Yandex unveils Sonata.
Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,106

Amazon to spend $700 million to train 100,000 workers for digital age
Amazon is a global leader in the use of artificial intelligence and robots – but first on “CBS This Morning,” the company is revealing a major plan to invest in its human workforce, too. The online giant will spend more than $700 million to provide 100,000 employees with new skills for the digital age by 2025.
At Amazon’s 125,000 square foot facility just outside Denver, it looks like robots are running the show. But behind each of these roughly 800 devices is a skilled employee like Nicole Bayer, who manages the daily flow of traffic at this center as a floor control specialist. Bayer said more robots means higher package volume. As a result, she said, “we need more associates to package our volume, not less.”
Before coming to Amazon a few years ago, Bayer said she’d been out of the workforce for years. She credited the company’s employee programs for relaunching her career. “I got a lot of technical skills out of it that helped me get promoted,” she said.
Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s worldwide consumer CEO, likened the program to grad school. The programs’ names feel collegiate, from “Machine Learning University” for onsite training, to “Amazon Technical Academy” for software engineer roles. The company is also offering programs like Associate2Tech, which trains employees to move into technical roles, and AWS Training and Certification, which teaches employees about the cloud and gives them knowledge “essential to operating in a technical field.”


The Longevity Industry will be the Biggest and Most Complex Industry in Human History
The Longevity industry will dwarf all other industries in both size and market capitalization and will require unprecedented sophistication in its approach for assessment and forecasting from the start to neutralize challenges and manifest opportunities
The Longevity Industry is not just about biotechnology and biomedicine. Rather, it consists of several distinct segments: Geroscience, Biomedicine, AgeTech and Finance. Despite this seemingly clear market segmentation, many of these sectors intersect with various domains of science and technology, such as advanced biomedicine, preventive medicine, digital health, AI, financial systems, pension systems and government national strategies.
One of the biggest challenges in assessing the Longevity industry is the extreme broadness of the sector. Hundreds of sectors, industries and domains of science and technology must be analyzed in order to obtain a concrete and comprehensive understanding of the dynamics, trends and direction of the industry. This situation is entirely unique to the Longevity industry. Due to this extreme level of complexity, realistic assessment and forecasting is extremely challenging, and the methods currently being applied for assessment of the biotech and biomedical industries are completely inadequate.


At Last, AI beats professionals in six-player poker
An artificial intelligence program developed by Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with Facebook AI has defeated leading professionals in six-player no-limit Texas hold’em poker, the world’s most popular form of poker.
The AI, called Pluribus, defeated poker professional Darren Elias, who holds the record for most World Poker Tour titles, and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, winner of six World Series of Poker events. Each pro separately played 5,000 hands of poker against five copies of Pluribus.
In another experiment involving 13 pros, all of whom have won more than $1 million playing poker, Pluribus played five pros at a time for a total of 10,000 hands and again emerged victorious.

25 Million Android Devices Infected
Malware researchers discovered a new malicious campaign for Android devices that replaces legitimate apps with tainted copies built to push advertisements or hijack valid ad events.
Around 25 million devices have already been infected with what researchers have dubbed “Agent Smith,” after users installed an app from an unofficial Android store.

The Rise of Transhumanism: Emerging Worldviews 11
https://paper.li/e-1437691924#/
Forms of Transhumanism
Transhumanism takes a variety of overlapping forms united around a common commitment to use science and technology to improve human intellect and/or physiology. Many, though not all, are committed to Posthumanism; others focus on artificial intelligence and its implications for human life. All of them raise important worldview questions, though not always the same ones.
One early form of Transhumanism was Extropianism. The name comes from the neologism extropy, a word intended to convey the reversal of entropy. Its focus is on using science, technology, and reason to take control of human evolution through life extension technologies, uploading our minds into computers, etc. An optimistic philosophy, Extropianism expected to extend human lifespans indefinitely and to recover and heal people frozen cryogenically.

This Robot Arm Can Help Wheelchair Users Drink Coffee, Open Doors
A new robot arm can help people who use wheelchairs better handle the day-to-day tasks that might otherwise be too challenging or awkward.
The Jaco, a robotic arm made by the tech company Kinova Robotics, can attach to a wheelchair and operate as a sort of third arm, according to Digital Trends — helping people with limited mobility go about their lives with a greater degree of independence.

Microrobots to change the way we work with cellular material
Some of you are going to want to use this tech.
In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from University of Toronto have demonstrated a novel and non-invasive way to manipulate cells through microrobotics.
Cell manipulation—moving small particles from one place to another—is an integral part of many scientific endeavours. One method of manipulating cells is through optoelectronic tweezers (OET), which use various light patterns to directly interact with the object of interest.
Because of this direct interaction, there are limitations to the force that can be applied and speed in which the cellular material can be manipulated. This is where the use of microrobotics becomes useful.