Posted in robotics/AI
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk took to Twitter this week to decry the slow and costly pace of U.S. infrastructure projects, and thus a challenge — or boast — was born: The Boring Co. could build a tunnel across the San Francisco Bay far cheaper and far faster than current available estimates.
Musk was pointing to a San Francisco Chronicle editorial favoring a new Transbay Tube for public transportation over another cross-bay bridge to alleviate chronic traffic woes and public-transportation overcrowding in the Bay Area. The editorial cited a starting price of $12 billion for the new tunnel.
Probably about a tenth of the cost and a fifth of the time— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 28, 2018
Temperature changes large and small are happening around us all the time, and scientists have come up with a machine that can convert those fluctuations into electricity, potentially powering sensors and communication devices almost out of thin air.
The energy harvesting is done through what’s called a thermal resonator: a device that captures heat on one side and radiates it over to the other. As both sides try and reach equilibrium, the energy can be caught using the process of thermoelectrics.
According to the team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the new thermal resonator could keep remote sensors or any off-grid devices powered up for years, just by using temperature swings – like the natural ones between night and day, for instance.
GALAPAGOS ISLANDS, Ecuador (AP) — It’s the biggest shark — and the biggest fish — in the sea, often found roaming in warm waters around the globe with its huge mouth agape in search of dinner.
Yet despite its hulking appearance, the whale shark has only tiny, almost useless teeth and is sometimes so docile that entire boatloads of people can swim alongside the enigmatic, spotted beast. It’s also one of the least understood animals in the oceans.
Posted in materials
This event will be webcast live from this page.
The Technology Policy Program invites you to the launch of our upcoming report, A National Machine Intelligence Strategy for the United States.
The United States is at the precipice of a defining moment in history. Over the past five years, progress in machine intelligence (MI) has greatly accelerated. From the defeat of Go champion Lee Sedol by DeepMind’s AlphaGo program to the first deployments of fully-autonomous vehicles on public roads, recent events are challenging us to re-evaluate what may soon be possible for computerized systems. MI systems have already begun to quietly pervade a growing share of businesses, governments, and individual lives around the world, and we are only just beginning to grasp the impacts that this technological revolution will have on our economy, our society, and our national security. In our paper, we outline they key elements of a comprehensive national strategy for the United States to promote the safe and responsible development of MI, and to maintain U.S. leadership in MI technology.
The transition toward a new mobility ecosystem could have wide-reaching impacts that span a host of industries and players, including—but not limited to:
Global automotive OEMs face momentous and difficult decisions. OEMs will need to determine if they should evolve from a (relatively) fixed capital production, first-transaction, product-sale business into one centered on being an end-to-end mobility services provider. This would represent a profound business model change and the development of entirely new capabilities to be competitively and sustainably viable.
The traditional capabilities of vehicle manufacturers and suppliers will likely need to expand, collaborating with autonomous vehicle technology suppliers, software developers, and others to provide a much broader range of product choices.12 There are complex economics in being able to manufacture vehicles similar to today’s mass-produced driver-owned cars, highly customized personally owned autonomous vehicles, and utilitarian pods for urban environments. Manufacturers will likely require not only today’s traditional supply chains but new manufacturing capabilities that allow advanced, low-cost, efficient customization. They will need to determine if they should redesign their business model to compete in all four future states or to focus on one segment.
