Lifeboat Foundation

Robots have learned to be flexible.

Computers are getting smarter, but first they’re stuck in some sort of uncanny valley of intelligence, reassembling normal, everyday objects into increasingly creepy combinations. First came the revelations of Google’s DeepDream technology, which, in learning to “see” objects, “saw” creepy multi-eyed organisms all over the place, turning the world into a half-sentient dog-like mess.

Now, researchers in Toronto have used a technology called “neural karaoke” to teach a computer to write a song after looking at a photo, and the little carol it penned after viewing a festive Christmas tree is an absolutely horrifying display of what these things think of us.

Continue reading “This AI’s attempt to write a Christmas carol is absolutely bone-chilling” »

Big corporations prefer robots to human employees.

It’s a sign of things to come.

In the last five years, online shopping has produced tens of thousands of new warehouse jobs in California, many of them in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The bulk of them paid blue collar people decent wages to do menial tasks – putting things in boxes and sending them out to the world.

Continue reading “Warehouses promised lots of jobs, but robot workforce slows hiring” »

A series of new images reveals the most detailed glimpse yet at Fyodor, the Russian spacebot bound for the International Space Station. The humanoid robot lift weights, and can drive a car.

Step inside the portal and everything is white, calm, silent: this is where researchers are helping craft the future of virtual reality. I speak out loud, and my voice echoes around the empty space. In place of the clutter on the outside, each panel is unadorned, save for a series of small black spots: cameras recording your every move. There are 480 VGA cameras and 30 HD cameras, as well as 10 RGB-D depth sensors borrowed from Xbox gaming consoles. The massive collection of recording apparatus is synced together, and its collective output is combined into a single, digital file. One minute of recording amounts to 600GB of data.

The hundreds of cameras record people talking, bartering, and playing games. Imagine the motion-capture systems used by Hollywood filmmakers, but on steroids. The footage it records captures a stunningly accurate three-dimensional representation of people’s bodies in motion, from the bend in an elbow to a wrinkle in your brow. The lab is trying to map the language of our bodies, the signals and social cues we send one another with our hands, posture, and gaze. It is building a database that aims to decipher the constant, unspoken communication we all use without thinking, what the early 20th century anthropologist Edward Sapir once called an “elaborate code that is written nowhere, known to no one, and understood by all.”

The original goal of the Panoptic Studio was to use this understanding of body language to improve the way robots relate to human beings, to make them more natural partners at work or in play. But the research being done here has recently found another purpose. What works for making robots more lifelike and social could also be applied to virtual characters. That’s why this basement lab caught the attention of one of the biggest players in virtual reality: Facebook. In April 2015, the Silicon Valley giant hired Yaser Sheikh, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon and director of the Panoptic Studio, to assist in research to improve social interaction in VR.

Continue reading “Cracking the elaborate code” »

The name’s Peeqo. [cat blinks endlessly].

I am surprised apple is normally selfish an about filling its pockets.

The notoriously secretive organisation is going to start sharing its research into AI in a move that may help advance its efforts.

With BMI technology, cell circuitry, etc. this is no surprise.

Are you scared of artificial intelligence (AI)?

Do you believe the warnings from folks like Prof. Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and others?

Continue reading “The Brain Tech to Merge Humans and AI Is Already Being Developed” »

One of the oddest military drones aborning reinvents a stillborn technology from 1951. That’s because the unmanned aircraft revolution is resurrecting configurations that were tried more than a half century ago but proved impractical with a human pilot inside. The case in point: Northrop Grumman’s new Tern, a drone designed to do everything armed MQ-1 Predators or MQ-9 Reapers can, but to do it flying from small ships or rugged scraps of land – i.e., no runway needed.

“No one has flown a large, unmanned tailsitter before,” Brad Tousley, director of the Tactical Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Tern’s primary funder, said in a news release. The key word there is “unmanned.”

Continue reading “Tern Tailsitter Drone: Pilot Not Included” »