Archive for the ‘robotics/AI’ category: Page 2348
Dec 8, 2015
The $75,000 problem for self-driving cars is going away
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: robotics/AI, transportation
LIDAR units once cost $75,000. Now a $250 LIDAR, with no moving parts, is about to enter the market.
Giving a car “eyes” once cost a fortune. Now it’s affordable, a good sign for autonomous vehicles.
Dec 8, 2015
Controversial Quantum Machine Bought
Posted by Andreas Matt in categories: computing, information science, materials, quantum physics, robotics/AI
Governments and leading computing companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Google are trying to develop what are called quantum computers because using the weirdness of quantum mechanics to represent data should unlock immense data-crunching powers. Computing giants believe quantum computers could make their artificial-intelligence software much more powerful and unlock scientific leaps in areas like materials science. NASA hopes quantum computers could help schedule rocket launches and simulate future missions and spacecraft. “It is a truly disruptive technology that could change how we do everything,” said Deepak Biswas, director of exploration technology at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
Biswas spoke at a media briefing at the research center about the agency’s work with Google on a machine they bought in 2013 from Canadian startup D-Wave systems, which is marketed as “the world’s first commercial quantum computer.” The computer is installed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, and operates on data using a superconducting chip called a quantum annealer. A quantum annealer is hard-coded with an algorithm suited to what are called “optimization problems,” which are common in machine-learning and artificial-intelligence software.
However, D-Wave’s chips are controversial among quantum physicists. Researchers inside and outside the company have been unable to conclusively prove that the devices can tap into quantum physics to beat out conventional computers.
Dec 8, 2015
Meet “Walk Man.” He’s Like Us — Except He’s a Robot
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: robotics/AI
Dec 7, 2015
Can The Existential Risk Of Artificial Intelligence Be Mitigated?
Posted by Dan Faggella in categories: ethics, existential risks, futurism, government, human trajectories, robotics/AI
It seems like every day we’re warned about a new, AI-related threat that could ultimately bring about the end of humanity. According to Author and Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom, those existential risks aren’t so black and white, and an individual’s ability to influence those risks might surprise you.
Image Credit: TED
Bostrom defines an existential risk as one distinction of earth originating life or the permanent and drastic destruction of our future development, but he also notes that there is no single methodology that is applicable to all the different existential risks (as more technically elaborated upon in this Future of Humanity Institute study). Rather, he considers it an interdisciplinary endeavor.
“If you’re wondering about asteroids, we have telescopes, we can study them with, we can look at past crater impacts and derive hard statistical data on that,” he said. “We find that the risk of asteroids is extremely small and likewise for a few of the other risks that arrive from nature. But other really big existential risks are not in any direct way susceptible to this kind of rigorous quantification.”
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Dec 7, 2015
Modular Robotic Car
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: robotics/AI, transportation
Dec 7, 2015
Deep learning, machine learning advancements highlight Microsoft’s research at NIPS 2015
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: computing, robotics/AI
Dec 7, 2015
China Aims to Retool Its Manufacturing Industry with Robots
Posted by Phillipe Bojorquez in categories: economics, robotics/AI
China needs advanced robotics to help balance its economic, social, and technological ambitions with continued growth.
Dec 7, 2015
Life in the Robot Age: When We’re All Unemployed
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: futurism, robotics/AI
“You’ll never get a good job, son, if you’re smoking pot all the time!”
That’s a scolding you won’t hear in the future. Besides the fact that pot smokers can become president, the future will not require you to get a good job. The traditional motivation to keep your mind orderly and bourgeois will be gone, so let your mind fly its freak flag and wander the Technicolor pathways already cleared by St. John of Patmos, Salvador Dali, and Carl Sagan.
In the near future, we may all be unemployed. We are entering what is generally called the “second machine age.” And, optimistically speaking, it may become the best thing that ever happened to the human being.
