H+ Weekly - Issue #10
ISSUE #10
This week - why you should not give your robot to children, police Daleks, AI that learns to play jazz, robots and snakes!
Enjoy!
More than human
Science is creating super-athletes
When asked about applications of their researches, scientists are most likely to say that results of their work going to be used in medicine. But there is another group which might be very interested in making humans better. And, most importantly, they have money.
10 Exoskeletons to Make You Superhuman
Did you ever want to a superhuman? With these exoskeletons you might become one!
Artificial Intelligence
Your Lawyer May Soon Ask This AI-Powered App for Legal Help
Everyone who ever had a chance to deal with law issues can tell you that laws are complicated. So complicated, that it might be necessary to use artificial intelligence to help people deal with it.
Are Artificial Neural Networks the Key to Unravelling the Mysteries of Autism?
Or how artificial neural network can allow us to "debug" our brains and learn how it works, what causes mental diseases and how we can cure them.
DARPA is teaching artificial intelligence software to play jazz
As bizarre as it sounds, this research has a lot of sense and might result in better AI algorithms, which will be able to quickly find more effective (or creative) solutions.
Interview with Stephen Wolfram on AI and the future
Stephen Wolfram, the founder of Wolfram Research, creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, talks about artificial intelligence, its past, where it is now and where AI researches are heading.
If Artificial Intelligence replaced politicians, would there ever be wars in the future?
Someone asked this question on reddit. What are your thoughts on it?
Putting the Art in Artificial Intelligence
Not only Google's DeepDream is creating art. Here are some other AI systems which created art.
Why There Will Be A Robot Uprising
That's the first ever paper predicting Terminator scenario using mathematics to prove its thesis. Full paper can be found here.
Robotics
How an Abused Robot was Trained to Run from Children
This little robot's job was to wander around a mall in Osaka, Japan and greet customers. But then it discovered something most adults already knew - children are mean. Especially in groups and without any adult nearby. So, in order to avoid destroying the robot, it had to be trained to run away from children.
For more technical details, check the paper titled Why Do Children Abuse Robots?.
Robots learn to evolve and improve
Engineers have developed a robotic system that can evolve and improve its performance. A robot arm builds "babies" that get progressively better at moving without any human intervention. The ultimate aim of the research project is to develop robots that adapt to their surroundings.
MIT Robot Steals Human Brains to Help It Balance
Guys from MIT built a robot which learns how to keep balance using humans to calibrate its systems. Metaphorically speaking, it was stealing the human brain to learn a new skill.
Robots deployed to protect and serve
If you see in Palo Alto machines looking like Daleks from Dr. Who, don't be afraid! They aren't Daleks. They are not to there to exterminate, annihilate or destroy. They are a brand new security robots and they are there to protect and serve.
An ‘air traffic control’ system for drones is in testing
As companies like Amazon seem bullish on using drones for commercial purposes, a type of ‘air traffic control’ for unmanned aircraft is probably a good idea. Now we have one; a team at The University of Nevada, Reno has developed software that keeps drones aware of one another in the air.
'Charging Snake' for Tesla Cars
Tesla cars are going to be charged by robotic snakes. And they are looking awesome.
The emotional mechanics of the robot-human interaction
Scientists decided to check how our brain reacts on robots performing human roles. In other words, they were testing the uncanny value under fRMI.
Artificially evolved robots that efficiently self-organize tasks
The field of 'swarm robotics' aims to use teams of small robots to explore complex environments, such as the moon or foreign planets. However, designing controllers that allow the robots to effectively organize themselves is no easy task.
Just like social insects such as ants, bees or termites teams of robots display a self-organized division of labor in which the different robots automatically specialized into carrying out different subtasks in the group.
Full article on artificially evolved robots can be found here.
Wearables
iSkin lets you control your smartphone via electronic skin sensors
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Informatics in Germany have created an electronic film that uses pressure sensitive sensors and can be attached to your regular skin.
Here's a video of iSkin in action.
Something to watch
Enabling the ethical development of strong AI
At last London Futurists event, Michael Stewart and Kay Firth-Butterfield of Lucid, were discussing what is the best way to direct the development of AI, so that AI will work alongside humans to solve the intractable problems of our day, and the future - problems which humans alone cannot solve?
A robot-snake climbs the stairs
And it does completely on its own. It can see the obstacle and finds a way to overcome it.
A robot-snake climbs the trees
Now all we need are robot-snakes on planes.
How to Upload Your Mind
Immortality is something we can find in comic books and movies. Or is it? Rusty Ward from Science Friction discusses how scientists are predicting that we’ll soon be able to upload our own brains and transcend our biology.
The Future of 3D Printing
Analysts from Stratfor, one of the world's leading private intelligence agency, are discussing the current state of 3D printing, the possible applications of the technology, and what are the next steps.
Something to listen
Steven Kotler | From Sci-Fi to Sci-Fact
Steven Kotler, author of the book Tomorrowland, talks with The Art of Charm on future technologies. The variety of topics is quite wide - AI, robotics, human enhancements, virtual reality, curing aging, mind uploading.
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