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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
AI and Carbon Nanotubes Are Now Being Used to Improve the World’s… Keyboards?
When it comes to groundbreaking research, there are two fields that seem to occupy the newscycle: carbon nanotubes and artificial intelligence. The potential combination of those two fields of study seems like it could radically change the word as we know it, or, as South Korean scientists have discovered, at least change how we type. … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Nvidia Is Using AI to Perfectly Fake Slo-Mo Videos
One of the hardest video effects to fake is slow motion. It requires software to stretch out a clip by creating hundreds of non-existent in-between frames, and the results are often stuttered and unconvincing. But taking advantage of the incredible image-processing potential of deep learning, Nvidia has come up with a way to fake flawless … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Self-Taught AI Masters Rubik’s Cube in Just 44 Hours
Meet DeepCube, an artificially intelligent system that’s as good at playing the Rubik’s Cube as the best human master solvers. Incredibly, the system learned to dominate the classic 3D puzzle in just 44 hours and without any human intervention. “A generally intelligent agent must be able to teach itself how to solve problems in complex … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Don’t Be Fooled by the ‘Forced a Bot’ Meme
By now, you’ve probably seen the satirical posts where someone claims to have “forced a bot” to watch thousands of hours of video and then write their own script. The posts are funny, but if you haven’t realized, they’re jokes that don’t quite encapsulate how artificial intelligence works. We thought it was pretty obvious, but … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
The Invisible Radio Waves All Around Us Let MIT’s New AI See People Right Through Walls
The information age has generated far more data than humanity can ever hope to manually process, but with the help of artificial intelligence, that avalanche of data is now revealing itself to be far more useful than we ever thought possible. The omnipresent wireless signals that keep us connected can now be used like X-rays … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Deepfake Videos Are Getting Impossibly Good
Fake news sucks, and as those eerily accurate videos of a lip-synced Barack Obama demonstrated last year, it’s soon going to get a hell of a lot worse. As a newly revealed video-manipulation system shows, super-realistic fake videos are improving faster than some of us thought possible. The SIGGRAPH 2018 computer graphics and design conference … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
The World’s Most Powerful Supercomputer Is an Absolute Beast
Behold Summit, a new supercomputer capable of making 200 million billion calculations per second. It marks the first time in five years that a machine from the United States has been ranked as the world’s most powerful. The specs for this $200 million machine defy comprehension. Built by IBM and Nvidia for the US Department … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Researchers Are Training a Robot Butler to Do the Chores You Hate in a Sims-Inspired Virtual House
Researchers are teaching machines to get stuff done using video simulations, a database of chores, and a virtual home reminiscent of your favorite time-wasting video game. The end goal? Teaching robots the same way you teach yourself how to install a toilet: instructional videos. Researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Why Thousands of Researchers Are Boycotting Nature’s Upcoming AI Journal
Early next year, the Springer Nature publishing group will launch a new subscription journal devoted to artificial intelligence. Like its other journals, Nature will impose a pay wall and restrict access to paying customers—a move that isn’t going over well with AI researchers, who say a for-profit subscription journal is not what the field needs … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
An AI Created New Doom Levels That Are as Fun as the Game’s Original Ones
The technical skills of programmer John Carmack helped create the 3D world of Doom, the first-person shooter that took over the world 25 years ago. But it was level designers like John Romero and American McGee that made the game fun to play. Level designers that, today, might find their jobs threatened by the ever-growing … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
And Now the White House Has Climbed Aboard the AI Bandwagon
Yesterday, the White House announced the creation of a new committee that will coordinate federal efforts related to artificial intelligence. The move makes sense given the rapid rise of AI, but the new group better be prepared to tackle all that AI has to offer—both the good and the bad. Michael Kratsios, deputy CTO at … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
The Future of BattleBots Is Smarter, More Vicious
Behind the scenes at a BattleBots tournament looks part science fair, part NASCAR pit stop. Robot bits are strewn across work benches, sparks are flying, and crews are furiously prepping for the next battle, replacing smashed parts with new ones and testing their weapons. In one corner, sits Chomp. Chomp looks like a regular BattleBot … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
AI Could Dramatically Increase Risk of Nuclear War by 2040, Says New Report
The common conception of a technologically enabled apocalypse foresees a powerful artificial intelligence that, either deliberately or by accident, destroys human civilization. But as a new report from the RAND Corporation points out, the reality may be far subtler: As AI slowly erodes the foundations that made the Cold War possible, we may find ourselves … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
The Quest to Teach AI to Write Pop Songs
David Cope didn’t set out to make anyone mad. In 1980, the composer envisioned a tool to help cure his creative block: a machine that could keep track of all the sounds and loose threads running through his mind, find similarities, and produce an entire piece of music inspired by it. So he built it. … Continued
By Frida Garza -
Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
UK Government Proposes Five Basic Principles to Keep Humans Safe From AI
A new report by the Lords Select Committee in the UK claims that Britain is in a strong position to be a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence. But to get there—and to keep AI safe and ethical—tech firms should follow the Committee’s newly proposed “AI Code.” The new report was penned by … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Experts Sign Open Letter Slamming Europe’s Proposal to Recognize Robots as Legal Persons
Over 150 experts in AI, robotics, commerce, law, and ethics from 14 countries have signed an open letter denouncing the European Parliament’s proposal to grant personhood status to intelligent machines. The EU says the measure will make it easier to figure out who’s liable when robots screw up or go rogue, but critics say it’s … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
This AI Can Automatically Animate New Flintstones Cartoons
The Flintstones, a cartoon about life in the Stone Age, has just surpassed The Jetsons, a cartoon about life in the distant future, when it comes to technological innovation. Researchers have successfully trained artificial intelligence to generate new clips of the prehistoric animated series based on nothing but random text descriptions of what’s happening in … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
After Millions of Trials, These Simulated Humans Learned to Do Perfect Backflips and Cartwheels
Using well-established machine learning techniques, researchers from University of California, Berkeley have taught simulated humanoids to perform over 25 natural motions, from somersaults and cartwheels through to high leg kicks and breakdancing. The technique could lead to more realistic video gameplay and more agile robots. Computer animation has never been better, but there’s still plenty … Continued
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Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Winner of DARPA Robot Competition Partners with Weapons Company, AI Researchers Call For Boycott
Top researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have called for a boycott of the South Korean university KAIST after it opened a lab with the defense firm Hanwha Systems. Even if you’re not familiar with KAIST, you might know some of the school’s robots. The university won the top prize at the last … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsArtificial Intelligence
Thousands of Google Employees Protest Company’s Involvement in Pentagon AI Drone Program
A Department of Defense partnership has drawn ire from the Google’s employees, and thousands have now signed a petition urging CEO Sundar Pichai to shut it down. Google’s involvement in Project Maven, first reported last month by Gizmodo, was intended to help the Pentagon use artificial intelligence to analyze drone footage. The company—and its current … Continued
By Avery Ellis