Lifeboat Foundation

Google’s AutoML makes it easier to design better AI.

There’s just not enough tech talent out there.

Rethink Robotics co-founder and CTO, former CSAIL director and all-around robot luminary Rodney Brooks joined the Disrupt New York stage this afternoon to tackle some complex questions, ranging from robots place in the living room to the battlefield.

Brooks has a fair bit of experience in both categories, as a cofounder of iRobot, whose product offerings have ranging from vacuuming to bomb diffusion. And while his current company deals more in the realm of factory automation, a number of these ethical issues still clearly weigh heavily on the Australian roboticist.

It was a question about whether robots should be considered unfit for any human tasks that really caused Brooks to ponder their place in the world.

Continue reading “‘A robot doesn’t have to shoot back,’ Rodney Brooks says of machines in the military” »

These fighter jets can fly themselves.

The truck also offers “major environmental upsides,” Volvo said, since “gear changing, steering and speed are constantly optimized for low fuel consumption and emissions.”

Volvo plans to test the autonomous truck with Renova through the end of the year.

Continue reading “Volvo’s Self-Driving Garbage Truck Wants Your Trash” »

An artificial Intelligence would consider all the facts before making the most rational decision for the greatest good. What could possibly go wrong?

Ronching blue or stummy beige? —

An AI invented a bunch of new paint colors that are hilariously wrong.

Let’s just say this neural network won’t make you fear the robot uprising.

Continue reading “An AI invented a bunch of new paint colors that are hilariously wrong” »

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratories and Lockheed Martin have demonstrated a mixed formation of manned and unmanned F-16s in a simulated combat environment.

The Have Raider demonstration at Edwards Air Force Base in California included two phases, Lockheed announced on April 10, 2017. The first phase, Have Raider I, focused on formation-flying. Have Raider II sent the pilotless F-16 on a mock bombing run through “dynamic” enemy defenses.

“This demonstration is an important milestone in AFRL’s maturation of technologies needed to integrate manned and unmanned aircraft in a strike package,” Capt. Andrew Petry, an AFRL engineer, said in a Lockheed press release.

Continue reading “U.S. Air Force Sends Robotic F-16s Into Mock Combat” »

Artificial intelligence is already helping determine your future – whether it’s your Netflix viewing preferences, your suitability for a mortgage or your compatibility with a prospective employer. But can we agree, at least for now, that having an AI determine your guilt or innocence in a court of law is a step too far?

Worryingly, it seems this may already be happening. When American Chief Justice John Roberts recently attended an event, he was asked whether he could forsee a day “when smart machines, driven with artificial intelligences, will assist with courtroom fact finding or, more controversially even, judicial decision making”. He responded: “It’s a day that’s here and it’s putting a significant strain on how the judiciary goes about doing things”.

Continue reading “AI sentencing criminals is a bad idea. This is why” »