Lifeboat Foundation

Even before the COVID crisis added its impetus, technological trends were accelerating the creation of robots that could fan out into our lives. Mechanical parts got lighter, cheaper, and sturdier. Electronics packed more computing power into smaller packages. Breakthroughs let engineers put powerful data-crunching tools into robot bodies. Better digital communications let them keep some robot “brains” in a computer elsewhere—or connect a simple robot to hundreds of others, letting them share a collective intelligence, like a beehive’s.

Machines now perform all sorts of tasks: They clean big stores, patrol borders, and help autistic children. But will they make life better for humans?

The plan in the next big war will probably be to let waves of AI fighters wipe out all the enemies targets, Anti aircraft systems, enemy fighters, enemy air fields etc…, however many waves that takes. And, then human pilots come in behind that.

An artificial intelligence algorithm defeated a human F-16 fighter pilot in a virtual dogfight sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Thursday.

An internally built system called Advanced Listening analyzes phone calls, emails, text messages and more, identifying possible compliance violations, systemic issues and opportunities to improve processes, products and customer service.

Editor’s note: A recording of this virtual event is embedded above.

Artificial intelligence is proving a potent weapon against the pandemic, enabling researchers to comb through massive data sets to understand the virus and how to combat it. From drug development to immune response, STAT’s Casey Ross will talk to researchers and AI experts about how AI is accelerating a worldwide effort to crack Covid-19’s molecular code.

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Machine logic can be too precise to seem fully human. Chatbots that learn logic from Aristotle instead might behave more like people.

NASA’s Mars rovers have been one of the great scientific and space successes of the past two decades.

Four generations of rovers have traversed the red planet gathering scientific data, sending back evocative photographs, and surviving incredibly harsh conditions—all using on-board computers less powerful than an iPhone 1. The latest rover, Perseverance, was launched on July 30, 2020, and engineers are already dreaming of a future generation of rovers.

While a major achievement, these missions have only scratched the surface (literally and figuratively) of the planet and its geology, geography, and atmosphere.

Beetle-size machine can climb, crawl, and carry heavy objects—all without batteries.

The Tetrad Automated Causal Discovery Platform, a software and text project developed by Peter Spirtes, Clark Glymour, Richard Scheines and Joe Ramsey of Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Philosophy, earned the “Leader” Award at the 2020 World Artificial Intelligence Conference this past July.

Continue reading “Philosophers Win Artificial Intelligence Award” »

Researchers at Oxford University, in collaboration with DeepMind, University of Basel and Lancaster University, have created a machine learning algorithm that interfaces with a quantum device and ‘tunes’ it faster than human experts, without any human input. They are dubbing it “Minecraft explorer for quantum devices.”

Classical computers are composed of billions of transistors, which together can perform complex calculations. Small imperfections in these transistors arise during manufacturing, but do not usually affect the operation of the computer. However, in a quantum computer similar imperfections can strongly affect its behavior.

In prototype semiconductor quantum computers, the standard way to correct these imperfections is by adjusting input voltages to cancel them out. This process is known as tuning. However, identifying the right combination of voltage adjustments needs a lot of time even for a single quantum device. This makes it virtually impossible for the billions of devices required to build a useful general-purpose quantum computer.