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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,828

The Real Threat Is Machine Incompetence, Not Intelligence


Forget super-AI. Crappy AI is more likely to be our downfall, argues researcher.

The past couple of years have been a real cringe-y time to be an AI researcher. Just imagine a whole bunch of famous technologists and top-serious science authorities all suddenly taking aim at your field of research as a clear and present threat to the very survival of the species. All you want to do is predict appropriate emoji use based on textual analyses and here’s Elon Musk saying this thing he doesn’t really seem to know much about is the actual apocalypse.

It’s not that computer scientists haven’t argued against AI hype, but an academic you’ve never heard of (all of them?) pitching the headline “AI is hard” is at a disadvantage to the famous person whose job description largely centers around making big public pronouncements. This month that academic is Alan Bundy, a professor of automated reasoning at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who argues in the Communications of the ACM that there is a real AI threat, but it’s not human-like machine intelligence gone amok. Quite the opposite: the danger is instead shitty AI. Incompetent, bumbling machines.

Microsoft Cognitive Services push gains momentum

The machine-learned smarts that enable Microsoft’s Skype Translator, Bing and Cortana to accomplish tasks such as translating conversations, compiling knowledge and understanding the intent of spoken words are increasingly finding their way into third-party applications that people use every day.

These advances in the democratization of artificial intelligence are coming in part from Microsoft Cognitive Services, a collection of 25 tools that allow developers to add features such as emotion and sentiment detection, vision and speech recognition, and language understanding to their applications with zero expertise in machine learning.

“Cognitive Services is about taking all of the machine learning and AI smarts that we have in this company and exposing them to developers through easy-to-use APIs, so that they don’t have to invent the technology themselves,” said Mike Seltzer, a principal researcher in the Speech and Dialog Research Group at Microsoft’s research lab in Redmond, Washington.

A real flying submarine drone

Innocorp has a new drone that is a flying submarine. It is an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone and iot can transitio from water to air to land without any individual or multiple deployments, fission of elements, (as in rockets), or complicated maneuvering.

Like the Murres, a unique seabird which can circumnavigate in the air and in water, SubMurres does both in unprecedented fashion. SubMurres has all the key features of a submarine, including complete marine functionality, communication tower with periscope for panoramic viewing of above-water landscape, dual propulsion blades, fully-articulated rotors that emerge as needed, sensors, and more. But it doesn’t end there.

The dual submarine aircraft moves ubiquitously from water to air. As a submarine, Submurres glide silently underwater performing its mission as it surfaces. Once on the water surface its flight system is engaged and its four rotors emerge from their compartments as vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) is initiated. Once airborne, there is no expulsion of parts. SubMurres simply flies unfettered, with all components intact. Its landing apparatus allow it to settle on terrain, and its second camera system allows it to fully capture surroundings. From land, it can be directly re-dispatched to water. No need to redeploy or to be picked up by another carrier aircraft, unlike any of the chief aeronautic industry or Navy-funded university’s latest submersive drone models.

Quantum computing will revolutionize cancer research, says D-Wave co-founder Farris

It will and I know some folks are also applying Quantum properties to their bio-research to look at ways to tackle certain brain cancers via (you guessed it) Quantum Biology.

Quantum computing and machine learning will impact most all parts of human life, but one of the first and most compelling benefits we will see is in the field of cancer research, says one expert.

Zero and One Media’s Katya Pinkowski sat down with D-Wave co-founder Haig Farris recently to talk about the world-leading, Burnaby-based quantum computing company as it creeps closer to commercialization. Asked what areas of life quantum computing would impact, Farris said there really won’t be part of society that won’t be touched by it, but that one of the most noticeable out of the gate will be cancer research.

“Whether it’s brain research or cancer research, understanding and being able to model and learn from various ways you might design a drug to address a particular cancer this is going to be probably the most important application that you and I will benefit and notice,” said Farris.

The incredible inventions of intuitive AI

What do you get when you give a design tool a digital nervous system? Computers that improve our ability to think and imagine, and robotic systems that come up with (and build) radical new designs for bridges, cars, drones and much more — all by themselves. Take a tour of the Augmented Age with futurist Maurice Conti and preview a time when robots and humans will work side-by-side to accomplish things neither could do alone.

This mysterious $2 billion biotech is revealing the secrets behind its new drugs and vaccines

I do hope people realize things like nanoparticles/ quantum bio revolutionizing everything in medicine beyond AI. Anyone, not considering in biotech and medical space in general will look dated as improved and advance options are presented that works in conjunction with our systems v. trying kill things or negatively altered our systems like chemo, radioactive treatments, and other drugs do today.

Moderna Therapeutics hopes to turn RNA into a new kind of drug. Can it live up to the hype?

The world’s first droneport: an African revolution

When you picture deliveries by drone, you’re probably imagining a glittering craft winching the latest purchase from Amazon Prime down to excited suburban consumers. A thrilling technology, but ultimately one that serves to do little more than put delivery drivers out of work and further fuel our rampant addiction to consumerism.

However, in other less economically developed parts of the world, the humble drone could be nothing short of a revolution.

“Obviously robotics and autonomous technologies will have very large political and social ramifications in industrial countries, but we feel in poorer countries that are not industrialised and never going to be industrialised, then robotics can buy you some efficiency that you would not otherwise have,” said Redline Cargo Drone Network founder and director of Afrotech-EPFL Jonathan Ledgard in a talk at WebSummit about his ambitious project.

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