But does it write book reports?
Get ready for a new generation of computers that can read millions of texts and understand the relationships between characters.
For decades, engineers have designed computer systems with processors and memory chips laid out like single-story structures in a suburb. Wires connect these chips like streets, carrying digital traffic between the processors that compute data and the memory chips that store it.
But suburban-style layouts create long commutes and regular traffic jams in electronic circuits, wasting time and energy.
That is why researchers from three other universities are working with Stanford engineers, including Associate Professor Subhasish Mitra and Professor H.-S. Philip Wong, to create a revolutionary new high-rise architecture for computing.
Machine learning now allows us to project a particular voice onto someone else’s face, which makes for some pretty hilarious pairings. http://voc.tv/1P6L9zh
Where are the limits of human technology? And can we somehow avoid them? This is where quantum computers become very interesting.
If human-less self-driving cars of the future creep you out, then this latest experimental automotive technology from China might offer you some respite. Or freak creep you out even more. Researchers from the port city of Tianjin have revealed what they claim is the country’s first ever car to be driven without the use of human hands or feet but with a driver still in control. All it takes is some brain power. And some highly specialized equipment, of course.
Mind-reading devices aren’t actually new. In fact, many companies and technologies make that claim year after year, but few have actually been able to deliver an actual consumer product, with most successful prototypes designed for therapeutic or medical uses. The theory, however, is the same throughout. Sensors read electroencephalogram or EEG from the wearer’s brain. These are then interpolated and interpreted as commands for a computer. In this case, the commands are mapped to car controls.
The application of direct brain control to driving is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, removing the delay between brain to muscle movement, which sometimes can be erroneous, could actually lead to better driver safety. On the other hand, given how easily drivers can be distracted even while their hands are on the wheel, the idea is understandably frightening to some.
Google appears to be more confident about the technical capabilities of its D-Wave 2X quantum computer, which it operates alongside NASA at the U.S. space agency’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.
D-Wave’s machines are the closest thing we have today to quantum computing, which work with quantum bits, or qubits — each of which can be zero or one or both — instead of more conventional bits. The superposition of these qubits can allow great numbers of computations to be performed simultaneously, making a quantum computer highly desirable for certain types of processes.
In two tests, the Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab today announced that it has found the D-Wave machine to be considerably faster than simulated annealing — a simulation of quantum computation on a classical computer chip.
Can we end violence? Can we create greater emotional well being and intellectual equality for the greater well being of humanity? Will we be able to keep up with machines? How can we augment our intelligence? Could we cure mental illness? After advancements in aging the next major area of research from a standpoint of eliminating personal and global suffering would be upgrades in intelligence. Transhumanist values at their core want to eliminate suffering and existential risk to people’s lives. With well founded logic, these goals are not completely out of reach, it is possible but as usual, we will have to take the complex issue from many angles and from the standpoint of a systems engineer, but let’s look at some fun stuff before we get into the heavy stuff.
The Benefits of Intelligence Upgrades
A tiny chip that uses radio waves to make its energy has been developed by Dutch researchers.
