Lifeboat Foundation

This new species will coexist peacefully with humans, one Turing Award winner says…

Robots’ potential to take over the world is a commonly expressed fear in the world of AI, but at least one Turing Award winner doesn’t see it happening that way. Rather than replacing mankind, technology will create a new kind of human that will coexist with its predecessors while taking advantage of new tech-enabled tools.

So argued Raj Reddy, former founding director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute and 1994 winner of the Turing Award, at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany last week.

Continue reading “Forget the robocalypse— ‘Homo connecticus’ may be what’s coming” »

‘Westworld’ review HBO remake of Michael Crichton movie stars Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris.

Lisa Joy and Jonah Nolan explore dark sides of AI and humanity in series that reboots the 1973 film about a robotic theme park gone haywire.

Seems like we’ve been waiting forever for the big showdown between Team USA and Japan. We’re seemingly no closer at the moment, but at least the team at MegaBots can offer a bit of good old-fashioned destruction to tide us over before the massive machines go toe-to-toe.

In the premier of its new web series (the trailer for which was shown off at Disrupt the other week), the team behind the fighting robot startup league go to town on their own robot, the $200,000 Mk. II.

In order to stress test the six-ton bot’s protective casing, the team shoots it with its own gun and gives it several whacks with a wrecking ball. At the risk of spoiling the seven-and-a-half minute long video, it turns out it’s really tough to knock over a 15-foot-tall fighting robot.

This video realized by the AI Lab of SoftBank Robotics shows how Pepper robot learns to play the ball-in-a-cup game (“bilboquet” in French). The movement is first demonstrated to the robot by guiding its arm.

From there, Pepper has to improve its performance through trial-and-error learning. Even though the initial demonstration does not land the ball in the cup, Pepper can still learn to play the game successfully.

Continue reading “[AI Lab] Pepper robot learning ‘ball in a cup’” »

The paradox of Schrödinger’s cat—in which a quantum cat is both alive and dead at the same time until we check to see which state it’s in—is arguably the most famous example of the bizarre counter-intuitive nature of the quantum world. Now, Stanford physicists have exploited this feature weirdness to make highly detailed movies of the inner machinery of simple iodine molecules.

As you’ve probably heard, there’s a live-action version of the classic manga The Ghost in the Shell with Scarlett Johansson coming next year, and now the first teasers have arrived.

The spots, which initially aired during tonight’s Mr. Robot season finale, are glitchy and weird; impressionistic moments rather than traditional teasers. (As somebody that grew up on ‘90s visions of our inevitable cyberpunk future, it’s an aesthetic I happen to personally enjoy. The only shame is that Ralph Fiennes isn’t around to sling some black market MiniDisc memories.)

Continue reading “Watch the first teasers for the new Ghost in the Shell movie” »

Arrival is the kind of science fiction film we dream of. It’s got big stars, a bigger concept, and the longer it goes, the more it demands of its audience. The pacing is methodical, the story captivating, and filmmaking beautiful. You rarely have a clue where it’s going—but once it gets there, you won’t be able to get it out of your head.