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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,693

Microsoft Partners With Elon Musk-Backed OpenAI To Democratize Artificial Intelligence: What Does This Mean?

Microsoft has announced a new partnership with Elon Musk’s OpenAI nonprofit to advance and democratize artificial intelligence. Between OpenAI and Microsoft AI and Research, open-source AI breakthroughs should not take too long to surface. Pictured here are Harry Shum, Microsoft AI and Research Group executive vice president, and Sam Altman, co-chair of OpenAI. ( Microsoft Blog )

Microsoft is partnering its artificial intelligence research arm with Elon Musk’s nonprofit OpenAI, announcing the “industry’s first cloud bot-as-a-service” on Microsoft Azure.

Under the arrangement, OpenAI will be able to tap Microsoft’s virtual machine technology to run large-scale artificial intelligence simulation and training exercises, while Microsoft will have state-of-the-art research on Azure.

Cybersecurity companies adopting AI, but so are hackers

TOKYO — Leading information technology companies are rushing to create systems that use artificial intelligence to defend against cyberattacks. The goal is to commercialize AI software to detect even ingeniously designed attacks, identify the perpetrators, and quickly mount a defense.

However, research is also taking place in the U.S. and elsewhere on ways to harness AI for cyberwarfare, and the trend suggests there will come a time when the battles in cyberspace pit AI against AI, leaving humans sidelined.

Fujitsu Laboratories, the R&D unit of Japanese IT giant Fujitsu, has begun to develop an AI system to protect corporate information systems from cyberattack. The system would learn to recognize regular patterns of network activity so deviant behavior stands out. The company aims to have a commercial product ready in two to three years that could uncover and respond to attacks even from hackers who intentionally space out their login attempts so they are difficult to discover.

Wearable exoskeleton lets researchers in Russia control a robot in Germany

You know that whole chaos theory idea (okay, we saw it in an Ashton Kutcher movie) about how a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world can trigger a hurricane in another?

Well, the 2016 equivalent is a project where scientists in Russia wear an exoskeleton to control a connected robot in Germany.

Named CAPIO, the project is the work of DFKI, a kind of European DARPA focused on building robots for carrying out applications and tasks that can assist humans. One of its robots is called AILA, and is controllable using CAPIO, an eight-contact exoskeleton system that wearers can use to move AILA in real time.

Cormorant/AirMule UAV completes first autonomous flight

A lot has happened since we first heard about the AirMule, a prototype VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) aircraft that features internal rotor blades – these work along with the horizontal-thrust ducted fans visible at the rear. First, it made some tethered autonomous test flights. Then, it flew untethered for a short distance. Now, known as the Cormorant UAV, it’s made its first full untethered autonomous flight … although there were a couple of hiccups.

Designed by Israeli firm Tactical Robotics, the Cormorant is designed to deliver troops, civilian passengers or other cargo within tight quarters where helicopters with exposed rotor blades just can’t go. With the UAV in its name standing for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, the idea is that it will perform these tasks either autonomously or by remote control.

The latest test took place in Israel on Nov. 3rd, lasting only about two minutes and involving low flight over uneven terrain. While the aircraft did successfully demonstrate autonomous flight modes such as takeoff, climb, acceleration, cruise, deceleration, descent, turns, hover and touchdown, it is hoped that subsequent flights will be able to smooth out the transitions between those modes.

Microsoft teams up with Elon Musk’s OpenAI project

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research non-profit backed by Tesla’s Elon Musk, Y Combinator’s Sam Altman, a Donald Trump fan called Peter Thiel, and numerous other tech luminaries, is partnering with Microsoft to tackle the next set of challenges in the still-nascent field.

OpenAI will also make Microsoft Azure its preferred cloud platform, in part because of its existing support for AI workloads with the help of Azure Batch and Azure Machine Learning, as well as Microsoft’s work on its recently rebranded Cognitive Toolkit. Microsoft also offers developers access to a high-powered GPU-centric virtual machine for these kind of machine learning workloads. These N-Series machines are still in beta, but OpenAI has been an early adopter of them and Microsoft says they will become generally available in December.

Amazon already offers a similar kind of GPU-focused virtual machine, though oddly enough, Google has lagged behind and — at least for the time being — doesn’t offer this kind of machine type yet.

This Google-powered AI can identify your terrible doodles

As part of Google’s slew of artificial intelligence announcements today, the company is releasing a number of AI web experiments powered by its cloud services that anyone can go and play with. One — called Quick, Draw! — gives you a prompt to draw an image of a written word or phrase in under 20 seconds with your mouse cursor in such a way that a neural network can identify it. It’s both a hilarious and fascinating exercise with broader implications for how AI can self-learn over time in key AI research areas like image recognition and optical character recognition.

Quick, Draw! is a great way to familiarize yourself with how neural networks work to identify objects and text in photos, which is one of the most common forms of AI-guided software techniques we see daily on platform’s like Facebook and Google Photos. As you start to craft the doodle, Quick, Draw!’s software automaton will start yelling out words and phrases it thinks you’re trying to illustrate. As you get closer to the finished product, the voice starts to become a good indication of how your drawing could be misinterpreted as something else. If you’re on point, however, the neural network will hone in on the object and guess correctly.

The Future of Surgery Is Robotic, Data-Driven, and Artificially Intelligent

As far back as 3,500 years ago ancient Egyptian doctors were performing invasive surgeries. Even though our tools and knowledge have improved drastically over time, until very recently surgery was still a manual task for human hands.

When it came out about 15 years ago, Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci surgical robot was a major innovation. The da Vinci robot helps surgeons be more precise and dexterous and to remove natural hand tremors during surgery.

In the years since da Vinci first came out, many other surgical robots have arrived. And today there’s a new generation coming online, like the Verb robot, a joint venture between Google and Johnson and Johnson. This means surgery is about to get even more interesting. Surgical robotics will be able to do more than just improve dexterity and reduce incision size…

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