Robotics/AI – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Jun 1
2016

Why Should We Ban Autonomous Weapons? To Survive

I reported on this 3 months ago; and glad to see others seeing the light.

While debate has focused on moral and legal issues of autonomous weapons, too little attention has been paid to the material dangers of an AI-powered war.

Jun 1
2016

Toyota in talks to buy Waltham’s Boston Dynamics from Google’s parent, Alphabet

Both Toyota and Honda would make sense as buyers. Toyota’s TRI has been ramping up on AI technology and Honda has been working on AI such as as Asimo for over a decade.

The car company may acquire Alphabet’s Boston Dynamics, known for a spry robot called Cheetah, and Schaft, a company working on humanoid robots, Tokyo’s Nikkei reported Wednesday. The potential acquisition would allow Toyota to make serious strides in its robotics division, while Alphabet could unload elements of its own underperforming robotics unit.

Jun 1
2016

The Pentagon is building a ‘self-aware’ killer robot army fueled by social media

Official US defence and NATO documents confirm that autonomous weapon systems will kill targets, including civilians, based on tweets, blogs and Instagram by Nafeez Ahmed.

This exclusive is published by INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a crowd-funded investigative journalism project for the global commons

Jun 1
2016

See The Difference One Year Makes In Artificial Intelligence Research

An improved way of learning about neural networks.

Jun 1
2016

What The Future Of Supermarkets May Look Like

This concept, by Italian designer Carlo Ratti Associati, features many futuristic designs such as transparent displays and robots boxing up your food.

Jun 1
2016

Uber, Ford, and Google Teaming Up to Radically Change Driving Laws

With a new lobby, driverless cars could gain some legitimacy and legislation for the road. The question is whether they are good for the environment or not.

Jun 1
2016

Here’s why the inventor of the Internet supports basic income

With the robot economy looming large in the coming decades, one solution to vanishing jobs may simply be to give people money regardless of whether or not they work.

That idea is called “basic income,” and it just gained the support of one of the tech world’s founding fathers, Internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee.

“I think a basic income is one of the ways of addressing massive global inequality,” Berners-Lee, who founded the Web in 1989, explained on a recent episode of The Economist podcast.

Jun 1
2016

Forget self-driving cars: What about self-flying drones?

While all the focus has been on autonomous vehicles, one Belgian startup has been busily developing self-flying features for drones.

Jun 1
2016

Asus Has Unveiled A New, Adorable Robot Butler

For $599 your home can have a futuristic robot butler.

Jun 1
2016

Artificial intelligence should be protected

With huge leaps taking place in the world of artificial intelligence (AI), right now, experts have started asking questions about the new forms of protection we might need against the formidable smarts and potential dangers of computers and robots of the near future.

But do robots need protection from us too? As the ‘minds’ of machines evolve ever closer to something that’s hard to tell apart from human intelligence, new generations of technology may need to be afforded the kinds of moral and legal protections we usually think of as ‘human’ rights, says mathematician Marcus du Sautoy from the University of Oxford in the UK.

Du Sautoy thinks that once the sophistication of computer thinking reaches a level basically akin to human consciousness, it’s our duty to look after the welfare of machines, much as we do that of people.