Day 6 at the Artificial Intelligence Hub robotic boot camp, the kids continued the programming class using python. There was an online training section with Camp Peavy, he showed the kids robots he built and shared articles on how to build them. it was an awesome experience. It is our vision to domesticate Artificial Intelligence in Africa and we wont stop until we get there. #TakeOver.
Kelvin Dafiaghor added a new photo.
Circa 2019
Scientists have longed to create the perfect energy source. Ideally, that source would eventually replace greenhouse gas-spewing fossil fuels, power cars, boats, and planes, and send spacecraft to remote parts of the universe. So far, nuclear fusion energy has seemed like the most likely option to help us reach those goals.
The big problem? It’s difficult to harness, and we’re nowhere near producing it at the scales we need in order to cause a seismic shift in energy policy. That’s why teams of researchers across the world are racing to improve our understanding of this reaction.
Continue reading “The Navy’s Patent for a Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor Is Wild” »
Researchers in Australia have achieved a world record internet speed of 44.2 terabits per second, allowing users to download 1,000 HD movies in a single second.
A team from Monash, Swinburne and RMIT universities used a “micro-comb” optical chip containing hundreds of infrared lasers to transfer data across existing communications infrastructure in Melbourne.
Over the last few years, creating fake videos that swap the face of one person onto another using artificial intelligence and machine learning has become a bit of a hobby for a number of enthusiasts online, with the results of these “deepfakes” getting better and better. Today, a new one applies that tech to Star Trek.
Continue reading “Watch: Deepfake Has Leonard Nimoy As Young Spock In J.J. Abrams’ ‘Star Trek’” »
In 2010, a lithium-ion battery pack with 1 kWh of capacity—enough to power an electric car for three or four miles—cost more than $1,000. By 2019, the figure had fallen to $156, according to data compiled by BloombergNEF. That’s a massive drop, and experts expect continued—though perhaps not as rapid—progress in the coming decade. Several forecasters project the average cost of a kilowatt-hour of lithium-ion battery capacity to fall below $100 by the mid-2020s.
That’s the result of a virtuous circle where better, cheaper batteries expand the market, which in turn drives investments that produce further improvements in cost and performance. The trend is hugely significant because cheap batteries will be essential to shifting the world economy away from carbon-intensive energy sources like coal and gasoline.
Batteries and electric motors have emerged as the most promising technology for replacing cars powered by internal combustion engines. The high cost of batteries has historically made electric cars much more expensive than conventional cars. But once battery packs get cheap enough—again, experts estimate around $100 per kWh for non-luxury vehicles—electric cars should actually become cheaper than equivalent gas-powered cars. The cost advantage will be even bigger once you factor in the low cost of charging an electric car, so we can expect falling battery costs to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles.
VICE.
What do a frying pan, an LED light, and the most cutting edge camouflage in the world have in common? Well, that largely depends on who you ask. Most people would struggle to find the link, but for University of Michigan chemical engineers Sharon Glotzer and Michael Engel, there is a substantial connection, indeed one that has flipped the world of materials science on its head since its discovery over 30 years ago.
The magic ingredient common to all three items is the quasiperiodic crystal, the “impossible” atomic arrangement discovered by Dan Shechtman in 1982. Basically, a quasicrystal is a crystalline structure that breaks the periodicity (meaning it has translational symmetry, or the ability to shift the crystal one unit cell without changing the pattern) of a normal crystal for an ordered, yet aperiodic arrangement. This means that quasicrystalline patterns will fill all available space, but in such a way that the pattern of its atomic arrangement never repeats. Glotzer and Engel recently managed to simulate the most complex quasicrystal ever, a discovery which may revolutionize the field of crystallography by blowing open the door for a whole host of applications that were previously inconceivable outside of science-fiction, like making yourself invisible or shape-shifting robots.
Continue reading “Quasicrystals Are Nature’s Impossible Matter” »
Rice University’s Early Bird could care less about the worm; it’s looking for megatons of greenhouse gas emissions.
Early Bird is an energy-efficient method for training deep neural networks (DNNs), the form of artificial intelligence (AI) behind self-driving cars, intelligent assistants, facial recognition and dozens more high-tech applications.
Researchers from Rice and Texas A&M University unveiled Early Bird April 29 in a spotlight paper at ICLR 2020, the International Conference on Learning Representations. A study by lead authors Haoran You and Chaojian Li of Rice’s Efficient and Intelligent Computing (EIC) Lab showed Early Bird could use 10.7 times less energy to train a DNN to the same level of accuracy or better than typical training. EIC Lab director Yingyan Lin led the research along with Rice’s Richard Baraniuk and Texas A&M’s Zhangyang Wang.
NASA has conducted an experiment in Antarctica, which has revealed new evidence that a parallel universe exists, except the rules of physics, are the opposite of ours.
Physicists have been debating among one another since 1952 of the possibility of a multiverse, whereby many universes exist parallel to ours. These universes could have different laws of physics, or even be similar to ours — just with different timelines.
The original theory was proposed by Quantum science pioneer Erwin Schrodinger, and even he admitted that he might have seemed a little crazy when he hosted that lecture. But now a new discovery has pushed scientists to reconsider if his theory is really as far-fetched as they thought it was. A cosmic ray detection experiment in Antarctica found a particle that very well may be from another universe.
Eight years ago a machine learning algorithm learned to identify a cat —and it stunned the world. A few years later AI could accurately translate languages and take down world champion Go players. Now, machine learning has begun to excel at complex multiplayer video games like Starcraft and Dota 2 and subtle games like poker. AI, it would appear, is improving fast.
But how fast is fast, and what’s driving the pace? While better computer chips are key, AI research organization OpenAI thinks we should measure the pace of improvement of the actual machine learning algorithms too.
In a blog post and paper —authored by OpenAI’s Danny Hernandez and Tom Brown and published on the arXiv, an open repository for pre-print (or not-yet-peer-reviewed) studies—the researchers say they’ve begun tracking a new measure for machine learning efficiency (that is, doing more with less). Using this measure, they show AI has been getting more efficient at a wicked pace.
SCOTLAND, UNITED KINGDOM – Following a 932-mile journey by river, sea and road, the first of three super grid transformers was delivered by Siemens to the onshore substation at New Deer in North East Scotland for the Moray East offshore windfarm development.
The transformer was moved from the port at Peterhead, Scotland to the substation site by a 230-foot long 20 Axle 350Te Girder Frame transporter with a police escort, due to its size and weight.
Each of the three transformers is around 40 feet in length and weighing in at 270 tonnes.
