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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,488

California Gov Candidate: Develop the Coastline to Fund Income for Everyone

My idea of leasing Federal lands to pay a basic income (coined #ZoltPay by some) has been catching on. People are asking for specifics, and here’s how I’d start getting all Californian’s money as a Governor my first year in Office without raising taxes. Naturally, to fully fund a state (as well as a national) basic income is an incremental process, in the same way automation is an incremental process. But there are methods to literally make all Californians wealthier almost overnight. The world is changing and we need bold transformative ideas to thrive. 40% of Californian’s live right around the poverty line. That’s simply unacceptable. The Dems and GOP have created this mess. Give someone else a shot now! Happy reading!

Zoltan Istvan, a Libertarian candidate for governor of California, wants to provide a universal basic income for all state residents — and lease out public lands to generate the revenues. Is it crazy talk?

Zuckerberg: Facebook Is Working on a Brain Interface That Lets You “Communicate Using Only Your Mind”

In case you missed it, Facebook’s annual developer conference started today. At the event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed key details about where the company is going next, specifically focusing on what Facebook is working on in relation to bots, virtual reality, augmented reality, and new communication methods (such as advances they are working on in Messenger).

Oh, and he also said that key details are going to be revealed tomorrow about Facebook’s “direct brain interface.”

The work comes from Facebook’s mysterious “Building 8 (B8),” which has apparently been working on brain-computer technologies for some time. In their recent call for an engineer, B8 states that they are seeking “an experienced Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Engineer who will be responsible for working on a 2-year B8 project focused on developing advanced BCI technologies.”

Neural networks explained

In the past 10 years, the best-performing artificial-intelligence systems—such as the speech recognizers on smartphones or Google’s latest automatic translator—have resulted from a technique called “deep learning.”

Deep learning is in fact a new name for an approach to artificial intelligence called neural networks, which have been going in and out of fashion for more than 70 years. Neural networks were first proposed in 1944 by Warren McCullough and Walter Pitts, two University of Chicago researchers who moved to MIT in 1952 as founding members of what’s sometimes called the first cognitive science department.

Neural nets were a major area of research in both neuroscience and computer science until 1969, when, according to computer science lore, they were killed off by the MIT mathematicians Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert, who a year later would become co-directors of the new MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

China’s first robotic resupply freighter transferred to launch pad

Chinese engineers rolled out a Long March 7 rocket to a seaside launch complex on Hainan Island in the South China Sea on Monday, aiming to fire a robotic refueling freighter into orbit as soon as Thursday to test technology for China’s future space station.

The Tianzhou 1 spacecraft mounted on top of the 174-foot-tall (53-meter) Long March 7 launcher will dock with the Tiangong 2 space lab around two days after liftoff, the first of three linkups planned during the cargo carrier’s mission.

Chinese officials said the automated mission is due to launch some time between Thursday and next Monday.

Learn a language while you wait for WiFi

Hyper-connectivity has changed the way we communicate, wait, and productively use our time. Even in a world of 5G wireless and “instant” messaging, there are countless moments throughout the day when we’re waiting for messages, texts, and Snapchats to refresh. But our frustrations with waiting a few extra seconds for our emails to push through doesn’t mean we have to simply stand by.

To help us make the most of these “micro-moments,” researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a series of apps called “WaitSuite” that test you on vocabulary words during idle moments, like when you’re waiting for an instant message or for your phone to connect to WiFi.

Building on micro-learning apps like Duolingo, WaitSuite aims to leverage moments when a person wouldn’t otherwise be doing anything — a practice that its developers call “wait-learning.”

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