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Archive for the ‘robotics/AI’ category: Page 1967

Sep 27, 2018

Salesforce’s Einstein has found its voice

Posted by in categories: business, robotics/AI

Salesforce has showcased new natural language features for enabling its Einstein AI platform to further simplify the work of sales agents, marketers and business leaders.

On ‘AI Day’ at the Dreamforce conference, members of Salesforce’s data science team demonstrated how Einstein Voice—an emerging speech interface—can be used to better access sales figures and projections, automate repetitive tasks, and receive business insights, including through Amazon’s and Google’s smart speakers.

Jim Sinai, Salesforce’s vice president of marketing, said in a keynote that Salesforce had been working on Einstein Voice for the last year to better deliver Einstein’s data discovery, deep learning and machine learning capabilities.

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Sep 26, 2018

DeepMind’s New Research on Linking Memories, and How It Applies to AI

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, robotics/AI

DeepMind is providing more research to show how neuroscience can inspire more sophisticated AI.


There’s a cognitive quirk humans have that seems deceptively elementary. For example: every morning, you see a man in his 30s walking a boisterous collie. Then one day, a white-haired lady with striking resemblance comes down the street with the same dog.

Subconsciously we immediately make a series of deductions: the man and woman might be from the same household. The lady may be the man’s mother, or some other close relative. Perhaps she’s taking over his role because he’s sick, or busy. We weave an intricate story of those strangers, pulling material from our memories to make it coherent.

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Sep 26, 2018

Why trackless trams are ready to replace light rail

Posted by in categories: government, robotics/AI, transportation

I began my life as an activist academic in 1979 when the Western Australian government closed the Fremantle railway, saying buses would be better. Patronage immediately fell by 30% and I ran a four-year campaign to save the railway. We won. I have been writing books and running campaigns ever since on why trains and trams are better than buses. But I have changed my mind. The technology has changed, and I think it will end the need for new light rail.

“Trackless trams” are based on technology created in Europe and China by taking innovations from high-speed and putting them in a bus.

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Sep 26, 2018

This Robotic Skin Makes Inanimate Objects Move

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, wearables

When designing a robot, key components are the robot’s sensors, which allow it to perceive its environment, and its actuators, the electrical or pneumatic motors that allow the robot to move and interact with its environment.

Consider your hand, which has temperature and pressure sensors, but also muscles as actuators. The omni-skins, as the Science Robotics paper dubs them, combine sensors and actuators, embedding them into an elastic sheet. The robotic skins are moved by pneumatic actuators or memory alloy that can bounce back into shape. If this is then wrapped around a soft, deformable object, moving the skin with the actuators can allow the object to crawl along a surface.

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Sep 25, 2018

Disruption Experience Nails It

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, economics, education, finance, innovation, internet, policy, robotics/AI

The Disruption Experience this Friday in Singapore is a blockchain event with a difference. With apologies to the Buick commercial, this is not your grandfather’s conference

I know a few things about blockchain conferences. I produced and hosted the first Bitcoin Event in New York. My organization develops cryptocurrency standards and practices. We help banks and governments create policy and services. And as public speaker for a standards organization, I have delivered keynote presentations at conferences and Expos in Dubai, Gujarat India, Montreal and Tampa, New York and Boston.

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Sep 25, 2018

10 Surprising Ways Driverless Cars Will Change The World

Posted by in categories: government, robotics/AI, transportation

When you think about the amount of time we spend behind the wheel today, whether in congestion or helping friends and family getting to and forth, being able to spend this time on other activities whilst on the move opens up a whole host of possibilities.

But not only will we have more free time, driverless cars also promise to make our roads safer and make our journeys faster.

Driverless cars are set to arrive on UK roads by 2021 according to the government and are predicted to change the face of personal mobility forever. Looking past the obvious benefits, Select Car Leasing have looked into the less predictable consequences of driverless cars.

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Sep 25, 2018

What China Can Teach the U.S. About Artificial Intelligence

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

If both countries can make these shifts in perspective, then what might look like a zero-sum battle for A.I. supremacy between China and the United States will begin to resemble something totally different: an opportunity to learn across cultures and collectively advance the global project of building A.I. that improves human lives.


Visionary research is no longer the most important element of progress.

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Sep 24, 2018

Google used AI to sort millions of historical Life photos you can explore online

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Google has used its AI prowess to catalog historical images taken by photographers for Life magazine. You can explore them online for free.

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Sep 24, 2018

When Will We Have Artificial Intelligence As Smart as a Human? Here’s What Experts Think

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Human-level artificial intelligence (HLAI) is a holy grail of AI research. But no one knows how to make it. Here’s when the experts think it’ll happen.

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Sep 24, 2018

Asteroids and comets as space weapons

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, biotech/medical, existential risks, robotics/AI

A dual use research of concern (DURC) refers to research in the life sciences that, while intended for public benefit, could also be repurposed to cause public harm. One prominent example is that of disease and contagion research (can improve disease control, but can also be used to spread disease more effectively, either accidentally or maliciously). I will argue here that DURC can and should be applicable to any technology that has a potential dual use such as this.


Approximately 66 million years ago, a 10 km sized body struck Earth, and was likely one of the main contributors to the extinction of many species at the time. Bodies the size of 5 km or larger impact Earth on average every 20 million years (one might say we are overdue for one, but then one wouldn’t understand statistics). Asteroids 1 km or larger impact Earth every 500,000 years on average. Smaller bodies which can still do considerable local damage occur much more frequently (10 m wide bodies impact Earth on average every 10 years). It seems reasonable to say that only the first category (~5 km) pose an existential threat, however many others pose major catastrophic threats*.

Given the likelihood of an asteroid impact (I use the word asteroid instead of asteroid and/or comet from here for sake of brevity), some argue that further improving detection and deflection technology are critical. Matheny (2007) estimates that, even if asteroid extinction events are improbable, due to the loss of future human generations if one were to occur, asteroid detection/deflection research and development could save a human life-year for $2.50 (US). Asteroid impact mitigation is not thought to be the most pressing existential threat (e.g. artificial intelligence or global pandemics), and yet it already seems to have better return on investment than the best now-centric human charities (though not non-human charities – I am largely ignoring non-humans here for simplicity and sake of argument).

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