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. The lectures introduce our current understanding of computational intelligence and ways in which strong AI could possibly be achieved, with insights from deep learning, reinforcement learning, computational neuroscience, robotics, cognitive modeling, psychology, and more.

Lex Fridman

Ray Kurzweil is one of the world’s leading inventors, thinkers, and futurists, with a thirty-year track record of accurate predictions. Called “the restless genius” by The Wall Street Journaland “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes magazine, Kurzweil was selected as one of the top entrepreneurs by Inc. magazine, which described him as the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison.” PBS selected him as one of the “sixteen revolutionaries who made America.”

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Annihilation is an upcoming science fantasy action horror film written for the screen and directed by Alex Garland based on the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. The film stars Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny, and Oscar Isaac.

Having previously written screenplays for cult classics like 28 Days Later and Dredd, Garland’s Ex Machina is arguably the definitive film about artificial intelligence (and killer robots) of the 21st century. And that was only his directorial debut.

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Extremely happy to be able to already share with you the two videos from our last salon🚀! We gathered not one but three individuals who have been pre-eminent luminaries in their fields for 30 years to discuss their alternative approaches to the current AI paradigm: Kim Eric Drexler, Robin Hanson, and Mark S. Miller.


Allison Duettmann (Foresight Institute) discusses alternative approaches to the current AI paradigm with three individuals who have been pre-eminent luminaries in their fields for 30 years: Eric Drexler, Robin Hanson, and Mark S. Miller.

Eric Drexler:

By pieter spronck and jaap van den herik

While the audiovisual qualities of games have improved significantly over the last twenty years, game artificial intelligence (AI) has been largely neglected. Since the turn of the century game development companies have discovered that nowadays it is the quality of the game AI that sets apart good games from mediocre ones. The Institute of Knowledge and Agent Technology (IKAT) of the Universiteit Maastricht examines methods to enhance game AI with machine learning techniques. Several typical characteristics of games, such as their inherent randomness, require novel machine learning approaches to allow them to deal with game AI.

Most commercial computer games contain computer-controlled agents that oppose the human player. ‘Game AI’ encompasses the decision-making capabilities of these agents. For implementing game AI, especially for complex games, developers usually resort to rule-based techniques in the form of scripts. Scripts have the advantage that they are easy to understand and can be used to implement fairly complex behaviour.

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Recent attempts to move beyond narrow AI applications in industry have struggled to gain traction. ReThink Robotics, a leading startup founded by AI founding MIT researcher Dr. Rodney Brooks to create adaptive collaborative robots for industrial robotics, closed its doors in October 2018 and has since had its IP acquired by HAHN Group. In a retrospective published by The Robot Report, several contributing factors led to the shutdown. ReThink’s reliance on series elastic actuators compromised the precision and repeatability found in typical actuators in favor of safety, which likely led to efforts to compensate on hardware through software.

While the company utilized innovative machine control and machine vision technologies in iterating on their robots, the combination of mechanical motion of firmware at the heart of their products led to a narrow range of issues at varying quality. This made Baxter and Sawyer, ReThink’s flagship industrial robots, ill-suited for adaptive industrial use.

Other companies attempting to build adaptive robots, including Jibo, have met similar troubles. Touted as an interactive social robot with a personality, Jibo launched their eponymous robot in November 2017 with an emphasis on naturalistic human-computer interaction, but entered the market with more limited functionality than cheaper smart assistant speakers. The company has since closed down and transferred ownership of their IP to SQN Venture Partners in November 2018.

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