Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Robots Can Now Learn to Cook by Watching YouTube Videos
January 3rd, 2015Via: Venture Beat: Researchers have come up with a new way to teach robots how to use tools simply by watching videos on YouTube. The researchers, from the University of Maryland and the Australian research center NICTA, have just published a paper on their achievements, which they will present this month at the 29th annual […]
Who Is Watching You?
December 29th, 2014Via: Medium: We are living in a Dragnet Nation?—?a world of indiscriminate tracking where institutions are stockpiling data about individuals at an unprecedented pace. The rise of indiscriminate tracking is powered by the same forces that have brought us the technology we love so much?—?powerful computing on our desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Before computers […]
Helicopter Drone Makes First Flight from Navy Destroyer
December 25th, 2014Via: Defensetech: A helicopter drone developed by Northrop Grumman Corp. has made its first flight from a U.S. Navy destroyer, the company announced. The MQ-8C Fire Scout on Dec. 16 completed 22 autonomous takeoffs and landings aboard the guided-missile destroyer, USS Jason Dunham (DDG 109), off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, according to a Dec. […]
Tech Investors Plowing Money Into Future Farms
December 19th, 2014Via: The Seattle Times: Investors and entrepreneurs behind some of the world’s newest industries have started to put their money and tech talents into farming — the world’s oldest industry — with an audacious agenda: to make sure there is enough food for the 10 billion people expected to inhabit the planet by 2100, do […]
The Devalued American Worker
December 15th, 2014Via: Washington Post: The American economy has stopped delivering the broadly shared prosperity that the nation grew accustomed to after World War II. The explanation for why that is begins with the millions of middle-class jobs that vanished over the past 25 years, and with what happened to the men and women who once held […]
Facebook AI Assistant for Imbeciles
December 10th, 2014Via: Wired: Let’s say you’re out drinking with your buddies, things get out of hand, you pull out your smartphone, you take a selfie in the middle of all this drunken revelry, then you take 30 or 40 more, and, without hesitation, you start uploading them to Facebook. It’s a common thing to do. But […]
Google’s Intelligence Designer
December 3rd, 2014Via: MIT Technology Review: But Hassabis sounds more excited when he talks about going beyond just tweaking the algorithms behind today’s products. He dreams of creating “AI scientists” that could do things like generate and test new hypotheses about disease in the lab. When prodded, he also says that DeepMind’s software could also be useful […]
Stephen Hawking Warns Artificial Intelligence Could End Mankind
December 2nd, 2014Via: BBC: Prof Stephen Hawking, one of Britain’s pre-eminent scientists, has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. He told the BBC:”The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” His warning came in response to a question about a revamp of the […]
Pizza Hut: Eye-Tracking Menu
November 30th, 2014Via: Engadget: Pizza Hut wants to help you skip your super-ego middleman and just let your id order that triple-cheese bacon pepperoni pie directly. It’s “Subconscious Menu” uses Tobii’s eye-tracking tech to figure out which of 20 different ingredients you’re looking at on a screen (see the video below). It then takes all of three […]
Flying Robots to Start Serving in Restaurants by End-2015
November 27th, 2014Nothing says “romantic dinner” like the ceaseless din of large, autonomous quadcopters buzzing around in a closed space. Via: Channel News Asia: Restaurant-goers in Singapore can expect to be served by autonomous flying robots – the world’s first commercial attempt – by the end of next year. Infinium-Serve, the autonomous flying robotic waiters, will be […]
