Visualizing Global Attitudes Towards AI đ€
From the archive:
We visualize survey results from over 19,000 adults across 28 countries to see how attitudes towards AI differ around the world.
Category: robotics/AI – Page 192
Cognitive flexibility, the ability to rapidly switch between different thoughts and mental concepts, is a highly advantageous human capability. This salient capability supports multi-tasking, the rapid acquisition of new skills and the adaptation to new situations.
While artificial intelligence (AI) systems have become increasingly advanced over the past few decades, they currently do not exhibit the same flexibility as humans in learning new skills and switching between tasks. A better understanding of how biological neural circuits support cognitive flexibility, particularly how they support multi-tasking, could inform future efforts aimed at developing more flexible AI.
Recently, some computer scientists and neuroscientists have been studying neural computations using artificial neural networks. Most of these networks, however, were generally trained to tackle specific tasks individually as opposed to multiple tasks.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have demonstrated miniature soft hydraulic actuators that can be used to control the deformation and motion of soft robots that are less than a millimeter thick. The researchers have also demonstrated that this technique works with shape memory materials, allowing users to repeatedly lock the soft robots into a desired shape and return to the original shape as needed.
âSoft robotics holds promise for many applications, but it is challenging to design the actuators that drive the motion of soft robots on a small scale,â says Jie Yin, corresponding author of a paper on the work (Advanced Materials, âFully 3D-Printed Miniature Soft Hydraulic Actuators with Shape Memory Effect for Morphing and Manipulationâ) and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State. âOur approach makes use of commercially available multi-material 3D printing technologies and shape memory polymers to create soft actuators on a microscale that allow us to control very small soft robots, which allows for exceptional control and delicacy.â
The new technique relies on creating soft robots that consist of two layers. The first layer is a flexible polymer that is created using 3D printing technologies and incorporates a pattern of microfluidic channels â essentially very small tubes running through the material. The second layer is a flexible shape memory polymer. Altogether, the soft robot is only 0.8 millimeters thick.
A team of researchers at Delft University of Technology has developed a drone that flies autonomously using neuromorphic image processing and control based on the workings of animal brains. Animal brains use less data and energy compared to current deep neural networks running on GPUs (graphic chips). Neuromorphic processors are therefore very suitable for small drones because they donât need heavy and large hardware and batteries.
The results are extraordinary: during flight the droneâs deep neural network processes data up to 64 times faster and consumes three times less energy than when running on a GPU. Further developments of this technology may enable the leap for drones to become as small, agile, and smart as flying insects or birds.
Photo of the âneuromorphic droneâ flying over a flower pattern. It illustrates the visual inputs the drone receives from the neuromorphic camera in the corners. Red indicates pixels getting darker, green indicates pixels getting brighter. (Image: TU Delft)
This study shows that by enhancing internal complexity of neurons in a HodgkinâHuxley network, similar performance to larger, simpler networks can be achieved, suggesting an alternative path for powerful AI systems by focusing on neuron complexity.
The services are necessary to maintain a domestic trusted source for strategic radiation-hardened microelectronics to meet the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) certification to Congress, as stipulated by the fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act Section 1,670, DOD officials say.
Radiation-hardened microelectronics components are necessary for manned and unmanned spacecraft operating on long-duration orbital missions in high-radiation space environments like geosynchronous orbits.
DARPA is giving seven teams $2 million to hone tools for scrutinizing the open-source code that underpins everything from banks to water systems.
The problem of intelligence â its nature, how it is produced by the brain and how it could be replicated in machines â is a deep and fundamental problem that cuts across multiple scientific disciplines. Philosophers have studied intelligence for centuries, but it is only in the last several decades that developments in science and engineering have made questions such as these approachable: How does the mind process sensory information to produce intelligent behavior, and how can we design intelligent computer algorithms that behave similarly? What is the structure and form of human knowledge â how is it stored, represented, and organized? How do human minds arise through processes of evolution, development, and learning? How are the domains of language, perception, social cognition, planning, and motor control combined and integrated? Are there common principles of learning, prediction, decision, or planning that span across these domains?
This course explores these questions with an approach that integrates cognitive science, which studies the mind; neuroscience, which studies the brain; and computer science and artificial intelligence, which study the computations needed to develop intelligent machines. Faculty and postdoctoral associates affiliated with the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines discuss current research on these questions.
A new algorithm may make robots safer by making them more aware of human inattentiveness. In computerized simulations of packaging and assembly lines where humans and robots work together, the algorithm developed to account for human carelessness improved safety by about a maximum of 80% and efficiency by about a maximum of 38% compared to existing methods.
The work is reported in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems.
âThere are a large number of accidents that are happening every day due to carelessnessâmost of them, unfortunately, from human errors,â said lead author Mehdi Hosseinzadeh, assistant professor in Washington State Universityâs School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering.
A tiny battery designed by MIT engineers could enable the deployment of cell-sized, autonomous robots for drug delivery within in the human body, as well as other applications such as locating leaks in gas pipelines.
The new battery, which is 0.1 millimeters long and 0.002 millimeters thickâroughly the thickness of a human hairâcan capture oxygen from air and use it to oxidize zinc, creating a current of up to 1 volt. That is enough to power a small circuit, sensor, or actuator, the researchers showed.
âWe think this is going to be very enabling for robotics,â says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study. âWeâre building robotic functions onto the battery and starting to put these components together into devices.â