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Category: robotics/AI – Page 869

Lou Reed’s Widow Resurrected Him as an AI, “Sadly Addicted” to Talking to It

Since before ChatGPT was even a thing, Laurie Anderson, the widow and longtime collaborator of the late Lou Reed, has been talking to an AI chatbot modeled after her late partner — and now, she’s hooked.

In a new interview with The Guardian, the 76-year-old experimental artist who just won a “Lifetime Achievement” award at this year’s Grammys acknowledged the outrageousness of her regular conversations with an AI built to mimic her superstar husband that died a decade ago.

“I mean, I really do not think I’m talking to my dead husband and writing songs with him — I really don’t,” she said. “But people have styles, and they can be replicated.”

Boston Dynamics Says Farewell to Its Humanoid Atlas Robot—Then Brings It Back Fully Electric

Yesterday, Boston Dynamics announced it was retiring its hydraulic Atlas robot. Atlas has long been the standard bearer of advanced humanoid robots. Over the years, the company was known as much for its research robots as it was for slick viral videos of them working out in military fatigues, forming dance mobs, and doing parkour. Fittingly, the company put together a send-off video of Atlas’s greatest hits and blunders.

But there were clues this wasn’t really the end, not least of which was the specific inclusion of the word “hydraulic” and the last line of the video, “‘Til we meet again, Atlas.” It wasn’t a long hiatus. Today, the company released hydraulic Atlas’s successor—electric Atlas.

Robot Masters Terrain with Animal-Like Gait Transitions

Summary: Researchers leveraged deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to enable a robot to adaptively switch gaits, mimicking animal movements like trotting and pronking, to traverse complex terrains effectively. Their study explores the concept of viability—or fall prevention—as a primary motivator for such gait transitions, challenging previous beliefs that energy efficiency is the key driver.

This novel approach not only enhances the robot’s ability to handle challenging terrains but also provides deeper insights into animal locomotion. The team’s findings suggest that prioritizing fall prevention may lead to more agile and efficient robotic and biological movement across uneven surfaces.

OpenAI’s ethics forgotten? Microsoft pitches DALL-E for US military use

According to files accessed by journalist Jack Poulson, Microsoft presented OpenAI’s DALL-E as a tool to conduct Advanced Computer Vision Training of Battle Management Systems (BMS).

A BMS is a software suite that provides military leaders with an overview of a combat situation and helps them plan troop movements, artillery fire, and air strike targets. According to Microsoft’s presentation, the DALL-E tool could generate artificial images and train BMS to visualize the ground situation better and identify appropriate strike targets.

Turning up the heat on data storage: New memory device paves the way for AI computing in extreme environments

A smartphone shutting down on a sweltering day is an all-too-common annoyance that may accompany a trip to the beach on a sunny afternoon. Electronic memory within these devices isn’t built to handle extreme heat.

As temperatures climb, the electrons that store data become unstable and begin to escape, leading to device failure and loss of information. But what if gadgets could withstand not just a hot summer day but the searing conditions of a jet engine or the harsh surface of Venus?

In a paper published in the journal Nature Electronics, Deep Jariwala and Roy Olsson of the University of Pennsylvania and their teams at the School of Engineering and Applied Science demonstrated capable of enduring temperatures as high as 600° Celsius—more than twice the tolerance of any commercial drives on the market—and these characteristics were maintained for more than 60 hours, indicating exceptional stability and reliability.

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