Lifeboat Foundation

The annual 2018 World Robot Conference in Beijing is a showcase of China’s burgeoning industry ranging from companion robots to those deployed on factory assembly lines and entertainment.

In 2018, Canada is ranked tenth in the world in nominal GDP. It is a rich developed country. Despite having an economy that is 11 times smaller than the USA or 7 times smaller than China, Canada has world competitive or world-leading projects in quantum computing, artificial intelligence, molecular nanotechnology, nuclear fusion and nuclear-molten salt.

This AI can JUDGE how attractive you are and more… and it could be a dangerous sign of things to come.

Amandeep Gill has a difficult job, though he won’t admit it himself. As chair of the United Nations’ Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) meetings on lethal autonomous weapons, he has the task of shepherding 125 member states through discussions on the thorny technical and ethical issue of “killer robots” — military robots that could theoretically engage targets independently. It’s a subject that has attracted a glaring media spotlight and pressure from NGOs like Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, which is backed by Tesla’s Elon Musk and Alphabet’s Mustafa Suleyman, to ban such machines outright.

Gill has to corral national delegations — diplomats, lawyers, and military personnel — as well as academics, AI entrepreneurs, industry associations, humanitarian organizations, and NGOs in order for member states to try to reach a consensus on this critical security issue.

Continue reading “Inside the United Nations’ effort to regulate autonomous killer robots” »

Robotics supply chain startup GreyOrange is expanding stateside, it announced today. It intends to open a new headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia and a manufacturing plant by 2019.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=o9jTEP0u8mg

In a best-of-three match, two teams of pro gamers overcame a squad of AI bots that were created by the Elon Musk-founded research lab OpenAI.

AI bots made by the Elon Musk-founded research lab OpenAI were defeated by human pro gamers at Dota 2 at The International. The loss was not completely unexpected, but it’s still an unusual knock back for the seemingly unstoppable march of AI. Here, we explain what the matches really meant.

Continue reading “OpenAI’s Dota 2 defeat is still a win for artificial intelligence” »

The World Economic Forum suggests we are on the cusp of a Fourth Industrial Revolution driven by ‘ubiquitous automation, big data and artificial intelligence’. The Institute for Public Policy Research, however, says that “despite the growing capability of robots and artificial intelligence (AI), we are not on the cusp of a ‘post-human’ economy.”

IPPR suggests that an estimated 60 percent of occupations have at least 30 percent of activities which could be automated with already-proven technologies. As tasks are automated, work is likely to be redefined, focusing on areas of human comparative advantage over machines.

The CIPD point out that “new technology has changed many more jobs than it has destroyed, and it does not destroy work. Overall, the biggest advanced industrialized economies have between them created over 50 million jobs, a rise of nearly 20 percent, over the past 20 years despite huge economic and technological disruptions.”

China’s PLA, or People’s Liberation Army, is actively trying to make advances in military robotics and unmanned systems. It now has a range of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in use across its army, navy, air force and rocket force – the military’s strategic and tactical missiles unit. Here are some of them.

The PLA ground force has a number of UAVs that are primarily smaller, more tactical models and are often used for battlefield reconnaissance and targeting artillery fire to improve precision strikes. A significant proportion of these are part of a series produced by the Xian Aisheng Technology Group. The fixed-wing drones have a conventional design with a mid-wing configuration and are used to support the artillery.

The navy generally uses smaller, tactical drones but it also has a limited number of sophisticated reconnaissance UAVs, notably this medium-altitude, long-endurance model. Roughly comparable to the US Global Hawk, it has a maximum range of 2,400km and a maximum endurance of 40 hours. It has been operating in the vicinity of the East China Sea since at least 2013 and there were also reports in 2016 that it had been deployed to Woody Island in the South China Sea – both disputed territories.

Continue reading “The drones that have become part of China’s military strategy” »

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