Lifeboat Foundation

China has launched the first mission to land a robotic craft on the far side of the Moon, Chinese media say.

The Chang’e-4 mission will see a static lander and rover touch down in Von Kármán crater, located on the side of the Moon which never faces Earth.

The payload blasted off atop a Long March 3B rocket from Xichang Satellite Launch Center.

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and deep learning have made huge strides in 2018. In this post we look at some of the key AI predictions for 2019, where is will be used, how it will make the biggest impact, as well as the key challenges we have to address.

The accelerating investment in artificial intelligence has vast implications for economic and cognitive development globally. However, AI is currently dominated by an oligopoly of centralized mega-corporations, who focus on the interests of their stakeholders. There is a now universal need for AI services by businesses who lack access to capital to develop their own AI services, and independent AI developers lack visibility and a source of revenue. This uneven playing field has a high potential to lead to inequitable circumstances with negative implications for humanity. Furthermore, the potential of AI is hindered by the lack of interoperability standards. The authors herein propose an alternative path for the development of AI: a distributed, decentralized, and democratized market for AIs run on distributed ledger technology. We describe the features and ethical advantages of such a system using SingularityNET, a watershed project being developed by Ben Goertzel and colleagues, as a case study. We argue that decentralizing AI opens the doors for a more equitable development of AI and AGIt will also create the infrastructure for coordinated action between AIs that will significantly facilitate the evolution of AI into true AGI that is both highly capable and beneficial for humanity and beyond.

Dawn is an inspirational marriage of technology and humanity.

China is getting set to launch the first-ever surface mission to the moon’s far side.

The robotic Chang’e 4 mission is scheduled to launch atop a Long March 3B rocket on Friday (Dec. 7) at around 1:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT; 2:30 a.m. on Dec. 8 local China time).

If all goes according to plan, Chang’e 4’s lander-rover duo will touch down within the moon’s South Pole‐Aitken (SPA) basin after a 27-day flight, then study both the surface and subsurface of this region. [China’s Moon Missions Explained (Infographic)].

Continue reading “China Preps for Launch of Historic Mission to Moon’s Far Side on Friday” »

DeepMind’s artificial intelligence programme AlphaZero is now showing signs of human-like intuition and creativity, in what developers have hailed as ‘turning point’ in history.

The computer system amazed the world last year when it mastered the game of chess from scratch within just four hours, despite not being programmed how to win.

But now, after a year of testing and analysis by chess grandmasters, the machine has developed a new style of play unlike anything ever seen before, suggesting the programme is now improvising like a human.

Continue reading “DeepMind’s AlphaZero now showing human-like intuition in historical ‘turning point’ for AI” »

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope was the first telescope designed to be serviced in orbit. Join Hubble astronauts live as they discuss servicing from the innovative Robotics Operations Center. Plus a robot demo!

Toink?

Andrew Moore says getting the technology to work in businesses is a huge challenge.

You never know how far your #SpaceApps solution will go! Gema knows that first hand. Hear about her project Deep Asteroid, which was a 2016 finalist, and how she used NASA data and the open-source tool Tensor Flow.

When NASA issued a worldwide challenge to help them better track the asteroids and comets that surround Earth, Gema Parreño answered the call. She used #TensorFlow, Google’s machine learning tool, to create a program called Deep Asteroid, which helps identify and track Near Earth Objects.

Continue reading “How machine learning helps scientists track asteroids” »