noted fund manager and Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood on Saturday suggested that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will likely give a strong lift to economic growth.

The fund manager is of the view that a breakthrough in AGI will lead to the acceleration of GDP within the next six to 12 years. The analyst estimates that GDP growth will increase from the 3–5% year-over-year rate currently to 30–50% per year. New DNA will win,’ she added.

Bam Logo

On large, isolated construction sites, reliable remote operations are a game changer. See how BAM Nuttall remotely deployed Spot for 3D laser scanning using a p… See more.

On a large and remote construction site in Shetland, where the team is battling the elements, covering large distances every day, the Trimble and Boston Dynamics integrated robot solution has become man’s newest four-legged friend.

BAM Nuttall has successfully trialled the integrated Trimble X7 laser scanner with Boston Dynamics’ Spot® robot in a remote construction setting — utilising a private stand-alone 5G network for remote control — in the first use case of its kind.

Enlisting Spot as the newest member of the site team, the four-legged robot has used specially adapted 3D laser scanning equipment to collect data and create site records. Spot and the Trimble X7 payload were controlled remotely using a private 5G communications network covering the 55,176 m2 site, marking the robot’s first 5G deployment in the U.K.

How Amazon robots navigate congestion

When Amazon Robotics scientists pondered adding mobile robots to fulfillment centers, they knew Amazon’s scale would present a unique challenge: Robot congestio… See more.

Amazon fulfillment centers use thousands of mobile robots. To keep products moving, Amazon Robotics researchers have crafted unique solutions.

How Americans think about artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is spreading through society into some of the most important sectors of people’s lives – from health care and legal services to agriculture and transportation.1 As Americans watch this proliferation, they are worried in some ways and excited in others.

In broad strokes, a larger share of Americans say they are “more concerned than excited” by the increased use of AI in daily life than say the opposite. Nearly half of U.S. adults (45%) say they are equally concerned and excited. Asked to explain in their own words what concerns them most about AI, some of those who are more concerned than excited cite their worries about potential loss of jobs, privacy considerations and the prospect that AI’s ascent might surpass human skills – and others say it will lead to a loss of human connection, be misused or be relied on too much.

But others are “more excited than concerned,” and they mention such things as the societal improvements they hope will emerge, the time savings and efficiencies AI can bring to daily life and the ways in which AI systems might be helpful and safer at work. And people have mixed views on whether three specific AI applications are good or bad for society at large.

China launches an autonomous mothership full of autonomous drones

China christened a remarkable new 290-foot ship last week – the world’s first semi-autonomous drone carrier. It’ll carry, launch, recover and co-ordinate the actions of more than 50 other autonomous aerial, surface and underwater vehicles.

The Huangpu Wenchong Shipyard began construction on the Zhu Hai Yun last July in Guangzhou. According to the South China Morning Post, it’s the first carrier of its kind, a self-contained autonomous platform that will roll out with everything necessary to perform a fully integrated operation including drone aircraft, boats and submersibles.

China doesn’t expect it to navigate busy seaports by itself, like the Japanese autonomous container ship Suzaku we wrote about last week. Instead, the Zhu Hai Yun will run on remote control until it’s out in the open water, and then its self-driving systems will take over to execute whatever mission it’s running.

General AI through scaling: Meta’s AI chief Yann LeCun speaks out

Does the breakthrough to general AI need more data and computing power above all else? Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Metaon the recent debate about scaling sparked by Deepmind’s Gato.

The recent successes of large AI models such as OpenAI’s DALL-E 2, Google’s PaLM and Deepmind’s Flamingo have sparked a debate about their significance for progress towards general AI. Deepmind’s Gato has recently given a particular boost to the debate, which has been conducted publicly, especially on Twitter.

Gato is a Transformer model trained with numerous data modalities, including images, text, proprioception or joint moments. All training data is processed by Gato in a token sequence similar to those of large language models. Thanks to the versatile training, Gato can text, describe images, play video games or control robotic arms. Deepmind tested the AI model with over 600 benchmarks.

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