Lifeboat Foundation

The first-ever surface mission to the far side of the moon is underway.

China’s robotic Chang’e 4 spacecraft streaked away from Earth today (Dec. 7), launching atop a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at about 1:23 p.m. EST (1823 GMT; 2:23 a.m. on Dec. 8 local China time).

If all goes according to plan, Chang’e 4 will make history’s first landing on the lunar far side sometime in early January. The mission, which consists of a stationary lander and a rover, will perform a variety of science work and plant a flag for humanity in a region that remains largely unexplored to date. [China’s Chang’e 4 Moon Far Side Mission in Pictures].

Continue reading “China Launches 1st Mission to Land on the Far Side of the Moon” »

The view of the world through any primate’s eyes is funnelled from the retina into the visual cortex, the various layers of which do the initial processing of incoming information. At first, it’s little more than pixels of dark or bright colours, but within 100 milliseconds the information zaps through a network of brain areas for further processing to generate a consciously recognized, 3D landscape with numerous objects moving around in it.

Doris Tsao mastered facial recognition in the brain. Now she’s looking to determine the neural code for everything we see. Doris Tsao mastered facial recognition in the brain. Now she’s looking to determine the neural code for everything we see.

After building AlphaGo to beat the world’s best Go players, Google DeepMind built AlphaZero to take on the world’s best machine players.

Facial recognition technology is being tested by businesses and governments for everything from policing to employee timesheets. Even more granular results are on their way, promise the companies behind the technology: Automatic emotion recognition could soon help robots understand humans better, or detect road rage in car drivers.

But experts are warning that the facial-recognition algorithms that attempt to interpret facial expressions could be based on uncertain science. The claims are a part of AI Now Institute’s annual report, a nonprofit that studies the impact of AI on society. The report also includes recommendations for the regulation of AI and greater transparency in the industry.

“The problem is now AI is being applied in a lot of social contexts. Anthropology, psychology, and philosophy are all incredibly relevant, but this is not the training of people who come from a technical [computer science] background.” says Kate Crawford, co-founder of AI Now, distinguished research professor at NYU and principal researcher at Microsoft Research. “Essentially the narrowing of AI has produced a kind of guileless acceptance of particular strands of psychological literature that have been shown to be suspect.”

Continue reading “Amazon And Microsoft Claim AI Can Read Human Emotions. Experts Say the Science Is Shaky” »

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Dancing to bruno mars uptown funk you up.

Lightweight, soft, wearable robots that people can wear all day, every day, to help them regain use of their upper extremities.

A big announcement from NASA about landing on the moon is coming on Thursday.

• The last time NASA landed a spacecraft on the moon was in December 1972.
• The US space agency said it’s about to announce “moon partnerships” with American companies to return to the lunar surface.
• NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine claimed the new moon missions will occur “sooner than you think!”
• NASA is withholding details of the announcement until Thursday afternoon, but Business Insider has independently confirmed some information.

If NASA’s stunning landing of a car-sized robot on Mars didn’t already whet your appetite for space exploration this week, mark your calendar for 2 p.m. EST on Thursday.

That’s when NASA plans to give an update about a program that aims to land privately developed spacecraft on the moon.

Continue reading “NASA administrator: ‘The US is returning to the surface of the moon, and we’re doing it sooner than you think!’” »

Robot development in Japan.