In a leap for robot development, the MIT researchers who built a robotic cheetah have now trained it to see and jump over hurdles as it runs—making this the first four-legged robot to run and jump over obstacles autonomously.
“Automation has already had a substantial impact on Chinese factory employment: Between 1995 and 2002 about 16 million factory jobs disappeared, roughly 15 percent of total Chinese manufacturing employment. This trend is poised to accelerate.” Read more
Latest DARPA robotics competition shows how we still have some work to do on independently mobile robots.
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“The McKinsey study analyzes and forecasts the potential impact of so-called digital talent platforms. The report looks at three types of such platforms: job-finding and employee-seeking websites (such as Monster.com and LinkedIn); marketplaces for services (Uber and Upwork, for example); and data-driven talent discovery tools (like Evolv and Knack). By 2025, McKinsey estimates, these digital talent platforms could add $2.7 trillion a year to global gross domestic product, which would be the equivalent of adding another Britain to the world economy. And the digital tools, the report states, could benefit as many as 540 million people in various ways, including better matches of their skills with jobs, higher wages and shorter stints of unemployment.” Read more
Fun article below on upcoming Financial Times event. Transhumanism and AI will be a part of the discussions at the event. They’re going to have lots of weird technology there, as well as robots wandering around.
Technically Incorrect: A New Zealand-based company says it’s building a very, very angry robot to help companies deal with angry customers.
On-screen robots tend to rise up and crush their puny human masters with alarming regularity.
“I decided to log every single incidence of artificial intelligence or robots in the history of cinema,” Adam Rutherford, a British geneticist and author who served as AI consultant on the recent film “Ex Machina”, tells CNET’s Crave blog. “I think I calculated that 65 percent of them end up being a threat, and the rest of them are just servile.” Read more
“Another big trend at work: The Renault robots are ‘collaborative,’ designed to work in proximity to people. Older types of factory robots swing their steel arms with such force that they can bludgeon anyone who strays too close. Using sonar, cameras or other technologies, collaborative robots can sense where people are and slow down or stop to avoid hurting them.” Read more
