Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Google and DeepMind Technologies
January 30th, 2014Via: MIT Technology Review: How much are a dozen deep-learning researchers worth? Apparently, more than $400 million. This week, Google reportedly paid that much to acquire DeepMind Technologies, a startup based in London that had one of the biggest concentrations of researchers anywhere working on deep learning, a relatively new field of artificial intelligence research […]
Baltimore: Speed Cameras Issue Hundreds of Thousands of “Erroneous” Tickets
January 28th, 2014Via: Baltimore Sun: Baltimore’s speed cameras likely charged motorists for thousands more erroneous tickets than previously disclosed, according to data from a secret audit conducted for the city last year and obtained by The Baltimore Sun. Consultant URS Corp. evaluated the camera system as run by Xerox State and Local Solutions in 2012 and found […]
Why Are U.S. Corporate Profits So High? Because Wages Are So Low
January 27th, 2014Automation is the key, but this piece doesn’t mention it. The companies have, “Still managed to boost profits beyond anything ever seen before because they’ve got away with employing as few workers as possible at as low a rate as possible.” I’ve got news for Jamie McGeever at Reuters: Companies only ever employ as few […]
Army Studying Replacing Thousands of Grunts with Robots
January 21st, 2014Via: Military Times: During remarks at the Army Aviation Symposium in Arlington, Va., on Jan. 15, Cone quietly dropped a bomb. The Army, he said, is considering the feasibility of shrinking the size of the brigade combat team from about 4,000 soldiers to 3,000 over the coming years, and replacing the lost soldiers with robots […]
47% Of Today’s Jobs Automated In Next Two Decades, “No Country Is Ready For It”
January 20th, 2014What’s the solution, according to the The Economist? Online classes and video games! Via: The Economist: Today’s governments would do well to start making the changes needed before their people get angry.
Law Enforcement Agencies Use of Drones Increasing
January 14th, 2014Via: Washington Post: Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are increasingly borrowing border-patrol drones for domestic surveillance operations, newly released records show, a harbinger of what is expected to become the commonplace use of unmanned aircraft by police. Customs and Border Protection, which has the largest U.S. drone fleet of its kind outside the […]
U.S. Military on Path to Become Google’s Single Largest Customer
January 10th, 2014Via: DailyCaller: Google CEO Larry Page has rapidly positioned Google to become an indispensable U.S. military contractor. Google recently purchased Boston Dynamics, a robotics pioneer that produces amazing humanoid robots for the U.S. Defense Department. This development invites attention to Google’s broader military contracting ambitions — especially since Boston Dynamics is the eighth robotics company […]
‘Robot Farmers Are the Future of Agriculture’
January 10th, 2014Via: Guardian: Will robot feet in near-future time walk upon England’s mountains green? And will there be drones flying overhead from England’s pleasant pastures seen? A new vision of robots patrolling the meadows and cornfields of the UK may seem dark and satanic to some, but according to farmers and the government it is the […]
BMW Builds a Self-Driving Car — That Drifts
January 7th, 2014Via: Wired: BMW makes the Ultimate Driving Machine, and now it’s made the Ultimate Drifting Machine. Except it’s the code that’s in control. At CES, BMW is showing off a modified 2-Series Coupe and 6-Series Gran Coupe that can race around a track at the limits of adhesion, and slide around corners like a throttle-happy […]
Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton
January 7th, 2014Via: Wired: A new drone with the mammoth wingspan of a Boeing 757 is set to give the U.S. Navy some serious surveillance power. Northrop Grumman and the Navy say they’ve just completed the ninth flight trial of the Triton unmanned aircraft system (UAS), an improvement upon its predecessor in the Air Force, the Global […]
