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Archive for the ‘robotics/AI’ category: Page 2405

May 29, 2015

Robot learns skills through trial and error, like you do — by Jon Fingas Engadget

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

As a rule, robots have to learn through explicit instruction, whether it’s through new programming, watching videos or holding their hands. UC Berkeley’s BRETT (Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks) isn’t nearly that dependent, however. The machine uses neural network-based deep learning algorithms to master tasks through trial and error, much like humans do. Ask it to assemble a toy and it’ll keep trying until it understands what works. In theory, you’d rarely need to give the robot new code — you’d just make requests and give the automaton enough time to figure things out.

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May 27, 2015

Can This Man and His Massive Robot Network Save America?

Posted by in categories: life extension, robotics/AI, transhumanism

A long interview from Esquire on transhumanism, AI, life extension, my campaign, and thoughts on the future.

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May 24, 2015

MIT’s Humanoid Robot Goes to Robot Boot Camp — Emily Dreyfuss | WIRED

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

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“If the humans were controlling Atlas directly from the command center, this would be no big deal, but the MIT team designed for autonomy. So they don’t have a joystick that would make the robot open the door. All the team can do is send their robot the command to find the handle and open it. It’s up to the robot’s software to figure out how.” Read more

May 22, 2015

AI More Like Iron Man’s JARVIS Is Coming This Next Decade…Bring It On — By Peter Diamandis SingularityHub

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

http://cdn.singularityhub.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/artificial-intelligence-bring-it-3-1000x400.jpg

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the most important technology we’re developing this decade. It’s a massive opportunity for humanity, not a threat. So, what is AI?

Broadly, AI is the ability of a computer to understand your question, search its vast memory banks, and give you the best, most accurate, answer. AI is the ability of a computer to process a vast amount of information for you, make decisions, and take (and/or advise you to take) appropriate action. Read more

May 19, 2015

Edge of Dark Review

Posted by in categories: futurism, robotics/AI, transhumanism

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Edge of Dark is part space-opera, part coming-of-age story, and part exploration of the relationship between humans and the post-human descendants who may ultimately transcend them.

The book takes place in the same universe as Brenda Cooper’s “Ruby’s Song” books (The Creative Fire; The Diamond Deep). However, you don’t need to have read those books to enjoy this one. The story in Edge of Dark picks up decades after the earlier books.

The setting is a solar system in which the most Earth-like planet, once nearly ecologically destroyed, is now in large part a wilderness preserve, still undergoing active restoration. Most humans live on massive space stations in the inner solar system. A few live on smaller space stations a bit further out, closer to the proverbial “Edge”. And beyond that? Beyond that, far from the sun, dwell exiles, cast out long ago for violating social norms by daring to go too far in tinkering with the human mind and body.

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May 18, 2015

Does Artificial Intelligence Pose a Threat? — Ted Greenwald | The Wall Street Journal

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

“The combination of immense Internet-connected networks and machine-learning algorithms has yielded dramatic advances in machines’ ability to understand spoken and visual communications, capabilities that fall under the heading ‘narrow’ artificial intelligence. Can machines capable of autonomous reasoning—so-called general AI—be far behind? And at that point, what’s to keep them from improving themselves until they have no need for humanity?” Read more

May 17, 2015

Robots Might Be the Necessary Future of Urban Pet Ownership — Evan Ackerman | IEEE Spectrum

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

“‘If artificial pets can replicate the human benefits obtained from live pets, does that mean that the human–animal emotional bond is solely dependent on ourselves and the image that we project on a live or artificial interactive partner? Does it ethically matter if the benefits of keeping artificial pets outweigh the risks, sparing other live pets’ potential animal welfare issues?’” Read more

May 16, 2015

So, the NSA Has an Actual Skynet Program — Kim Zet Wired

Posted by in categories: privacy, robotics/AI, security, Skynet, supercomputing, surveillance

We’ve suspected it all along—that Skynet, the massive program that brings about world destruction in the Terminator movies, was just a fictionalization of a real program in the hands of the US government. And now it’s confirmed—at least in name.

As The Intercept reports today, the NSA does have a program called Skynet. But unlike the autonomous, self-aware computerized defense system in Terminator that goes rogue and launches a nuclear attack that destroys most of humanity, this one is a surveillance program that uses phone metadata to track the location and call activities of suspected terrorists. A journalist for Al Jazeera reportedly became one of its targets after he was placed on a terrorist watch list. Read more

May 15, 2015

Virtually Human — A Transhumanist Poem by Veronika Lipinska

Posted by in categories: entertainment, fun, robotics/AI

What follows is a work of transhumanist poetry by the Anglo-Polish lawyer, Veronika Lipinska, Lifeboat Foundation advisory board member and Steve Fuller’s co-author of The Proactionary Imperative: A Foundation for Transhumanism (Palgrave, 2014). The Polish sources of transhumanism remain underexplored, but they range across theology and literature. The ‘Polish Brethren’ were a radical 16–17th century Protestant sect who hosted the heretic Fausto Sozzini — the model for Faust — who laid the theological groundwork for such characteristic Enlightenment religious doctrines as Unitarianism and Deism, both of which posited a more immediate connection between the human and the divine than the established churches found comfortable. In more recent times, most transhumanists will be familiar with the science fiction of Stanislaw Lem, but still more recently the 1980 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Czeslaw Milosz, has penned a poem, ‘After Enduring’, dedicated to cosmologist Frank Tipler’s efforts to infer Christian eschatology from the physics of the Singularity. This poem is a modest follow-up for a new generation.

Virtually human

He played with my head
Got me hardwired
Connected me to the world
And now I can see everything

Continue reading “Virtually Human -- A Transhumanist Poem by Veronika Lipinska” »

May 15, 2015

Walking Like a Human Is a Stroll in the Park — By Jason Dorrier Singularityhub

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Humans evolved over millions of years into today’s upright, bipedal walkers. Now, the evolution of some robots is on a similar track. Only the pace is much faster. In recent decades, we’ve gone from stationary robots performing repetive tasks to wheeled and four-legged robots. And now, bipedal bots are on the rise.

Boston Dynamics has famously engineered some of the most advanced bipedal bots in recent memory (e.g., Petman and Atlas). But they aren’t the only lab working on two-legged robots that can walk like us.

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