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Archive for the ‘robotics/AI’ category: Page 2117

Mar 5, 2017

Boston Dynamic’s Newest Robot Is Like A Horse On Roller Skates

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

This robot has the moves.

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Mar 5, 2017

‘Who’s in control?’ Scientists gather to discuss AI doomsday scenarios

Posted by in categories: existential risks, robotics/AI

Artificial intelligence has the capability to transform the world — but not necessarily for the better. A group of scientists gathered to discuss doomsday scenarios, addressing the possibility that AI could become a serious threat.

The event, ‘Great Debate: The Future of Artificial Intelligence — Who’s in Control?’, took place at Arizona State University (ASU) over the weekend.

“Like any new technology, artificial intelligence holds great promise to help humans shape their future, and it also holds great danger in that it could eventually lead to the rise of machines over humanity, according to some futurists. So which course will it be for AI and what can be done now to help shape its trajectory?” ASU wrote in a press release.

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Mar 5, 2017

AI Scientists Gather to Plot Doomsday Scenarios (and Solutions)

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cybercrime/malcode, Elon Musk, existential risks, military, policy, robotics/AI

Artificial intelligence boosters predict a brave new world of flying cars and cancer cures. Detractors worry about a future where humans are enslaved to an evil race of robot overlords. Veteran AI scientist Eric Horvitz and Doomsday Clock guru Lawrence Krauss, seeking a middle ground, gathered a group of experts in the Arizona desert to discuss the worst that could possibly happen — and how to stop it.

Their workshop took place last weekend at Arizona State University with funding from Tesla Inc. co-founder Elon Musk and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn. Officially dubbed “Envisioning and Addressing Adverse AI Outcomes,” it was a kind of AI doomsday games that organized some 40 scientists, cyber-security experts and policy wonks into groups of attackers — the red team — and defenders — blue team — playing out AI-gone-very-wrong scenarios, ranging from stock-market manipulation to global warfare.

Horvitz is optimistic — a good thing because machine intelligence is his life’s work — but some other, more dystopian-minded backers of the project seemed to find his outlook too positive when plans for this event started about two years ago, said Krauss, a theoretical physicist who directs ASU’s Origins Project, the program running the workshop. Yet Horvitz said that for these technologies to move forward successfully and to earn broad public confidence, all concerns must be fully aired and addressed.

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Mar 4, 2017

An End to Aging: Can Science Allow Humans to To Become Immortal?

Posted by in categories: genetics, life extension, robotics/AI, science

Some scientists argue that aging is a social construct, not a natural law. Can we challenge it with advances in genetics and artificial intelligence?

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Mar 4, 2017

Google Deep Learning system diagnoses cancer better than a pathologist with unlimited time

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

Google has been working on advanced image-recognition systems for several years through its GoogLeNet projects. The project was, in part, aimed at the company’s autonomous car project, teaching self-driving cars to recognize everything from road layouts to stop signs.

The company has now applied GoogLeNet tech to cancer diagnosis, and reports that the system was already delivering good results straight out of the box, but says that tweaking the system has delivered stunning performance.

Pathologists have always faced a huge data problem in order to obtain an accurate diagnosis. A massive amount of information — slides containing cells from tissue biopsies, thinly sliced and stained — must be scanned in search of any abnormal cells. And time is of the essence.

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Mar 4, 2017

Transhumanism: More Nightmare Than Dream?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, ethics, law enforcement, life extension, policy, robotics/AI, transhumanism

A new well written but not very favorable write-up on #transhumanism. Despite this, more and more publications are tackling describing the movement and its science. My work is featured a bit.


On the eve of the 20th century, an obscure Russian man who had refused to publish any of his works began to finalize his ideas about resurrecting the dead and living forever. A friend of Leo Tolstoy’s, this enigmatic Russian, whose name was Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov, had grand ideas about not only how to reanimate the dead but about the ethics of doing so, as well as about the moral and religious consequences of living outside of Death’s shadow. He was animated by a utopian desire: to unite all of humanity and to create a biblical paradise on Earth, where we would live on, spurred on by love. He was an immortalist: one who desired to conquer death through scientific means.

Despite the religious zeal of his notions—which a number of later Christian philosophers unsurprisingly deemed blasphemy—Fyodorov’s ideas were underpinned by a faith in something material: the ability of humans to redevelop and redefine themselves through science, eventually becoming so powerfully modified that they would defeat death itself. Unfortunately for him, Fyodorov—who had worked as a librarian, then later in the archives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs—did not live to see his project enacted, as he died in 1903.

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Mar 4, 2017

10 Million Self-Driving Cars Will Hit The Road By 2020 — Here’s How To Profit

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

Given the advanced state of driverless technologies and the amount of money being poured into the sector, there is little question—make that, no question at all—that within 10 years, driverless cars will be the norm.

The implications are immense and widespread.

There are currently about 1.4 billion cars on the road. Many of those cars, and eventually all, are going to be replaced by self-driving vehicles.

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Mar 3, 2017

Robots are about to make your beer runs

Posted by in categories: futurism, robotics/AI

In the future, your beer will be delivered by by robots that look like big beetles out to set up a golf course.

Virginia became the first state in the union on Wednesday to legally allow robots to use sidewalks and crosswalks just like us humans.

SEE ALSO: Bizarre Boston Dynamics robot moves like a world-class athlete.

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Mar 3, 2017

Growing tissue grafts on humanoid robots: A future strategy in regenerative medicine?

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, robotics/AI, space travel

Humanoid robots may enhance growth of musculoskeletal tissue grafts for tissue transplant applications.

Over the past decade, exciting progress has been made in the development of humanoid robots. The significant potential future value of humanoids includes applications ranging from personal assistance to medicine and space exploration. In particular, musculoskeletal humanoids (such as Kenshiro and Eccerobot) were developed to interact with humans in a safer and more natural way (1, 2). They aim to closely replicate the detailed anatomy of the human musculoskeletal system including muscles, tendons, and bones.

With their structures activated by artificial muscles, musculoskeletal humanoids have the ability to mimic more accurately the multiple degrees of freedom and the normal range of forces observed in human joints. As a result, it is not surprising that they offer new opportunities in science and medicine. Here, we suggest that musculoskeletal robots may assist in the growth of musculoskeletal tissue grafts for tissue transplant applications.

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Mar 3, 2017

Space Mining: Luxembourg and lunar robotic company ispace shoot for the moon

Posted by in categories: business, engineering, government, robotics/AI, space

https://youtube.com/watch?v=5cMEJTnPq-I

(sth/T.L.) – Luxembourg’s government and Tokyo-based space lunar robotic exploration company ispace Inc. on Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in the context of the SpaceResources.lu initiative with focus on developing miniaturized technology to discover, map, and utilize resources on the Moon.

Japanese start-up ispace was created by Hakuto, a finalist team of Google’s prestigious innovation competition Google Lunar XPRIZE. The company already works together with the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) and will continue to do so.

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