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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,765

Microsoft’s new AI is capable of spotting a good joke

As great as computers are at crunching their way through millions of numbers in just a few seconds, they’re not well known for having deep emotions or a sense of humour — until now. A new artificial intelligence system developed by Microsoft has been trained to spot the funniest submissions to the ongoing New Yorker cartoon caption competition. Indeed, the software has been developed partly out of necessity, with so many entries flooding in that the human editors can’t cope.

“The process of looking at 5,000 caption entries a week usually destroys [my editorial assistant’s] mind in about two years, and then I get a new one,” the New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff explained to Bloomberg. “It’s a little bit daunting. It’s like going snow blind; you go humour blind.”

That’s why Mankoff has been working alongside Microsoft researchers Dafna Shahaf and Eric Horvitz in developing the new humour-sensitive AI software. Of course, the program needs to be trained in what’s funny and what isn’t, because it doesn’t have an innate sense of what makes something witty: by feeding in thousands of previous submissions, the AI gets a large database of previous responses to work from.

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The makers of the Roomba just got government approval for a robot lawn mower

It’s been nearly a decade since the earliest whispers suggested iRobot, makers of the Roomba, were building a lawn mower. But we seem to be a bit closer to the future we were promised: the FCC has granted approval to iRobot to build a hands-free mowing-bot, Reuters reports.

Although we don’t know all of the specifics, the mower, according to Reuters, would operate through stakes in the ground that wirelessly connect to a mower and map out where it should cut. That approach required a waiver from the Commission, which was granted despite objections from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The observatory argued the mower’s signal would interfere with telescopes, but the FCC sided with iRobot, saying its limitations would insure astronomers‘ work wasn’t harmed.

But a mower still doesn’t sound like it will be available to consumers imminently. According to Reuters, iRobot says the waiver will let it “continue exploring the viability of wideband, alongside other technologies, as part of a long-term product exploration effort in the lawn mowing category.”

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Hit TV show Humans on intelligent android servants

A reminder: HUMANS premieres in the U.S. Sunday June 28, 2015 at 9PM EDT on AMC.

This eight-part drama series takes place in a parallel present, featuring the Synth — a highly developed, artificially intelligent android servant.

Having seen the first two episodes, I’m totally hooked. I found the show surprisingly believable. It (almost) fills the void left after Almost Human and Fringe.

The Atlantic nailed it in a review: “With its small-bore, domestic focus, Humans has the potential to stand out in the supersaturated genre of A.I. fiction.”

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The proposed ban on offensive autonomous weapons is unrealistic and dangerous

AI-controlled armed, autonomous UAVs may take over when things start to happen faster than human thought in future wars. From Call of Duty Black Ops 2 (credit: Activision Publishing)

The open letter from the Future of Life Institute (FLI) calling for a “ban on offensive autonomous weapons” is as unrealistic as the broad relinquishment of nuclear weapons would have been at the height of the cold war.

A treaty or international agreement banning the development of artificially intelligent robotic drones for military use would not be effective. It would be impossible to completely stop nations from secretly working on these technologies out of fear that other nations and non-state entities are doing the same.

It’s also not rational to assume that terrorists or a mentally ill lone wolf attacker would respect such an agreement.

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I Millennials camperanno cent’anni o anche più. Ma se lo potranno permettere?

This is an interesting story in one of Italy’s top 3 papers/sites about life extension science and millennials living beyond 100 years of age. It also features transhumanism: http://numerus.corriere.it/2015/08/06/i-millennials-camperan…ermettere/ and the English: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=http://…rev=search

Le tendenze della statistica ci dicono che chi oggi ha vent’anni ha ottime probabilità di arrivare ai cento in buona salute. Forse anche molto di più, se avranno successo le battaglie del Partito Transumanista che si presenta alle elezioni americane del 2016 con l’obiettivo di puntare più risorse sulla lotta all’invecchiamento. Ma come si configura un mondo di persone tanto longeve? L’allungamento della vita potrà beneficiare tutte le popolazioni o soltanto una fascia di privilegiati? Già oggi la speranza di vita nei Paesi più poveri è mediamente inferiore di 18 anni rispetto ai Paesi più ricchi e anche in Italia ci sono tre anni di differenza tra Milano e Napoli. E come si ridisegna un sistema sociale nel quale le persone vivranno venti o trent’anni più di oggi?

Un autobus rosso a forma di bara, con tanto di fiori finti sul tetto, percorre le strade degli Stati Uniti. Lo ha voluto il leader del Partito transumanista Zoltan Istvan, candidato alle elezioni presidenziali del 2016. Istvan non diventerà presidente, ma il suo messaggio non è banale: con il suo tour elettorale, vuole attirare l’attenzione sulla battaglia contro l’invecchiamento. Chiede più fondi per la ricerca e per le cure sanitarie, più carriere nelle attività tecnologiche, nell’intelligenza artificiale e nella medicina.

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WATCH: The dawn of the bionic man

Hugh Herr is building the next generation of bionic limbs, robotic prosthetics inspired by nature’s own designs. Herr lost both legs in a climbing accident 30 years ago; now, as the head of the MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics group, he shows his incredible technology in a talk that’s both technical and deeply personal — with the help of ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her left leg in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and performs again for the first time on the TED stage.

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Move over, autonomous AI weapons, there’s a new risk in town: ‘gene drives’

Wyss Institute scientists believe that synthetic gene drives, if researched responsibly, might be used in the future to render mosquito populations unable to transmit malaria (credit: CDC)

An international group of 26 experts, including prominent genetic engineers and fruit fly geneticists, has unanimously recommended a series of preemptive measures to safeguard gene drive research from accidental (or intentional) release from laboratories.

RNA-guided gene drives are genetic elements — found naturally in the genomes of most of the world’s organisms — that increase the chance of the gene they carry being passed on to all offspring. So they can quickly spread through populations if not controlled.

Looking to these natural systems, researchers around the world, including some scientists, are developing synthetic gene drives that could one day be leveraged by humans to purposefully alter the traits of wild populations of organisms to prevent disease transmission and eradicate invasive species.

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