AI/Robotics

Looking to the future of A New Kind of Science

Today ten years have passed since A New Kind of Science (”the NKS book”) was published. But in many ways the development that started with the book is still only just beginning. And over the next several decades I think its effects will inexorably become ever more obvious and important. Indeed, even at an everyday level I [...]

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Swarms of tiny intelligent drones with cameras — what could go wrong?

Are you ready for Eye-Bots — flying smarms of intelligent drones that zoom in and track everything going on? Yo boy, this one’s gonna make them spyder bots in Minority Report and Big-Brother TV sets in 1984 look positively user-friendly. A flock of flying robots rises slowly into the air with a loud buzzing noise. [...]

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When creative machines overtake man

Machine intelligence is improving rapidly, to the point that the scientist of the future may not even be human! In fact, in more and more fields, learning machines are already outperforming humans. As noted in this transcript of a talk at TEDxLausanne on Jan. 20, 2012, artificial intelligence expert Jürgen Schmidhuber isn’t able to predict the [...]

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Will corporations prevent the Singularity?

It occurred to me recently that the world possesses some very powerful intelligent organisms that are directly and clearly opposed to the Singularity — corporations. Human beings are confused and confusing creatures. We don’t have very clear goal systems, and are quite willing and able to adapt our top-level goals to the circumstances. I have [...]

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Welcome to your future android clone

This is the most interesting event at SXSW I’ve heard of so far: “Robot panelists, AI and the future of identity.” It’s a session Monday at SXSW (3:30PM  – 4:30PM), where Bruce Duncan, Managing Director of the Terasem Movement Foundation, will bring us up to date on Terasem’s amazing LifeNaut project. LifeNaut is a free online service (and experiment) for [...]

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Evi trumps Siri for general knowledge

Move over Siri, Evi is the new kid in town. It’s no Watson, but Evi, created by True Knowledge, a Cambridge, U.K.-based semantic technology startup, like Siri, can answer questions posed by voice (using Nuance software) in a conversational manner or by typing. But unlike Siri (only available on iPhone 4S), Evi runs on the [...]

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The future of autonomous cars … and planes

If you’re driving on the Autobahn right now, I advise you keep an eye out for this guy, who is apparently praying his driverless BMW doesn’t crash into something (note: this is a highway without speed limits — not reassuring). (Videos here.) Hey, BMW: why not toss in a robot driver to carry groceries and [...]

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random | Bots gone wild

Introducing random — a new, occasional blog category for stuff that’s way too weird for our regular weird posts. Like these wacky robot stories: Wanna take a ride on a 15-foot-long inflatable walking robot named Ant-Roach (as in anteater-cockroach)? Um, maybe not, but hey, “human safe” bots are not a bad idea, especially if you [...]

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Mask-bot: A talking video humanoid robot

Welcome to the creepiest uncanny-valley experience yet: a talking robot face called Mask-bot, developed by a team at the Institute for Cognitive Systems (ICS) at TU München and AIST, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan. What sets Mask-bot apart is that it can instantly construct and project a static video image [...]

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Kurzweil responds: Don’t underestimate the Singularity

Last week, Paul Allen and a colleague challenged the prediction that computers will soon exceed human intelligence. Now Ray Kurzweil, the leading proponent of the “Singularity,” offers a rebuttal. — Technology Review, Oct. 10, 2011. Although Paul Allen paraphrases my 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near, in the title of his essay (cowritten with his colleague Mark [...]

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