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Category: robotics/AI – Page 405

Have your buffalo wings, save the chicken. Step inside a lab-grown meat factory with us to see the future of food.

Up next, Meet Apollo, the real-life robot who wants to give you more free time | Hard Reset ► • Meet Apollo, the real-life robot who…

Lab-grown meat, cultivated meat, cell-based meat, slaughter-free meat: All of these terms refer to the process of creating real meat from animal cells, despite names that may allude to a vegan product.

What benefits are there to growing meat from chicken cells rather than raising animals for slaughter? Industrial animal agriculture is responsible for an estimated 15 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions, and with demand for meat projected to double in the next decade, this technology could offer a more sustainable option.

Come with us as we step inside a lab-grown meat facility, and become some of the first to taste-test chicken that was grown in a bioreactor instead of on a factory farm.

00:00 Welcome to Hard Reset.

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A supersonic drone that will be propelled by a revolutionary new engine has taken to the skies for the first time. When Venus Aerospace’s aircraft does go supersonic on a later date, it will be powered by a Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE).

Supersonic drones may sound like something bleeding edge, but they’re surprisingly old hat as a basic concept. As far back as the early 1950s, the US Air Force was fielding remote-controlled supersonic jets for targets to test air defenses, as platforms for reconnaissance in dangerous areas, or as weapons armed with conventional or nuclear warheads.

However, the one thing they’ve all had in common over the past 75 years was a jet engine for propulsion to boost them past Mach 1. In recent years, advances in avionics, aerodynamics, and autonomous systems have allowed uncrewed aircraft to expand their roles, but at their heart, they were still jet propelled.

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In an effort to bring clean, renewable energy to some of the world’s more remote islands — many of which are powered by old diesel generators — a pan-European consortium of seven companies has designed a device capable of turning seawater into electricity.

The Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion, or OTEC, technology consists of three main parts that are being built all over the world: a cold-water riser pipe, which is being fabricated in Austria, a cylindrical hull, which is being built in the Canary Islands (a Spanish autonomous community, where the OTEC will be assembled and tested), and a gimbal connection point.

Once the entire OTEC prototype is complete, it will be installed on the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands, a little under two miles off the coast. There, it will be tested in harsh ocean conditions for one year. The OTEC is designed to be disconnected if conditions get too harsh and moved closer to shore until the weather clears up.

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Apple is reportedly exploring the development of ‘home robots’ as its next big venture.

According to Business Insider, tech giant Apple is shifting its focus towards a new area of development.

The pivot comes after a difficult period for Apple, with the company scrapping its plans to develop a self-driving car, which it had been working on for years.

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Agriculture is a cornerstone of human civilization, a testament to our ability to harness nature for sustenance. Yet, this age-old industry faces many challenges that hamper productivity, impact livelihoods, and threaten global food security.

By 2050, we must produce 60 percent more food to feed a world population of 9.3 billion, reports the Food and Agriculture Organization. Given the current industry challenges, doing that with a farming-as-usual approach could be tricky. Moreover, this would extend the heavy toll we already place on our natural resources.

This is where Artificial Intelligence can come to our rescue. The AI in Agriculture Market is projected to grow from $1.7 billion in 2023 to $4.7 billion by 2028, highlighting the pivotal role of advanced technologies in this sector. This article explores three significant issues agriculture faces today and shows how AI is helping tackle them using real-world examples.

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People like the veteran computer scientist Ray Kurzweil had anticipated that humanity would reach the technological singularity (where an AI agent is just as smart as a human) for yonks, outlining his thesis in ‘The Singularity is Near’ (2005) – with a projection for 2029.

Disciples like Ben Goertzel have claimed it can come as soon as 2027. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang says it’s “five years away”, joining the likes of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and others in predicting an aggressive and exponential escalation. Should these predictions be true, they will also introduce a whole cluster bomb of ethical, moral, and existential anxieties that we will have to confront. So as The Matrix turns 25, maybe it wasn’t so far-fetched after all?

Sitting on tattered armchairs in front of an old boxy television in the heart of a wasteland, Morpheus shows Neo the “real world” for the first time. Here, he fills us in on how this dystopian vision of the future came to be. We’re at the summit of a lengthy yet compelling monologue that began many scenes earlier with questions Morpheus poses to Neo, and therefore us, progressing to the choice Neo must make – and crescendoing into the full tale of humanity’s downfall and the rise of the machines.

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