Category: AI

By Joel Hruska 

Over the past few years, AI has gone from a niche topic to an exploding field. AI can improve audio and video quality, animate still images of long-dead people, and identify you from an analprint. One thing it hasn’t been able to do? Argue effectively within the context of a formal debate.

To overcome this problem, IBM created Project Debater, an AI development program focused on exactly what it sounds like. Many AI projects, especially those focusing on gaming, have a clear winner and a loser based on the evaluation of numerical criteria, such as pieces captured, lives lost, or the ratio between kills and deaths. Effectively debating a human requires a vastly different skill set.

A recent paper in Nature describes the results of a 2019 test between Project Debater and globally recognized debate champion Harish Natarajan. The AI and individual debated whether preschool should be subsidized. Each side was given 15 minutes for prep time without additional internet access, which Project Debater used to sort through its own internal database of content. Both sides gave a four-minute speech, followed by a two-minute closing statement.

Guests have their faces scanned at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in August, 2019.Hector Retamal | AFP | Getty Images

By Catherine Clifford

Artificial intelligence will create so much wealth that every adult in the United States could be paid $13,500 per year from its windfall as soon as 10 years from now.

So says Sam Altman, co-founder and president of San Francisco-headquartered, artificial intelligence-focused nonprofit OpenAI.

“My work at OpenAI reminds me every day about the magnitude of the socioeconomic change that is coming sooner than most people believe,” Altman, who  posted Tuesday. “Software that can think and learn will do more and more of the work that people now do.”

By Leila Stein 15 Updated by Kyle Baird 

Sophia the Robot has created her own non-fungible token (NFT) digital artwork to be auctioned.

Sophia made the artworks with digital artist Andrea Bonaceto. This makes them the first-ever collaboration between humans and robots. 

An NFT version of the art goes up for sale on the Nifty Gateway marketplace on March 23. 

 · By Daniel Patrascu

There is no doubt the only way forward for humanity is to enlist the help of artificial intelligence systems, such as they presently are. They are required, you see, because humans always had a habit of biting off more than they can chew, and engage in audacious projects that are far beyond the capabilities of their brains.

One such project is the Artemis lunar exploration program. Later this year, the first flight in a longer series is set to depart for the Moon with no crew on board to test performance, life support, and communication capabilities.

Then, in 2023, astronauts will head for the Earth satellite, without landing there, followed in 2024 by the Artemis III mission that will actually put human boots on the ground after decades of absence. 

Crucial to the success of the missions is the Orion capsule. Cooked up in the Lockheed Martin laboratories, Orion is the actual spaceship that will ensure astronauts arrive at their destination alive and well, and then back to Earth.

By Michael Vizard

Intel today revealed that its 3D Athlete Tracking (3DAT) technology is being employed by Exos, a firm that focuses on human performance conditioning, to help train professional athletes aspiring to join the National Football League (NFL) and other organizations.

Intel’s 3DAT technology captures skeletal data when an athlete is sprinting, using a video camera running at 60 frames per second. That data is then analyzed using Intel Deep Learning Boost AI capabilities that have been built into the latest generation of Intel Xeon Scalable processors Intel has deployed in a cloud it manages.

The goal is to make it simpler for coaches and athletes to understand how different types of skeletal structures may give one athlete an edge over another, said Ashton Eaton, two-time Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon and a product development engineer in Intel’s Olympic Technology Group.

“We don’t know why people won or lost,” Eaton said. “There are a lot of unknowns.”

A prototype robotic glove for people who struggle with daily tasks

By Sean Morrison

An engineering graduate hopes to aid millions of people after helping create a robotic glove which uses artificial intelligence to boost muscle grip.

Seeing his aunt’s struggles with daily tasks such as drinking water or changing TV channel after loss of movement caused by multiple sclerosis led Ross O’Hanlon, 24, to produce the device.

The glove detects the wearer’s intention to grip by using electromyography (EMG) to measure electrical activity in response to a nerve’s stimulation of the muscle.

It then employs an algorithm to convert the intention into force, helping the user to hold an item or apply the necessary pressure to complete an activity.

JON WHITTLE,

Artificial intelligence (AI) is learning more about how to work with (and on) humans. A recent study has shown how AI can learn to identify vulnerabilities in human habits and behaviours and use them to influence human decision-making.

It may seem cliched to say AI is transforming every aspect of the way we live and work, but it’s true. Various forms of AI are at work in fields as diverse as vaccine development, environmental management and office administration. And while AI does not possess human-like intelligence and emotions, its capabilities are powerful and rapidly developing.

There’s no need to worry about a machine takeover just yet, but this recent discovery highlights the power of AI and underscores the need for proper governance to prevent misuse.

We’ve trained a neural network called DALL·E that creates images from text captions for a wide range of concepts expressible in natural language.

DALL·E^[1] is a 12-billion parameter version of GPT-3 trained to generate images from text descriptions, using a dataset of text–image pairs. We’ve found that it has a diverse set of capabilities, including creating anthropomorphized versions of animals and objects, combining unrelated concepts in plausible ways, rendering text, and applying transformations to existing images.