For those of you who have ever returned home for the holidays, you know there’s nothing like introducing your boyfriend or girlfriend to your family – especially when that significant other is a $50,000 robot you’ve built yourself. A Canadian inventor who created a “fembot” named Aiko had to move home due to the debt [...]
Posts under ‘Artificial Intelligence’
“Failed” 2010 predictions weren’t too far off
Ahh, 2000. The dawn of a new millennium that held unlimited promise for the future. Some prognosticators and futurists seemed to expect a bit too much from the first ten years, however, and we’re now able to look back on their failed predictions and chuckle at how far off they were. Flying cars? Artificial intelligence [...]
Did IBM overstate “simulated cat brain” claims?
Last week I wrote about IBM’s announcement that a research team had created the “largest artificial brain ever,” which they compared to the size of a cat’s brain. It turns out that some of these claims may have been hyperbole. Henry Markram, the lead at the Blue Brain Project (which describes itself as the “first [...]
Will lawyers soon be able to specialize in “robotics law?”
When autonomous robots become more common and begin making their way out into the world, some will malfunction, and accidents will happen. Some of these accidents will cause property destruction and perhaps even lead to human injury or death. Civilians will probably be killed as robots are increasingly used on the battlefield. Not to mention, [...]
How science fiction has influenced real life tech
It may not be surprising that many scientists have been influenced by science fiction – for instance, Arthur C. Clarke influenced pioneers of artificial intelligence research and the developers of the World Wide Web. I didn’t realize that Snow Crash had such a powerful influence on the development of several technologies, especially virtual worlds: The [...]
IBM researchers to create virtual world for supercomputer to explore
Today researchers at IBM’s Almaden research center unveiled the “biggest artificial brain ever,” which is described as being as large as a cat’s brain. The hardware is impressive, consisting of 147,456 CPUs, but what is even more compelling is how the team plans to “teach” the computer – by creating a virtual world in which [...]
“Gray goo” and hostile AI low on potential threat scale
If you’re like me, you are looking forward to the predicted singularity and the inevitable major advances in technology that will occur this century. However, there’s always the thought that things could go horribly wrong – self-replicating nanomachines could create “gray goo,” AI could turn against its creators, and so on. According to Mike Treder [...]
New supercomputer more energy efficient through “brain-like” design
If conventional processors were used to create an artificial intelligence, the resulting supercomputer would consume massive amounts of electricity – up to 20 megawatts, which would require a small hydroelectric plant to power it. The human brain, on the other hand, only consumes about 20 watts of electricity to operate. Creating more energy efficient computers [...]
Psychology Today skeptic takes on the singularity
Massimo Pigliucci of Psychology Today’s Rationally Speaking blog is “In Pursuit of Positive Skepticism” – and after sitting in on a presentation by philosopher David Chalmers regarding the singularity, he came away especially skeptical of the concept. In his blog post, “David Chalmers and the Singularity that will probably not come,” Pigliucci not only takes [...]
Will Facebook lead the way to the Singularity?
In an article at ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kilpatrick notes singularitarian Peter Thiel’s investments in Facebook, and wonders if the world’s most popular social network could be the precursor to a “smarter than human intelligence.” Facebook’s machine intelligence is very real; its system is learning quickly about how humans interact and how different people respond to different [...]