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Category: robotics/AI – Page 1,847

How IoT and AI are helping keep truck drivers safe

A truck fleet accident costs an average of $16,500 in damages and $57,500 in injury-related costs for a total of $74,000. “This does not include a broad range of ‘hidden’ costs, including reduced vehicle value (typically anywhere from $500 to $2,000), higher insurance premium, legal fees, driver turnover (the average driver replacement cost = $8,200), lost employee time, lost vehicle-use time, administrative burden, reduced employee morale and bad publicity,” said Yoav Banin, chief product officer at Nauto, which provides artificial intelligence driver and fleet performance solutions.

Emphasis on truck driving safety is well placed, considering other challenges that the trucking industry is facing.

Ranking first is a chronic shortage of truck drivers nationwide that could force fleet operators to hire less-experienced drivers who require operator and safety training. Driver compensation and truck parking ranked second and third, but immediately behind them in fourth and fifth position were driver truck fleet safety and insurance availability, which depends on safe driving records.

Ex-Google researcher: AI workers need whistleblower protection

Artificial intelligence expert Timnit Gebru on the challenges researchers can face at Big Tech companies, and how to protect workers and their research.

Artificial intelligence research leads to new cutting-edge technologies, but it’s expensive. Big Tech companies, which are powered by AI and have deep pockets, often take on this work — but that gives them the power to censor or impede research that casts them in an unfavorable light, according to Timnit Gebru, a computer scientist, co-founder of the nonprofit organization Black in AI and the former co-leader of Google’s Ethical AI team.

The situation imperils both the rights of AI workers at those companies and the quality of research that is shared with the public, said Gebru, speaking at the recent EmTech MIT conference hosted by MIT Technology Review.

GlobalData: China is ahead of global rivals for AI ‘unicorns’

China is pulling ahead of global rivals when it comes to innovative AI “unicorns” that are pushing the technology forward. Research from GlobalData has found that — of the 45 international AI unicorns identified — China has the largest share with 19 based in the country.

Collectively, the Chinese AI unicorns are valued at $43.5 billion.

Beijing has been on a regulatory crackdown in recent months, especially on Chinese companies doing business in, and with, the US.

Robotaxi firm Didi, for example, was targeted by Chinese authorities following its $4.4 billion listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Chinese regulators forced Apple to remove Didi from the App Store while other app stores operating in China have also been ordered not to serve Didi’s app.

Despite the crackdowns, AI development in China has remained strong.

Full Story:

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The 2021 machine learning, AI, and data landscape

It’s been a hot, hot year in the world of data, machine learning, and AI. Just when you thought it couldn’t grow any more explosively, the data/AI landscape just did: the rapid pace of company creation, exciting new product and project launches, a deluge of VC financings, unicorn creation, IPOs, etc.

It has also been a year of multiple threads and stories intertwining.

One story has been the maturation of the ecosystem, with market leaders reaching large scale and ramping up their ambitions for global market domination, in particular through increasingly broad product offerings. Some of those companies, such as Snowflake, have been thriving in public markets (see our MAD Public Company Index), and a number of others (Databricks, Dataiku, DataRobot, etc.) have raised very largely (or in the case of Databricks, gigantic) rounds at multi-billion valuations and are knocking on the IPO door (see our Emerging MAD company Index).

A “New Nobel” — Computer Scientist Wins $1 Million Artificial Intelligence Prize

Duke professor becomes second recipient of AAAI Squirrel AI Award for pioneering socially responsible AI.

Whether preventing explosions on electrical grids, spotting patterns among past crimes, or optimizing resources in the care of critically ill patients, Duke University computer scientist Cynthia Rudin wants artificial intelligence (AI) to show its work. Especially when it’s making decisions that deeply affect people’s lives.

While many scholars in the developing field of machine learning were focused on improving algorithms, Rudin instead wanted to use AI’s power to help society. She chose to pursue opportunities to apply machine learning techniques to important societal problems, and in the process, realized that AI’s potential is best unlocked when humans can peer inside and understand what it is doing.

World’s First Robotic Woman

This looks familiar…

Robo Woman — 1,968 taken from the British Pathe reel “Miss Honeywell — World’s First Robotic Woman”. See this playlist of our best clips:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF58DA24745914ADC

See the original Robo Woman video with its full Pathe commentary and extra shots here:
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/miss-honeywell/

The music is taken from a live art performance recorded by Pathe in Paris in 1964. You can watch the exciting piece here:
http://www.britishpathe.com/video/futuristic-music-and-dance-in-paris/ (The jazzy “electro” music in the middle is from the original reel, so you want the top link above for that)

http://www.britishpathe.com.

Continue reading “World’s First Robotic Woman” | >

Goodbye Paradrops! Bell Showcases Its New Autonomous Supply Drop Drone

“This speed bag resupply feature is a game changer for the warfighter,” said in a statement Mike Goodwin, sales and strategy manager Bell. “With the ability to drop supplies quickly and efficiently in a drop zone or a remote location, we can get critical supplies delivered as soon as they’re needed.”

Bell claims the APT has already flown 420 times at U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, in Georgia, and other sites. Now, the company is seeking to demonstrate how the aircraft can drop supplies on demand at its cruising speed of 80 mph (129 km/h).

For now, the vehicle’s main advantage is that it will simply drop the transported goods quickly near the location, allowing personnel to immediately retrieve supplies without needing to wait for aircraft to land and takeoff. This allows the drone to conserve battery power by minimizing hover time, extending its mission range and time, and increasing the chances the aircraft will survive.

Armed with remote-controlled rifles, military robot dogs are now on the move

The robot dog has a remote-controlled rifle attached to its back as a human operator can control it via an Android tablet. The robot has been named the SPUR, which stands for Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle.

It features a 6.5mm Creedmoor rifle, from military defense company SWORD International, on top of a Quadrupedal Unmanned Ground Vehicle (QUGV) developed by Ghost Robotics.

The SPUR was first displayed at the US Army’s annual convention in Washington DC on Monday.

It is thought to be the first example of an unmanned system with a weapon attached, according to The Drive.

The robot has day and night vision and the ability to shoot bullets out to 1,200 meters.

Full Story:

Algorithms of war: The military plan for artificial intelligence

At the outbreak of World War I, the French army was mobilized in the fashion of Napoleonic times. On horseback and equipped with swords, the cuirassiers wore bright tricolor uniforms topped with feathers—the same get-up as when they swept through Europe a hundred years earlier. The remainder of 1914 would humble tradition-minded militarists. Vast fields were filled with trenches, barbed wire, poison gas and machine gun fire—plunging the ill-equipped soldiers into a violent hellscape of industrial-scale slaughter.

Capitalism excels at revolutionizing war. Only three decades after the first World War I bayonet charge across no man’s land, the US was able to incinerate entire cities with a single (nuclear) bomb blast. And since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1,945 our rulers’ methods of war have been made yet more deadly and “efficient”.

Today imperialist competition is driving a renewed arms race, as rival global powers invent new and technically more complex ways to kill. Increasingly, governments and military authorities are focusing their attention not on new weapons per se, but on computer technologies that can enhance existing military arsenals and capabilities. Above all is the race to master so-called artificial intelligence (AI).

Facebook talks about an interesting new AI concepts that can see and remember everything it’s user does

While reading or listening about the future of the world and its technology, you might have heard the term Artificial Intelligence. It surely is the future of technology and applications in the near future, major tech companies have been working on developing better versions of AI and are expecting it to revolutionize technology.

With many companies heavily investing towards Artificial Intelligence, Social giant ‘Facebook’ is not far behind in this race towards the rising industry. Facebook a few years ago took it’s step into the world of AI and is now making big moves by creating AI based products and slowly capturing a large market share in this industry.

AI based developments in Facebook have increased since the company increased its workforce in the AI sector. Recent news suggests that developers at Facebook are working towards another interesting AI program, this one will be able to see, hear and memorize everything users do. Facebook said that it wants the AI to have things such as episodic memory which means that the AI would be able to remember even small details such as where you kept your car keys. Surprising isn’t it?

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