Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Cars Could Drive Themselves Sooner than Expected
May 19th, 2014Via: Reuters: Cars could be driving themselves down the world’s streets far sooner than expected, thanks to a change in a global treaty backed by European countries. A little-noticed amendment to the United Nations Convention on Road Traffic agreed last month would let drivers take their hands off the wheel of self-driving cars. It was […]
‘Now The Military Is Going To Build Robots That Have Morals’
May 14th, 2014Via: DefenseOne: The Office of Naval Research will award $7.5 million in grant money over five years to university researchers from Tufts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Brown, Yale and Georgetown to explore how to build a sense of right and wrong and moral consequence into autonomous robotic systems.
Human Consciousness Probably Can’t Be Modeled On A Computer
May 13th, 2014Via: Medium: The central part of their new work is to describe the mathematical properties of a system that can store integrated information in this way but without it leaking away. And this leads them to their central proof. “The implications of this proof are that we have to abandon either the idea that people […]
Robotic Arm Catches Objects On The Fly
May 13th, 2014Via: EPFL: A robot developed by EPFL researchers is capable of reacting on the spot and grasping objects with complex shapes and trajectories in less than five hundredths of a second.
Is Your Job at Risk from Robot Labor? Check This Handy Interactive Chart
May 13th, 2014Via: Quartz: In the second machine age, robots will perform tasks once thought to require uniquely human abilities, like driving our taxis and filleting our fish. But not all jobs will be equally affected by automation. The interactive plot above attempts to sort out the differences. We compared three variables related to the American workforce: […]
Innovative Prosthetic Arm From Segway Inventor Cleared by U.S.
May 10th, 2014Via: Bloomberg: A prosthetic arm made by a company founded by Segway inventor Dean Kamen was approved for sale by U.S. regulators, who called it the first such device able to respond to multiple simultaneous commands from a wearer’s brain. Electrodes attached to the arm detect muscle contractions close to the prosthesis, and a computer […]
“This Secret Fuel of the Economy, Rarely Missing and Little Noticed, Is Running Out”
May 7th, 2014Via: AP: For those who fear an overcrowded planet, this is good news. For the economy, not so good. We tend to think economic growth comes from working harder and smarter. But economists attribute up to a third of it to more people joining the workforce each year than leaving it. The result is more […]
Eyes Over Compton, “We Basically Kept it Pretty Hush Hush”
May 6th, 2014Via: The Atlantic: This is the future if nothing is done to stop it. In a secret test of mass surveillance technology, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sent a civilian aircraft* over Compton, California, capturing high-resolution video of everything that happened inside that 10-square-mile municipality. Compton residents weren’t told about the spying, which happened […]
Robots Are Caring for Elderly People in Europe
May 6th, 2014Via: Vice: Judging by recent surveys, most people seem to think that robots that are actually useful will lead to some sort of apocalyptic machine uprising. But look past the military bots and automated job-stealers, and one of the most obvious applications of a service robot is an entirely unthreatening task humans are increasingly failing […]
Volvo Testing Self Driving Cars on Public Roads in Sweden
May 5th, 2014Via: Volvo: Volvo Car Group’s groundbreaking project ‘Drive Me’ – featuring 100 self-driving Volvos on public roads in everyday driving conditions – is moving forward rapidly. The first test cars are already rolling around the Swedish city of Gothenburg and the sophisticated Autopilot technology is performing well. An autonomous drive car was also shown in […]
