H+ Weekly - Issue #75
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Deepmind gets Starcraft to play with. Upgrading your body and connecting the brain with the computers. The lip-reading scene from HAL is now a reality. And a cute, 3D printed robot that gets an existential crisis when it learns what is its purpose.
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MORE THAN A HUMAN
How modular bionic upgrades will keep your body cutting edge
With superior healthcare and nutrition pushing up the average life expectancy, our bodies increasingly have to last years. Each body has so many components that can easily fail. But modular bionics, 3D-printed organs and in-body chips have the potential to keep us cutting-edge and give us superhuman abilities forever.
Rethinking the Brain Machine Interface
In her TED Talk, Polina Anikeeva talks about brain-computer interfaces. She explains why connecting neurons with transistors is not so easy, but these problems can be overcome with new materials that interact with the brain electrically, chemically, and mechanically, or even wirelessly.
Will the Internet of Things make us superhuman?
Maybe. Maybe wearables and augmenting reality are the first steps to gain superhuman abilities.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Meet REx, the AI Software System That Could Combat Global Climate Change
People from Lancaster University have developed an artificially intelligent computer software system that can rapidly self-assemble itself into the most efficient form without human input. They envision this system to be used in data centers where it can reduce the power consumption.
Blizzard Opens Up Starcraft To Google's Deepmind AI
After defeating the master in Go, founders of Deepmind said that they would like to see Starcraft as the next game their AI learn to play. Their dreams are closer to become the reality as Blizzard opened the game for the AI that learns.
AI Can Now Demolish Humans In ‘Mortal Kombat’
But in the meantime, the team of graduate students from the Israel Institute of Technology made an AI that learned how to beat humans in Mortal Kombat.
Oxford Scientists Have an AI That Can Read Your Lips
Remember the scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey when HAL was able to understand what both astronauts were talking about just by reading their lips? We are a step closer to make that scene a reality.
Toshiba advances deep learning with extremely low power neuromorphic processor
AI is advancing not only in the software realm but also in hardware. Deep learning and other machine learning techniques require huge processing power which comes with a huge energy bill. Toshiba is one of many companies that tries to build a neuromorphic processor - a processor that works like a brain. Such processors will require less power and will greatly improve AIs performance even on small devices, like smartphones.
Software Dreams Up New Molecules in Quest for Wonder Drugs
Ingesting a heap of drug data allows a machine-learning system to suggest alternatives humans hadn’t tried yet.
ROBOTICS
Tiny Fabric-clinging Robots Are A Fashion Statement
Researchers from MIT and Stanford have built these small robots can crawl on clothes. Right now these robots are more than proof of concept than an actual useful thing, but there are possible applications for that kind of crawling robots.
Rise Of The Robomasters
Guys from The Verge went to see Robomasters in Shenzhen, China. It is an annual robotics competition held by DJI and it looks like DOTA or League of Legends, but with real-life robots. DJI is using the competition to find the best talents, but who knows, maybe we see a birth of a new kind of sport?
3D printed pass the butter robot from Rick and Morty
"What is my purpose?"
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Conrad Gray (@conradthegray)
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