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Blog – Page 10539

Kalashnikov’s upcoming product shows how the US and Russia are on wildly different paths to autonomy.

The maker of the famous AK −47 rifle is building “a range of products based on neural networks,” including a “fully automated combat module” that can identify and shoot at its targets. That’s what Kalashnikov spokeswoman Sofiya Ivanova told TASS, a Russian government information agency last week. It’s the latest illustration of how the U.S. and Russia differ as they develop artificial intelligence and robotics for warfare.

The Kalashnikov “combat module” will consist of a gun connected to a console that constantly crunches image data “to identify targets and make decisions,” Ivanova told TASS. A Kalashnikov photo that ran with the TASS piece showed a turret-mounted weapon that appeared to fire rounds of 25mm or so.

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This one and one in iceland! wow!

Volcanic eruptions on the Indonesian resort island of Bali have prompted officials to cancel flights and move about 24,000 residents out of the way as a thick ash cloud from Mount Agung, thousands of meters high, drifts east and southeast along the archipelago.

Residents were evacuated from 224 points around the island while Lombok International Airport on Pulau Lombok, the island due east of Bali, has closed temporarily, said Ari Ahsan, spokesman for Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali.

At Ngurah Rai, Bali’s main airport, flight cancellations stranded roughly 7,000 domestic and international passengers, according to the airport’s latest report.

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On August 13, 2017, during the final day at RAADfest 2017.

Q&A session with an extraordinary group of gerontologists, futurists, speakers, scientists and advocates of Radical Life Extension (RLE):

Panelists from left to right: Aubrey De Grey, Bernadeane, Bill Andrews, Bill Faloon, Natasha Vita-More, Jim Strole, José Luis Cordeiro, Neal VanDeree and Liz Parrish.

David Kekich joined the panel via web conference media, and Joe Bardin served as moderator (seated at the very left of the panel)

Continue reading “170813 RAADfest final panel” | >

Japan leads the world in advanced robotics. Many of its firms see great potential in “carerobos” that look after the elderly. Over a quarter of the population is over 65, the highest proportion of any country in the OECD. Care workers are in desperately short supply, and many Japanese have a cultural affinity with robots.

AT SHINTOMI nursing home in Tokyo, men and women sit in a circle following exercise instructions before singing along to a famous children’s song, “Yuyake Koyake” (“The Glowing Sunset”).

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DARPA has a new surveillance program in the works, and it doesn’t involve training human agents or AI operators. Instead, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense wants to genetically engineer plant-based sensors as battlefield spy tech.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the think-tank that’s under the U.S. Department of Defense, recently announced that it’s working on a new project that could change how pertinent information is gathered on the battlefield. The project, dubbed the Advanced Plant Technologies (APT) program, examines the possibility of turning plants into next-generation surveillance technology.

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