Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Computer Chips Based on Biological Neurons May Help Simulate Larger and More-Complex Brain Models
May 5th, 2019Via: The Scientist: Neuromorphic chips’ ability to perform complex computational tasks while consuming very little power has caught the attention of the tech industry. The potential commercial applications of neuromorphic chips include power-efficient supercomputers, low-power sensors, and self-learning robots. But biologists have a different application in mind: building a fully functioning replica of the human […]
Robots Edge Closer to Unloading Trucks in Amazon-Era Milestone
May 4th, 2019Via: Bloomberg: As FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc. beef up automation to keep pace with surging e-commerce and a potential threat from Amazon.com Inc., they’ve been stumped at a crucial stage: loading and unloading trucks. Robot makers are getting close to solving part of that puzzle. Siemens AG and Honeywell International Inc. have […]
For Lower-Paid Workers, the Robot Overlords Have Arrived
May 2nd, 2019Via: Wall Street Journal: It’s time to stop worrying that robots will take our jobs — and start worrying that they will decide who gets jobs. Millions of low-paid workers’ lives are increasingly governed by software and algorithms. This was starkly illustrated by a report last week that Amazon.com tracks the productivity of its employees […]
Lettuce-Farming Robots Might Grow Your Next Salad
April 26th, 2019Via: Bloomberg: Your next salad might include leafy greens grown by robots in California greenhouses. About 75 percent of the lettuce farmed in the U.S. comes from that state’s Central Coast and San Joaquin Valley. Cultivating it requires warm temperatures, not too much rain, and lots of time and labor. Startups such as Iron Ox, […]
Walmart Experiments with AI to Monitor Stores in Real Time
April 25th, 2019Enable face recognition so the system can tempt Bubba with three cents off his next bag of Doritos with alerts on his phone as he’s standing in front of the chips. Via: AP: Inside one of Walmart’s busiest Neighborhood Market grocery stores, high resolution cameras suspended from the ceiling point to a table of bananas. […]
Amazon Automatically Tracks and Fires Warehouse Workers for ‘Productivity’
April 25th, 2019Via: The Verge: The documents also show a deeply automated tracking and termination process. “Amazon’s system tracks the rates of each individual associate’s productivity,” according to the letter, “and automatically generates any warnings or terminations regarding quality or productivity without input from supervisors.” (Amazon says supervisors are able to override the process.)
The Pentagon Is Investing in Space Robots to Repair Satellites
April 24th, 2019Via: Nextgov: The Pentagon’s research office wants to send robots into space to inspect and repair the nation’s satellites. Today the U.S. has more than 400 military, government and commercial satellites circling the globe in geosynchronous Earth orbit, or GEO, a celestial path about 22,000 miles above the ground. These high-altitude satellites are ideal for […]
Tesla Autonomy Day Presentation
April 22nd, 2019This is a fairly technical presentation for analysts. Personally, I doubt that Tesla is going to have a widely available robotaxi service anytime soon, but, at a minimum, this makes for interesting listening with regard to their efforts to devise the custom hardware and software necessary for autonomous driving. I queued the video to the […]
Mush, Spot, Mush!
April 16th, 2019The sound… Via: Boston Dynamics: It only takes 10 Spotpower (SP) to haul a truck across the Boston Dynamics parking lot (~1 degree uphill, truck in neutral). These Spot robots are coming off the production line now and will be available for a range of applications soon.
We’re All Being Judged By a Secret ‘Trustworthiness’ Score
April 15th, 2019Via: Slashdot: Nearly everything we buy, how we buy, and where we’re buying from is secretly fed into AI-powered verification services that help companies guard against credit-card and other forms of fraud, according to the Wall Street Journal. More than 16,000 signals are analyzed by a service called Sift, which generates a “Sift score” ranging […]
