H+ Weekly - Issue #27
ISSUE #27
On designed babies, a drone with a flamethrower, AI that makes new music on demand, Facebook open sources AI hardware, racing robots and more!
More than a human
Self-learning Bionic Hand
A demonstration of a self-learning bionic hand, that learns the movements of a real hand.
Artificial Intelligence
Teaching AI to Play Atari Will Help Robots Make Sense of Our World
Wired checks why AI researchers like to give their systems classic games like Space Invaders, Video Pinball, and Breakout.
Jukedeck’s AI Composer Makes Cheap, Custom Soundtracks
With Jukedeck’s new artificial intelligence music composition technology, creators can get a cheap, royalty free soundtrack custom-made for their video. Jukedeck users don’t even need musical talent. They just select the mood, style, tempo and length, and Jukedeck returns a unique song to match their short film, YouTube series or 6-second Vine.
Game Theory: The Human Hive Mind Theory
MatPat from Game Theory explains, based on StarCraft 2, what is a hive mind and swarm intelligence, and how we are closer to have a hive consciousness... or that we already have one.
Facebook Open Sources Its AI Hardware as It Races Google
Facebook doesn't want to feel worse than Google, so in response for the Google open sourcing its AI framework, Facebook open sourced its hardware to run AI algorithms.
Google and Facebook Race to Solve the Ancient Game of Go With AI
Speaking of race in AI between Google and Facebook. A program that could solve the ancient game of Go is currently a Holy Grail of AI researches and both companies race each other in who will be the first to make that program. We might soon find the winner of this race.
Robotics
Robots Could Learn The Same Way Babies Do
Researchers proposed to teach robots in the same way as the babies learn about the world - by touching things, testing them out, playing around, and watching what adults do.
Baidu's Testing a Self-Driving Car and Samsung Is Building Autonomous Car Parts
Baidu, the Chinese Google, did the same thing as Google did, which is they build an autonomous car and now they are testing it on roads.
Robots Take On Racetracks
Yahama presented a motorcycle robot, Formula E announced it will have a race of autonomous race cars. The race of robots is becoming a thing! Of course, they said it is all to make autonomous cars safer, but in reality, they just want to build the fastest robot racer on the planet. Which is awesome.
A drone with flamethrower
It was a matter of time when someone will come up with an idea of attaching a flamethrower to a drone.
Biotechnology
CRISPR Gene-Editing Gets Rules. Well, Guidelines, Really
An international panel of scientists has officially said the genome-editing technology CRISPR needs more research into its safety… and that engineering human babies would probably be pretty bad anyway.
A short explanation on the DNA nanorobots
A quite good explanation what are the DNA nanorobots, how they work and we can use them to deliver drugs to kill cancer cells without touching the healthy cells.
Britain should lead way on genetically engineered babies, says Chief Scientific Adviser
At a conference in London , Sir Mark Walport, who advises the government on scientific matters, said he believed there were "circumstances" in which the genetic editing of human embyros could be "acceptable". And he said Britain should be at the forefront of the research.
Engineering the Better Baby
Sooner or later, someone will start mess with human genes, either to eradicate a disease or to enhance the baby. This article calls to sort some things out before the marketing machine turns on.
Wear it
Google Wants to Patent a Blood-Sucking Smartwatch
Google engineers came up an idea how to put a needle-free blood draw device into a smartwatch. Depending how you think about Google, it is either awesome or creepy.
Motus Wearable Sensors Bring Biomechanics Out Of The Lab And Into The Ball Park
Modern sport is as much a game of skills as it is a game of numbers and data. Motus released a set of sensors that can be worn by a baseball player to gather even more data on his performance. Will see, maybe other sports with adopt similar technologies.
Other
Building the Tamagotchi Singularity
There was xkcd comic about the Tamagotchi Singularity, and someone decided to make one. So yeah, Singularity did happen, but not for us.
The Three Laws of Robotics
Randall from xkcd checks what would happen if we change the order of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. Lesson - don't mess with Laws of Robotics.
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