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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2134

In its secretive R&D department, Honda has been developing a bipedal disaster robot designed to climb through crumbled buildings.

Honda unveiled the prototypical E2-DR robot last week at the 2017 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in Vancouver, reports IEEE Spectrum. As the Honda video shows, the E2-DR robot can climb ladders, ascend stairs, crawl through tight spaces, and manipulate its body to squeeze through cracks.

SEE ALSO: Robotics expert Dr. Ross Mead reveals the truth about your favorite movie robots.

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Have you ever had the perfect photo ruined by someone with their eyes closed in the shot? You could fix the problem with a bit of cloning from an alternate shot using a photo editing app—but Adobe is making the process much easier in the new 2018 version of Photoshop Elements with a dedicated ‘Open Closed Eyes’ feature.

You can spend an entire career using Photoshop and still not master the software’s every last feature, but that complexity can be intimidating to the millions of amateur photographers born from the advent of affordable digital-SLRs, and even smartphones. That’s where Photoshop Elements comes in. It’s a lighter version of Photoshop with training wheels that simplifies many popular photo editing techniques. A better way to describe it might be as a version of Photoshop your parents could stumble their way through with minimal phone calls to you.

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Throwback from 6 October 2016…

According to Eugenia Kuyda, co-founder of the AI startup Luka, memorial bots are ‘the future.’ The CEO recently unveiled the ‘digital monument’ to her deceased friend Roman Mazurenko, feeding thousands of text messages to a neural network to create a Luka chatbot in his image.

In the App Store, Luka is described as ‘a new messenger with AI-powered chatbots. They help you find GIFs and funny videos, make plans together, pick places to eat, play trivia games and have fun.’

But, that isn’t all it can do.

Continue reading “Would YOU talk to a dead friend an as AI? ‘Memorial’ chatbot revealed” | >

Payne and another Google employee demonstrated a conversation between someone speaking Swedish and another person responding in English.

During the demonstration, one employee, speaking Swedish, had Pixel Buds and the Pixel phone. When the phone was addressed in English, the earbuds translated the phrase into Swedish in her ear. The Swedish speaker then spoke back in Swedish through the earbuds by pressing on the right bud to summon Google Assistant translated that Swedish reply back into an English phrase, which was played through the phone’s speakers so the English speaker could hear.

While this idea might sound far-fetched, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told investors in January that Google Translate was set to make big leaps this year.

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The use of artificial intelligence and, in particular, machine learning is becoming increasingly popular in research. Such systems excel at high-speed data analysis, interpretation, and laborious research tasks, such as image assessment. One of the areas in which machine learning has been enjoying success is image recognition. Now, researchers have begun to use machine learning to analyze brain tumors.

One of the areas in which machine learning has been enjoying success is image recognition. Now, researchers have begun to use machine learning to analyze brain tumors.

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These are a tiny fraction of the examples of how our economy differs from the 20th century industrial economy. Similar changes are under way in the developing world, as labor gives way to robotics and basic goods become affordable and accessible to the planet’s billions. Given those changes, why would 20th century models of prices and rates and money supply work as they used to work?

We like to believe that there are “laws of economics” and past patterns to guide us, but, as Yellen indicated, there is now “considerable uncertainty.” It may feel safer to trust that past patterns will reassert themselves. But maybe policymakers should weigh more heavily the chance that the patterns have changed.

The Federal Reserve takes a 20th-century approach to managing a 21st-century economy.

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Last year, artificial intelligence (AI) research company DeepMind shared details on WaveNet, a deep neural network used to synthesize realistic human speech. Now, an improved version of the technology is being rolled out for use with Google Assistant.

A system for speech synthesis — otherwise known as text-to-speech (TTS) — typically utilizes one of two techniques.

Concatenative TTS involves the piecing together of chunks of recordings from a voice actor. The drawback of this method is that audio libraries must be replaced whenever upgrades or changes are made.

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How much faster can you build a sneaker, exactly? A lot, it turns out. Wired UK has paid a visit to Adidas, which is hauling shoe manufacturing from labor-intensive Chinese plants into the aptly named Speed Factories in America and Germany.

Using tricks like robotic knitting, advanced plastic forming, and 3D printing (which is provided by Carbon, one of our 50 Smartest Companies of 2017) Adidas plans to make even custom sneakers 90 times faster than it can right now. It plans to crank out 1 million pairs of shoes a year from two Speed Factories—one in Atlanta, Georgia, the other in Bavaria, Germany—by the end of 2017.

Such innovation, it hopes, will allow it to remain competitive with Nike and Under Armor, which currently dominate the sportswear world.

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The research community is beginning to understand that motivations are not a human “artifact” of consciousness, but part of the essential glue that binds consciousness together. Without motivations we have nothing that holds us to this vessel, ensuring that we continue to eat, pay our rent, and do other things necessary for our survival. Conscious machines will for this reason have motivations as well. Otherwise they simply just wouldn’t function. This is an important point because talk of the singularity often brings up visions of a single integrated “machine” that will inevitably enslave humanity. A better question is:

“Will AI be used to gain immense advantage for a single party (whether that party is the AI itself or the human that controls it), or will AI be used to maximize benefit for us all?”

Even if the AIs have interfaces that allow them to share information more rapidly than humans can through reading or watching media, separate AIs will have separate motivations from a single centralized AI. Given that a signature of consciousness is motivation, any consciousness will obviously be motivated to secure all the resources it needs to ensure its survival. In some cases, the most efficient way to secure resources is sharing. In other cases, it’s through competition. AIs might share resources, but they might also compete.

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