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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,396

Second version of HoloLens HPU will incorporate AI coprocessor for implementing DNNs

By Marc Pollefeys, Director of Science, HoloLens

It is not an exaggeration to say that deep learning has taken the world of computer vision, and many other recognition tasks, by storm. Many of the most difficult recognition problems have seen gains over the past few years that are astonishing.

Although we have seen large improvements in the accuracy of recognition as a result of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), deep learning approaches have two well-known challenges: they require large amounts of labelled data for training, and they require a type of compute that is not amenable to current general purpose processor/memory architectures. Some companies have responded with architectures designed to address the particular type of massively parallel compute required for DNNs, including our own use of FPGAs, for example, but to date these approaches have primarily enhanced existing cloud computing fabrics.

Google’s machine learning algorithm gets human help in quest for fusion power

Hot on the heels of last month’s nuclear fusion breakthrough comes the first results from a multi-year partnership between Google and Tri Alpha Energy, the world’s largest private fusion company. The two organizations joined forces in 2014 in the hopes that Google’s machine learning algorithms could advance plasma research and bring us closer to the dream of fusion power.

China’s “Minority Report” Style Plans Will Use AI to Predict Who Will Commit Crimes

Authorities in China are exploring predictive analytics, facial recognition, and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help prevent crime in advance. Based on behavior patterns, authorities will notify local police about potential offenders.

Cloud Walk, a company headquartered in Guangzhou, has been training its facial recognition and big data rating systems to track movements based on risk levels. Those who are frequent visitors to weapons shops or transportation hubs are likely to be flagged in the system, and even places like hardware stores have been deemed “high risk” by authorities.

A Cloud Walk spokesman told The Financial Times, “Of course, if someone buys a kitchen knife that’s OK, but if the person also buys a sack and a hammer later, that person is becoming suspicious.” Cloud Walk’s software is connected to the police database across more than 50 cities and provinces, and can flag suspicious characters in real time.

Is anyone home? A way to find out if AI has become self-aware

(credit: Gerd Altmann/Pixabay)

By Susan Schneider, PhD, and Edwin Turner, PhD

Every moment of your waking life and whenever you dream, you have the distinct inner feeling of being “you.” When you see the warm hues of a sunrise, smell the aroma of morning coffee or mull over a new idea, you are having conscious experience. But could an artificial intelligence (AI) ever have experience, like some of the androids depicted in Westworld or the synthetic beings in Blade Runner?

Unleashing the true potential of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents both the biggest opportunity and potentially the greatest threat to the legal profession in history.

This is part of a bigger global revolution – where society, business and government are likely to experience more change in the next 20–30 years than in the last 500.

This large-scale disruption is being driven by the combined effects of AI and other disruptive technologies whose speed, power and capability are growing exponentially – or faster.

These technologies, which are all are fed by AI, include quantum computing, blockchain technology, the internet of things (IoT), big data, cloud services, smart cities, and human augmentation. All of these could be hundreds or thousands of times more powerful within a decade.

The resulting changes mean the total transformation of every business sector, the birth of new trillion dollar industries and a complete rethink of law, regulation, legal infrastructures, and the supporting governance systems for every activity on the planet.

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For The First Time, a US Company Is Implanting Microchips in Its Employees

We’re always hearing how robots are going to take our jobs, but there might be a way of preventing that grim future from happening: by becoming workplace cyborgs first.

A company in Wisconsin has become the first in the US to roll out microchip implants for all its employees, and says it’s expecting over 50 of its staff members to be voluntarily ‘chipped’ next week.

The initiative, which is entirely optional for employees at snack stall supplier Three Square Market (32M), will implant radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips in staff members’ hands in between their thumb and forefinger.