Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
AI Beats Professional Poker Players
January 31st, 2017Via: BBC: A poker-playing AI has beaten four human players in a marathon match lasting 20 days. Libratus, an artificial intelligence program developed at Carnegie Mellon University, was trained to play a variant of the game known as no-limit heads-up Texas hold ’em. In a similar tournament in 2015, the humans won. The victory has […]
Cafe X, Bringing Robots to the Coffee Shop
January 30th, 2017Via: TechCrunch: The world’s first coffee shop opened in Constantinople in 1555. Four hundred and some years later, Cafe X is putting a twist on that old barista model. Opening in San Francisco today, the startup is opting instead to have a large robotic arm craft your caffeinated potions.
DragonflEye Project Wants to Turn Insects Into Cyborg Drones
January 26th, 2017Via: IEEE: As hard as we’re trying, it’s going to be a very long time before we’re able to build a robotic insect that’s anywhere near as capable or versatile as a real one. So for now, we rely on a cybernetics approach to get real insects to do our bidding instead. Over the past […]
Robotic Fabricator Could Change the Way Buildings Are Constructed
January 25th, 2017Via: MIT Technology Review: So what is the state-of-the-art for construction robots? Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Markus Giftthaler at the ETH Zurich in Switzerland and a few pals who have developed a new class of robot capable of creating novel structures on a construction site. They call their new […]
Robots Are Taking Over Oil Rigs
January 24th, 2017Via: Bloomberg: Automation means wells need only five workers, down from 20.
When Their Shifts End, Uber Drivers Set Up Camp in Parking Lots Across the U.S.
January 24th, 2017In, 8 Men as Rich as Half the World, I joked, “Get yourself a side hustle and a podshare.” And now… Via: Bloomberg: The vast majority of Uber’s full-time drivers return home to their beds at the end of a day’s work. But all over the country, there are many who don’t. These drivers live […]
Silicon Valley Billionaires Prepping for Collapse Caused by Machines Eliminating Jobs
January 23rd, 2017Mmm hmm. Via: Recode: One of the more peculiar hobbies popular among the Silicon Valley elite is an obsession with preparing to survive for end times; its adherents are commonly called “preppers.” It’s the topic of an essay in the New Yorker this week, “Survival of the Richest” by Evan Osnos, which delves into why […]
Facial Recognition to Replace Passports in Security Overhaul at Australian Airports
January 23rd, 2017Via: Guardian: A radical overhaul of security at Australia’s international airports is the first step towards the government’s goal of automating 90% of air traveller processing by 2020. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection will start moving towards a “contactless” system for arrivals this year, Fairfax reported on Sunday – the most ambitious stage […]
Foxconn Weighs $7 Billion U.S. Factory With Apple
January 22nd, 2017In other news, Foxconn Plans to Replace Almost Every Human Worker with Robots. So, I’d take the 30,000 to 50,000 jobs statement below with a grain of salt. Via: Bloomberg: Foxconn Technology Group Chairman Terry Gou told reporters in Taipei the company is considering a joint investment with Apple Inc. for a display manufacturing facility […]
Tesla’s Second Generation Autopilot Could Reduce Crash Rate by 90%, Says CEO Elon Musk
January 21st, 2017Whatever you think about autonomous drive technologies, my point with posting these stories is not to be a cheerleader one way or another. I just want to be sure everyone knows that this stuff is real and it is coming. Millions of drivers will lose their jobs, and these are not minimum wage, burger flipping […]
