Everything you need to know about ChatGPT, Bard, Midjourney, Dall-E and more.
The mad geniuses at DARPA have their next project lined up: a camera that can guide itself and report back from the field. That kind of visual intelligence has been an exclusively human trait, until now. The plan, called “The Mind’s Eye,” is going to be outlined next at a one-day conference in DC in … Continued
Six years ago, David Cope destroyed one of the world’s most talented composers. Her name was Emmy, and she’d written thousands of musical scores that were indistinguishable from classics by Mozart. But Emmy’s younger, brighter daughter named Emily lives on. David Cope is an emeritus professor at University of California. His last piece of music … Continued
A gaggle of MIT inventors are presently working to create a swarm of micro LED-equipped heli-robots that would hover autonomously in the sky and create massive works of floating 3D artwork. The coming apocalypse, it just got prettier! The program, called Flyfire, would sync up hundreds (and thousands?) of tiny helicopter robots to create, say, … Continued
At the end of many sport games, the commentators inevitably give shouts outs to the camera crew, who wave back with toothy smiles. It’s a touching, simple “thank you” for covering the game. Sadly, these poor saps are all doomed. Now, I don’t know when the end will come for these unfortunate souls, but I … Continued
After 50 years and countless dead ends, incremental progress, and modest breakthroughs, artificial intelligence researchers are asking for a do-over. The $5 million Mind Machine Project (MMP), a patchwork team of two dozen academics, students and researchers, intends to go back to the discipline’s beginnings, rebuilding the field from the ground up. With 20/20 hindsight, … Continued
The cat brain simulation IBM supposedly pulled off has just been called out as a “PR stunt” by the leader of the Blue Brain project, who says that it’s all a “mass deception of the public.” https://gizmodo.com/it-takes-147-456-powerpc-processors-to-out-think-a-sing-5407562 Henry Markram, the Blue Brain guy, says in an email to IBM’s CTO, that the project is not … Continued
Also on IBM’s cat-sized-brain-simulation materials list: 143 terabytes of RAM, miles and miles of cabling, a million watts of electricity, 6675 tons of air conditioning equipment, and an acre of floor space. Cats: they’re kinda dumb. They only seem smarter than dogs because they’re not so friendly, and our society judges kindness harshly. It’s true! … Continued
Kwabena Boahen, a computer scientist at Stanford University, believes that it would require 10 megawatts to power a processor as smart as the human brain. His new “Neurogrid” supercomputer might be able to do it on only 20 watts. To put that in perspective, 10 megawatts is the kind of energy a small hydroelectric plant … Continued
Asimo, still licking its wounds after being outrun by Toyota, fired back earlier this month at Carnegie Mellon, where it learned how to navigate complex, moving obstacle courses. Seriously impressive stuff in this video—just wait until things start spinning! https://gizmodo.com/toyota-humanoid-robot-gives-asimo-a-run-for-its-money-5328227 Officially, this video shows that Carnegie Mellon researchers have given Asimo the ability to detect … Continued
Shown here is Toyota’s running robot. At 7 km/h it’s not going to win any wind sprints in the Olympics, but nevertheless this thing is airborne for 100ms between strides as it skirts across the floor (i.e. genuine running). For comparison’s sake, Honda’s Asimo robot can only manage a meager 6 km/h. We assume Toyota … Continued
Science fiction is great fun, but should we really be quaking in our boots over dangerous A.I. anytime soon? A growing number of scientists say yes, and the results of their February conference at Asilomar are finally being made public. At the conference, the scientists debated research limits on AI, much like their colleagues in … Continued
When I interviewed Wired for War author PW Singer last March, he told me that the preconditions for a successful Terminator-type uprising are not in place. As computer development accelerates, however, those preconditions become way more possible. So, what are the preconditions, according to Singer? 1. The AI or robot has to have some sense … Continued
A robot named Adam is reported to be the first robot ever to independently uncover scientific knowledge. The robot’s AI made a hypothesis about the genomics of a yeast, planned a test for the hypothesis and carried the test out in its lab. The results were replicated by human scientists later, confirming that, no, the … Continued
The collective power of many little robots could do a lot of good for the world. But for now, it just pulls little children across the floor in a freaky way. Still, I find myself transfixed as the robots self-organize, connecting to one another like a giant train to stack their power for a greater … Continued
The Pentagon and the Department of Defense has recently put in a request to contractors for a multi-robot pursuit system to search and track down “non-cooperative humans.” The military is worried that controlling robots will take time away from defense officials so creating a pack-hunting AI that will do it automatically will be useful. Once … Continued
Today, the machines became a little smarter, as a computer named Elbot managed to achieve a 25% success rate when convincing a human being that they were talking to another human. The experiment is called the Turing Test, after mathematician Alan Turing, and Sunday’s saw six Artificial Conversational Entities (ACEs) trying to ace the exam. … Continued
Looks like the day when we all hang out with robots that smoke cigars, throw back drinks and win all our money in poker is edging closer, now that programmers at the University of Alberta have created a Hold ‘Em-playing software that can beat poker professionals. The Polaris software was pitted against Poker pros like … Continued
John Seabrook wrote a recent feature in The New Yorker about interactive-voice-response systems (I.V.R.) commonly used with customer service and tech support telephone hotlines. Seabrook spent time at B.B.N. Technologies watching these systems transcribe callers’ words and analyzing the tone of voice for emotions present. While breaking down the history of automated telephone services and … Continued
Using his self-designed AI program, Philip M. Parker has “authored” 200,000 books without ever lifting his pen. While his work features some self-explanatory medical texts like The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea, most of Parker’s publications are 100-300 page industry analysis pieces like DAGENHAM MOTORS GROUP PLC: Labor Productivity Benchmarks and International Gap Analysis. … Continued
Those spiffing fellows at the University of Plymouth, UK are undertaking a research project involving a baby-bot named iCub, which will see the robot actually learn how to speak. The three-foot high robot will help researchers deduce how language is taught, but the further reaching impact of the study include the prospect of developing humanoid … Continued