H+ Weekly - Issue #49
ISSUE #49
AI that helps build AI and an AI that pretended to be a teacher, flying dancing drones and fighting drones, a very dexterous robot and a robot you can beam into it and more!
More than a human
Soft Wearable Bot Does All Your Heavy Lifting
When you think about exoskeletons you probably have a hard metal or plastic device strapped to a human. But there is a team at Harvard University which believes that the future of the exoskeletons lies in textiles and soft robotics. So they created a lightweight flexible suit that augments human performance.
Maybe It's Not Such A Great Idea To Bring People Back After Brain Death
Let's imagine we can bring people back after brain death. We injected into such person substances that rebuild the brain. But would that person be the same person before "death"? How many memories would get lost? How many new one would be created?
Sony just patented contact lenses that can secretly record what you see
Last week I shared with you the news that Google patented cyborg contact lenses. Sony doesn't want to be behind, so they patented their own lenses.
Artificial Intelligence
Beyond Siri: The World Premiere of Viv
The creators of Siri showed their new creation - an artificial intelligence assistant named Viv, which aims to be the intelligent interface for everything.
What 7 of the World’s Smartest People Think About Artificial Intelligence
Time made a quick compilation of what some smart people in the world think about AI. The list contains such names as Sam Altman, Nick Bostrom, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk.
Building AI Is Hard—So Facebook Is Building AI That Builds AI
Making AI is hard. So hard, that inside Facebook, engineers have designed what they like to call an “automated machine learning engineer,” an artificially intelligent system that helps create artificially intelligent systems.
Is AlphaGo Really Such a Big Deal?
According to Michael Nielsen, the author of the article, yes, it is. It is a long read explaining roughly how AlphaGo works, why it is different that Deep Blue (the computer that beat the chess master Garry Kasparov) and what we might expect from current AI systems.
Georgia Tech Teaching Assistant Isn’t Human, She’s a Robot
Ahshok Goel, a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology has just revealed that he has been employing a robot as one of his teaching assistants. “Jill Watson” has been doing regular TA work for Goel, answering students questions in a forum, reminding students of upcoming important dates over email—and all of this in a way that was so human, students never realized that they were talking to a robot.
Demis Hassabis, Yann LeCun and Jürgen Schmidhuber debate the Singularity
The big guys of artificial intelligence discuss whether or not super intelligent AI is a threat to humanity.
The next AI is no AI
The article main point is that AI might become so ubiquitous that we will not be even able to notice it. It will become an utility, just like electricity or how the internet is becoming an utility now.
Robotics
100 Dancing Drones Fly At The Same Time in Elegant Ballet
Intel took 100 drones and made them dance in the air.
MegaBots Raises $2.4 Million to Create Robot Fighting League
Robot fighting league may become a thing!
Silicon Valley Billionaire Wants to Give Us All Robot Bodies
Scott Hassan has a dream in which you will be able to beam into different robotic bodies from anywhere in the world, making "here" everywhere.
Five Exponential Trends Are Accelerating Robotics
According to this article, improved power systems, new materials, advances in computing, manufacturing and new, better algorithms are five trends that are accelerating robotics.
Mountain Dew brings DR1 drone racing to Twitch and cable this August
Every good news about drone racing makes me happy. Like this one. Mountain Dew became the title sponsor of DR1 drone racing and will help bring drone racing to cable television and Twitch.
A New Army Robot Has Creepily Nimble Fingers
A showcase of Resquared's new robot which is very dexterous and able to do some really complex tasks, like unscrew bottles, open bags and, err, play with toys.
Robots Can Now Beat Us At Foosball
Let's add foosball to the list of things in which robots are better than humans.
Why Rwanda Is Going to Get the World’s First Network of Delivery Drones
It makes sense to test drone delivery systems in remote areas, where there aren't so many regulations or safety concerns, and by the way you can send precious medical supply to help save lives.
3D print all the things!
3D Printer Creates Real Bones Using Synthetic Material
A new 3D printer created by a University of Waterloo Engineer allows 3D-printed joints and implants that are made of the same minerals as human bone, and they interlock with the patient’s cells to create longer-lasting replacements.
Will 3D Printing Break Copyright?
In this episode of Idea Channel, Mike Rugnetta checks with Michael Weinberg from Shapeways how 3D printing will affect copyrights and will 3D printing do the same to traditional manufacturing as MP3 did to the music industry.
Virtual Worlds
Disney’s Coloring Book Is Able To Bring Your Artwork To Life While You Design Them
This is magical. You have a normal colouring book and you give it to children to colour it. Then with a special app on your tablet or a smartphone you can bring the artwork to life thanks to augmented reality.
Outro
Genocide Bingo
Genocide Bingo is a "game" in which we build a super-intelligent AI and try not to make it kill the humanity. A fun video quickly showing different scenarios we can encounter and what might be the result.
Can Computers Read Your Mind?
Nowadays it’s not unusual for a search engine to autofill search terms, for streaming music services to suggest new music based on your past preferences, and for advertisers to automatically target you for specific products. But how far can this practice go? Is it possible that one day a computer could read your mind? BrainStuff tries to answer these questions.
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