Lifeboat Foundation

I cannot wait to see the results.

Palo Alto-based Diffbot has proclaimed itself the “leading arms dealer in coming AI wars” after raising $10 million in Series A funding.

Diffbot has developed a robot that is working to organize information from all over the Web into the world’s largest database of knowledge. The robot, which works without human oversight, recognizes, reads, understands and monitors product pages, news articles, discussion forums, videos, pictures and more, according to the company. Businesses can gain access to this data when they sign up for Diffbot plans, ranging from $299 to $3,999 per month.

Continue reading “Artificial intelligence startup Diffbot raises $10 million for ambitious project” »

Computer scientists say as cloud computing allows machines to become more life-like, robots may become the ‘perfect companion’ and people may even go to court in a bid to marry their robots.

Read more

Your weekly selection of awesome robot videos.

Read more

In a major step forward for self-driving cars and the industry seeking to manufacture them, US highway authorities have informed Google that its autonomous vehicle systems could qualify as a “driver” in the eyes of the law.

A letter addressed to the company from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) last week suggests that if self-driving vehicles (SDVs) can satisfy a number of safety standards, the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) is controlling the car – in the absence of any human controls – would not be a barrier to the car legally driving on US roads.

“We agree with Google its SDV will not have a ‘driver’ in the traditional sense that vehicles have had drivers during the last more than one hundred years,” writes chief counsel for the NHTSA, Paul A. Hemmersbaugh. “If no human occupant of the vehicle can actually drive the vehicle, it is more reasonable to identify the ‘driver’ as whatever (as opposed to whoever) is doing the driving. In this instance, an item of motor vehicle equipment, the [SDS Self-Driving System], is actually driving the vehicle.”

Read more

Over the last few years tech companies both large and small have developed programs that can “dream”; and understand and process information; and even write articles; but nothing has come close to the holy grail of artificial intelligence — developing software that can learn independently.

At least, not until now.

Helsinki might seem like an unlikely potential birthplace for this new era of intelligent machines. Yet it’s there — on a side street blocks from the central train station — that a team of roboticists, neuroscientists, and graphics programmers planted the seed that would become the new artificial intelligence software developer, The Curious AI Company.

Read more

Expensive travel bags should do more than look good, and German high-end luggage manufacturer Rimowa would seem to agree. The company has developed an electronic luggage tag which displays baggage info in the same format, size and appearance of typical paper labels, but on a digital screen built into the unit and located near the handle.

The Rimowa e-tag is similar to a device tested by British Airways in 2013, which allowed travelers to attach it to any piece of luggage.

Continue reading “Electronic luggage tag lets travelers check-in bags from home” »

Tesla Version 7.1 adds driverless automatic parking to Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles.

Read more

Again, I see too many gaps that will need to be address before AI can eliminate 70% of today’s jobs. Below, are the top 5 gaps that I have seen so far with AI in taking over many government, business, and corporate positions.

1) Emotion/ Empathy Gap — AI has not been designed with the sophistication to provide personable care such as you see with caregivers, medical specialists, etc.
2) Demographic Gap — until we have a more broader mix of the population engaged in AI’s design & development; AI will not meet the needs for critical mass adoption; only a subset of the population will find will connection in serving most of their needs.
3) Ehtics & Morale Code Gap — AI still cannot understand at a full cognitive level ethics & empathy to a degree that is required.
4) Trust and Compliance Gap — companies need to feel that their IP & privacy is protected; until this is corrected, AI will not be able to replace an entire back office and front office set of operations.
5) Security & Safety Gap — More safeguards are needed around AI to deal with hackers to ensure that information managed by AI is safe as well as ensure public saftey from any AI that becomes disruptive or hijacked to cause injury or worse to the public

Until these gaps are addressed; it will be very hard to eliminate many of today’s government, office/ business positions. The greater job loss will be in the lower skill areas like standard landscaping, some housekeeping, some less personable store clerk, some help desk/ call center operations, and some lite admin admin roles.

Continue reading “Yes, robots will steal our jobs — but don’t worry, we’ll get new ones” »

DARPA’s efforts to teach AI “Empathy & Ethics”

The rapid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) has raised fears about whether robots could act unethically or soon choose to harm humans. Some are calling for bans on robotics research; others are calling for more research to understand how AI might be constrained. But how can robots learn ethical behavior if there is no “user manual” for being human?

Researchers Mark Riedl and Brent Harrison from the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology believe the answer lies in “Quixote” — to be unveiled at the AAAI-16 Conference in Phoenix, Ariz. (Feb. 12 — 17, 2016). Quixote teaches “value alignment” to robots by training them to read stories, learn acceptable sequences of events and understand successful ways to behave in human societies.

Continue reading “Using stories to teach human values to artificial agents” »