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Pests destroy up to 40% of the world’s crops each year, causing $220 billion in economic losses, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Trapview is harnessing the power of AI to help tackle the problem.

The Slovenian company has developed a device that traps and identifies pests, and acts as an advance warning system by predicting how they will spread.

“We’ve built the biggest database of pictures of insects in the world, which allows us to really use modern AI-based computing vision in the most optimal way,” says Matej Štefančič, CEO of Trapview and parent company EFOS.

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The latest data improves our understanding of how clouds in “hot Jupiter” exoplanets like this might appear up close. They are likely to be broken up, rather than a single, uniform blanket over the planet.

Photochemistry is the result of light triggering chemical reactions. This process is fundamental to life on Earth: it makes ozone, for example, which protects us from harsh ultraviolet (UV) rays.

New observations of WASP-39 b, a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a Sun-like star found 700 light years away, confirm the presence of a never-before-seen molecule in the atmosphere – sulfur dioxide – among other details.

The James Webb Space Telescope has previously studied WASP-39 b. In August, it captured the first clear evidence for carbon dioxide. Now, it has focused its array of highly sensitive instruments on the planet once again, revealing not just an isolated ingredient, but a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds in the broiling atmosphere. This latest data, far more detailed than any previous telescope, shows the amazing capabilities of Webb, and hints at the potential for future discoveries that may reveal biosignatures.

Continue reading “Photochemistry is confirmed on an exoplanet” | >

Deepmind introduces a new research framework for AI agents in simulated environments such as video games that can interact more flexibly and naturally with humans.

AI systems have achieved great success in video games such as Dota or Starcraft, defeating human professional players. This is made possible by precise reward functions that are tuned to optimize game outcomes: Agents were trained using unique wins and losses calculated by computer code. Where such reward functions are possible, AI agents can sometimes achieve superhuman performance.

But often – especially for everyday human behaviors with open-ended outcomes – there is no such precise reward function.

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Originally published on Towards AI the World’s Leading AI and Technology News and Media Company. If you are building an AI-related product or service, we invite you to consider becoming an AI sponsor. At Towards AI, we help scale AI and technology startups. Let us help you unleash your technology to the masses.

The model is able to transfer knowledge between a simulated environment and real-world settings.

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Researchers at MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms are working on an ambitious project, designing robots that effectively self-assemble. The team admits that the goal of an autonomous self-building robot is still “years away,” but the work has thus far demonstrated positive results.

At the system’s center are voxels (a term borrowed from computer graphics), which carry power and data that can be shared between pieces. The pieces form the foundation of the robot, grabbing and attaching additional voxels before moving across the grid for further assembly.

The researchers note in an associated paper published in Nature, “Our approach challenges the convention that larger constructions need larger machines to build them, and could be applied in areas that today either require substantial capital investments for fixed infrastructure or are altogether unfeasible.”

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MIT researchers have devised an algorithm using voxels robotics devices to build anything from houses to planes to cars and even other robots by using a grid system that transfers knowledge to determine when to build what, and when to build other robot builders. New Google Deepmind video game artificial intelligence develops agents that can talk, listen, ask questions, navigate, search and retrieve information, control things, and do a range of other intelligent tasks in real-time. New Non-invasive brain computer interface device transmits information through optic nerve to compete with Neuralink BCI.

Tech News Timestamps:
0:00 Robotics Breakthrough Builds Anything — Even Robots.
2:44 New Google Deepmind Video Game AI
5:25 New Neuralink BCI Competitor.

#robot #ai #neuralink

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