Elon Musk co-founded artificial intelligence non-profit OpenAI just announced it has created an AI system that can learn to complete a task in reality after watching just one demonstration of that task in a simulated environment.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, OpenAI’s newest robot system should leave humanity blushing. Not only can it successfully replicate human behaviors, it can do so after just a single demonstration of the task.
Biological systems don’t completely freeze up when they encounter a new situation, but computers often do.
Biological organisms are pretty good at navigating life’s unpredictability, but computers are embarrassingly bad at it.
That’s the crux of a new military research program that aims to model artificially intelligent systems after the brains of living creatures. When an organism encounters a new environment or situation, it relies on past experience to help it make a decision. Current artificial intelligence technology, on the other hand, relies on extensive training on various data sets, and if it hasn’t encountered a specific situation, it can’t select a next step.
Last month, we showed an earlier version of this robot where we’d trained its vision system using domain randomization, that is, by showing it simulated objects with a variety of color, backgrounds, and textures, without the use of any real images.
Now, we’ve developed and deployed a new algorithm, one-shot imitation learning, allowing a human to communicate how to do a new task by performing it in VR. Given a single demonstration, the robot is able to solve the same task from an arbitrary starting configuration.
Caption: Our system can learn a behavior from a single demonstration delivered within a simulator, then reproduce that behavior in different setups in reality.
When machines control all the world’s finances and run factory floors, what will humans be left to do?
We’ll make art, says Kai-Fu Lee, a former Google and Microsoft executive who has since launched VC firm Sinovation Ventures.
“Art and beauty is very hard to replicate with AI. Given AI is more objective, analytical, data driven, maybe it’s time for some of us to switch to the humanities, liberal arts, and beauty,” Lee told Quartz editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney during a live Q&A session. “Maybe professions where it’s hard to find a job might be good to study.”
Hopefully this doesnt negatively effect the self driving truck.
One of Uber’s top engineers will no longer be able to work on a key self-driving car technology, a federal judge ordered, adding a new hurdle in the ride-hailing company’s race to get to market.
Uber will be able to continue working on its self-driving car technology, the judge said, but embattled engineer Anthony Levandowski must be removed from any work relating to a key technology called LIDAR, which helps cars “see.”
Alphabet’s self-driving car unit, Waymo, has sued Uber, claiming that the ride-hailing start-up is using key parts of Waymo’s self-driving technology.
SAN FRANCISCO Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] must promptly return stolen confidential files to Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Waymo self-driving car unit, a federal judge ruled, while stopping short of shutting down the ride-services company’s autonomous car program.
The judge wrote that Uber knew, or should have known, that an ex-Waymo engineer it later hired had taken Waymo files potentially containing trade secrets, and that some of the intellectual property had “seeped into” Uber’s own development efforts.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco, unsealed on Monday, marked a blow to Uber, which is engaged in a battle with Waymo to dominate the fast-growing field of self-driving cars expected to revolutionize the automotive industry.
Posted in military, robotics/AI
Tracked Combat Vehicles
Multi-Utility Tactical Transport (MUTT)
MUTT is designed to be a rugged, reliable small unit force multiplier providing increased persistence, protection and projection. As a controller-less small unit robotic follower, it “Lightens the Load” throughout the full gamut of combat operations with expeditionary power. As a remote-controlled or tele-operated teammate, it provides stand-off from threats or increased projection of combat power. The MUTT is engineered to easily evolve to accommodate new payloads, new controllers and increased levels of autonomy. MUTT provides MUM-T 1.0 capability.
Caption: Our system can learn a behavior from a single demonstration delivered within a simulator, then reproduce that behavior in different setups in reality.
