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I cannot wait to see the results.


Palo Alto-based Diffbot has proclaimed itself the “leading arms dealer in coming AI wars” after raising $10 million in Series A funding.

Diffbot has developed a robot that is working to organize information from all over the Web into the world’s largest database of knowledge. The robot, which works without human oversight, recognizes, reads, understands and monitors product pages, news articles, discussion forums, videos, pictures and more, according to the company. Businesses can gain access to this data when they sign up for Diffbot plans, ranging from $299 to $3,999 per month.

“We’ve developed a business model for AI that works and I’m excited with this new investment to accelerate our mission even further,” founder and CEO Mike Tung wrote in a company news release Thursday. “Structuring the world’s knowledge is within sight.”

It’s an exciting time for space exploration. NASA, private companies, and several countries are all racing to colonize space. Soon we hope to become a multi-planetary species. But why?

This post explores why we’re racing to the Moon and Mars and who will get there and when.

This is Part 2 of our Space GGC Series focused on important issues facing us now:

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In a major step forward for self-driving cars and the industry seeking to manufacture them, US highway authorities have informed Google that its autonomous vehicle systems could qualify as a “driver” in the eyes of the law.

A letter addressed to the company from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) last week suggests that if self-driving vehicles (SDVs) can satisfy a number of safety standards, the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) is controlling the car – in the absence of any human controls – would not be a barrier to the car legally driving on US roads.

“We agree with Google its SDV will not have a ‘driver’ in the traditional sense that vehicles have had drivers during the last more than one hundred years,” writes chief counsel for the NHTSA, Paul A. Hemmersbaugh. “If no human occupant of the vehicle can actually drive the vehicle, it is more reasonable to identify the ‘driver’ as whatever (as opposed to whoever) is doing the driving. In this instance, an item of motor vehicle equipment, the [SDS Self-Driving System], is actually driving the vehicle.”

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Over the last few years tech companies both large and small have developed programs that can “dream”; and understand and process information; and even write articles; but nothing has come close to the holy grail of artificial intelligence — developing software that can learn independently.

At least, not until now.

Helsinki might seem like an unlikely potential birthplace for this new era of intelligent machines. Yet it’s there — on a side street blocks from the central train station — that a team of roboticists, neuroscientists, and graphics programmers planted the seed that would become the new artificial intelligence software developer, The Curious AI Company.

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When I was a kid I remember being a member of Ms. Frizzle’s classroom. We went on adventures under the ocean, into the rainforest, out to the stars, and even to the center of the Earth and it was amazing.

Of course I am talking about my time on the Magic School Bus.

A relic of the nineties, the Magic School Bus starred Lily Tomlin as Ms. Frizzle, an eccentric teacher who owned a magic school bus that she used to take her students on fantastical journeys. The show and subsequent video games were a big part of my, and thousands of other children of the nineties’, formative years as it presented educational topics in an engaging way that made you curious to learn more.

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