Researchers from the Beijing-based technology firm trained its text-to-speech synthesis system on more than 800 hours of audio, taken from around 2,400 different speakers.
To work at its best, Deep Voice requires 100 five-second sections of sound but it can trick a voice recognition system 95 per cent of the time with just ten five-second samples.
The technology could duplicate the voices of people who have lost the ability to use their voice, developers say.
A burger-flipping robot named Flippy is now cooking up hamburgers at a fast food restaurant called Caliburger.
A robot named Flippy is now in the kitchen at a fast food restaurant called CaliBurger in Pasadena. We were there for a preview event where Flippy made us some lunch.
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State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) and Tencent Research surveyed 8.000 respondents on their attitudes toward AI as part of CCTV’s China Economic Life Survey. The results show that 76.3 per cent see certain forms of AI as a threat to their privacy, even as they believe that AI holds much development potential and will permeate different industries. About half of the respondents said that they believe AI is already affecting their work life, while about a third see AI as a threat to their jobs.
A China Central Television and Tencent Research survey found that three in four respondents are worried about the threat that artificial intelligence poses to their privacy.
Intelligent Machines
The elderly may toss their walkers for this robotic suit.
An early prototype of a soft exoskeleton that helps you walk could prove useful for the military and the aging population.
Researchers in Oregon State University’s College of Engineering have taken a key step toward the rapid manufacture of flexible computer screens and other stretchable electronic devices, including soft robots.
The advance by a team within the college’s Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute paves the way toward the 3D printing of tall, complicated structures with a highly conductive gallium alloy.
Researchers put nickel nanoparticles into the liquid metal, galinstan, to thicken it into a paste with a consistency suitable for additive manufacturing.
In the course of the last century, science fiction has been a harbinger of things to come. From the automatic sliding doors of Star Trek to visual communication, cyberspace, and even the moon landing, many of our present technological achievements were dreamed up in the futuristic visions of science fiction authors of the 1960s and 70s. Indeed, the fantastical world of science fiction, while not intended to be prophetic, has ended up acting as a blueprint for our modern world.
We have learned from science fiction not only the possibilities of technology, however, but also its irreconcilable dangers. Readers of the genre will recognize the many stories warning us of the hazards of space travel, mind enhancement, and artificial intelligence. These fictional accounts cautioned that if we were not careful, our freedom to transform the world around us would transmogrify into a self-enforced slavery.
Nonetheless, while many of us remembered that these were just stories, intended as speculations about a possible future—in other words, they were fiction before science—through them, we became used to the idea that any advanced technology was inherently dangerous and its use always suspect. Moreover, it became a commonplace idea that technologies whose aim was to change or transform the human being—whether genetic, biological or reconstructive—would lead to a future worthy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Every major tech company is looking at quantum computers as the next big breakthrough in computing. Teams at Google, Microsoft, Intel, IBM and various startups and academic labs are racing to become the first to achieve quantum supremacy — that is, the point where a quantum computer can run certain algorithms faster than a classical computer ever could. Today, Google said that it believes that Bristlecone, its latest quantum processor, will put it on a path to reach quantum supremacy in the future.
The purpose of Bristlecone, Google says, it to provide its researchers with a testbed “for research into system error rates and scalability of our qubit technology, as well as applications in quantum simulation, optimization, and machine learning.”
The state of California will now allow driverless cars without safety drivers to be tested on public roads for the first time. Is a world full of driverless cars about to kick into gear?
Via NBC News MACH
Tokyo, Japan may have just become the first city to officially grant residence to an artificial intelligence (AI). The intelligence’s name is Shibuya Mirai and exists only as a chatbot on the popular Line messaging app. Mirai, which translates to ‘future’ from Japanese, joins Hanson Robotic’s “Sophia” as pioneering AI gaining statuses previously reserved for living, biological entities. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia granted Sophia citizenship last month.
The Shibuya Ward of Tokyo released a statement through Microsoft saying, “His hobbies are taking pictures and observing people. And he loves talking with people… Please talk to him about anything.” The goal of Mirai is said to be to familiarize some of the 224,000 citizens of the district with the local government and give them an avenue to share opinions with officials.
Mirai is programmed to be a seven-year-old boy and can have text conversations with users and even “make light-hearted alterations to selfies he is sent,” according to Agence France Presse.
