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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,260

Microsoft Invests $1 Billion to Create a World-Saving AI

Whether or not creating an AGI is even possible remains up for debate. Meanwhile, others may cringe at the thought of an AI with the intellect to match and exceed humanity. However, OpenAI has been bullish on the prospect. The company points to the breakthroughs researchers have made in last decade in getting AI algorithms to recognize images, translate languages, and control robots. One of OpenAI’s own AI projects can write fiction like a human can (sort of).

However, creating new AI-based technologies costs a lot of money. Not only does it require programming, but also renting access to thousands of servers. So OpenAI has been seeking funding. “The most obvious way to cover costs is to build a product, but that would mean changing our focus. Instead, we intend to license some of our pre-AGI technologies, with Microsoft becoming our preferred partner for commercializing them,” Altman wrote in a separate blog post.

  • The AI Breakthrough Will Require Researchers Burying Their Hatchets.

Tesla has a giant new machine to produce the Model Y frame in almost one piece

Tesla is working on several significant manufacturing improvements for the Model Y production program and it includes building a giant new casting machine to produce a big part of the Model Y frame in one single piece.

We have been reporting on how Tesla plans to simplify the design of its future vehicle platforms and achieve greater automation in the manufacturing process.

Yesterday, we reported on how Tesla is working on a revolutionary new wiring architecture to help robots build upcoming cars like the Model Y.

Microsoft invests in and partners with OpenAI to support us building beneficial AGI

Microsoft is investing $1 billion in OpenAI to support us building artificial general intelligence (AGI) with widely distributed [https://openai.com/charter/]

Economic benefits. We’re partnering to develop a hardware and software platform within Microsoft Azure which will scale to AGI. We’ll jointly develop new Azure.

AI supercomputing technologies, and Microsoft will become our exclusive cloud provider—so we’ll be working hard together to further extend Microsoft Azure’s capabilities in large-s.

One small step: What will the moon look like in 50 years?

The immediate future of the moon will see us build on those first steps taken in July 1969. We’ll send more robotic landers and rovers to conduct experiments on our behalf. China already has another Chang’e mission planned for this year and India, too, will look to land on the surface before the end of the year. In our stead, the robots will search for water and explore the lunar highlands for the resources necessary to establish a more permanent presence.

Looking further ahead, we’ll prepare to truly colonize the moon. We’ll mine the sublunar layers and smelt its rock for metals and oxygen. We’ll live at its poles, erecting inflatable shelters, communications centers and laboratories, and performing experiments not possible from the surface of the Earth. Eventually, we’ll depart for further into the cosmos and find our way to Mars.

But it starts with the moon.

Singularity University: Rearranging Atoms With Ralph Merkle

“If you rearrange the atoms in coal, you get diamond. If you rearrange the atoms in sand, you get silicon. How atoms are arranged is fundamental to all material aspects of life,” says Ralph Merkle, currently senior research chair at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. He’s a large, pear-shaped man who, as he speaks, waves his arms far more energetically than his physique would imply. He modulates his tone dramatically for effect, often humorous.

Those words kick off day 2 at the Singularity University Executive Program. The curriculum divides roughly into three days of intensive classroom introductions to critical tech domains, three days of visits to Silicon Valley companies, and two days of workshops devoted to specific industries, plus a final day to wrap up. On Saturday I settled gingerly into a lightly padded metal chair for highly compressed, sometimes super technical, up-to-the-minute overviews of artificial intelligence, robotics, networking, computing, and quantum computing. (Forecast: sunny! With patchy clouds and fog.) That took until dinner time with only a quick break for lunch, which was filled with presentations by graduates of SU’s nine-week summer program.

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