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Long Promised Artificial Intelligence Is Looming—and It’s Going to Be Amazing

We have been hearing predictions for decades of a takeover of the world by artificial intelligence. In 1957, Herbert A. Simon predicted that within 10 years a digital computer would be the world’s chess champion. That didn’t happen until 1996. And despite Marvin Minsky’s 1970 prediction that “in from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being,” we still consider that a feat of science fiction.

The pioneers of artificial intelligence were surely off on the timing, but they weren’t wrong; AI is coming. It is going to be in our TV sets and driving our cars; it will be our friend and personal assistant; it will take the role of our doctor. There have been more advances in AI over the past three years than there were in the previous three decades.

Even technology leaders such as Apple have been caught off guard by the rapid evolution of machine learning, the technology that powers AI. At its recent Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple opened up its AI systems so that independent developers could help it create technologies that rival what Google and Amazon have already built. Apple is way behind.

Gamma 2 Robotics launches autonomous security robot, partners with Hexagon

Mass killings in US and Europe during 2015 & 2016: Pulse in Orlando — 49 killed; Brussels — 32 dead; Paris — 150 dead; San Bernardino 14 dead… With these numbers we have to assess could Robots equipped with sensors, communications, Tasers and other defenses be used for security guards to protect buildings and public areas and events as a defense to save lives. I believe getting robots equipped with sensor technology as well as other equipment could help towards combating terror. Also, drones should be looked at to be used in conjunction with these bots.


Gamma 2 Robotics introduced its new RAMSEE security patrol robot at Hexagon’s international conference HxGN LIVE, which is being held June 13–16 in Anaheim, California. The launch is part of a new partnership with Hexagon Safety & Infrastructure.

RAMSEE is a physical presence that patrols autonomously without supervision and provides real-time data on intruders, motion, heat, fire, smoke, gas and more. the company says in a news release.

“RAMSEE will change the world of security because it never rests and operates at a fraction of the cost paid for other security services,” says Lew Pincus, chief executive officer, Gamma 2 Robotics. “We built RAMSEE to be ideally suited for the overnight dull, dirty and dangerous patrols nobody wants to do. These are the jobs for which the security industry struggles to find staffing.”

We’re about to become more intelligent than at any other point in human history

Provided the variants for intelligence can be figured out and the genetic editing tools sufficiently refined (no small matter, in either case), Hsu thinks there’s an incredible potential for improvement. He’s written for the science magazine Nautilus that his calculations from the work at BGI indicate a potential for “very roughly, about 100 standard deviations of improvement, corresponding to an IQ of over 1,000.”

That’s a level of intelligence beyond what we can comprehend right now.

At the same time, we’re not just working on improving biological intelligence. We’re also working on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Smarter humans might be better able to solve those problems, helping us create smarter machines. Smart machines capable of processing big data are already essential for efforts to understand millions of human genomes. These things work together.

U.S. intelligence community examining video analytics

With the element of terrorists in society today; things like video data/ information and biometrics will grow increasingly in demand within the immediate years a key peice that will require improvements in the timely performance and interpretation of the information via the technologies used to collect, analyze, interpret, and present the information to users as well as respecting the privacy of innocent civilians. However, Civilians will also need to do their own part in reasonableness of when and why certain sets of data must be collected.


The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a division of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, will host a Proposers’ Day Conference for the Deep Intermodal Video Analytics (DIVA) program on July 12, 2016, in anticipation of the release of a new broad agency announcement (BAA) solicitation.

The purpose of the conference, which will be held in Washington, DC, will be to provide information on DIVA and the research problems the program aims to address, to address questions from potential proposers and to provide a forum for potential proposers to present their capabilities for teaming opportunities.

The DIVA program will be designed to develop robust automated activity detection for a multi-camera streaming video environment. As an essential aspect of DIVA, activities will be enriched by person and object detection, as well as recognition at multiple levels of granularity. DIVA is anticipated to be a three-phase program.

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