The artificial intelligence that beat human players in Go can now learn from its own memory. Google’s DeepMind AI, according to its programmers, is now capable of intelligently building on what’s already inside its memory.
Robots are now just as good at transcribing speech as humans.
According to a paper published yesterday, a team of Microsoft engineers in the Artificial Intelligence and Research division reported their system reached a word error rate (WER) of 5.9 percent, a figure that is roughly equal to that of human abilities.
In the early morning hours of October 20th, an 18-wheeler tractor trailer pulled into Colorado Springs, Colorado, bearing 50,000 frosty cans of Budweiser beer. Normally, this would not be a noteworthy occurrence, but this truck was driving itself, marking the first time that commercial cargo was shipped by a self-driving vehicle.
Stretched, trijet 50-seat configuration to be tested by subscale supersonic demonstrator
Guy Norris Los Angeles
Boom Time
More than half a century after development of the Concorde was launched, progress toward economically viable supersonic airliners has proved elusive. But now a Silicon Valley-backed startup says the ingredients for a successful, small, faster-than-sound airliner are in place, thanks to a new wave of enabling technology and a market primed with the need for speed.
Since first unveiling plans earlier this year for a 40-seat, twin-engine, supersonic transport, Denver-based Boom Technology has revised and fine-tuned the design that will cruise at Mach 2.2 for the same ticket price as subsonic business class. The aircraft has since been stretched to seat up to 50 and is now reconfigured as a trijet to permit immediate use on long overwater routes.
A team of researchers from Belgium think that they are close to extending the anticipated end of Moore’s Law, and they didn’t do it with a supercomputer. Using an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm called reservoir computing, combined with another algorithm called backpropagation, the team developed a neuro-inspired analog computer that can train itself and improve at whatever task it’s performing.
NO, REALLY. AMPUTEES HAVE BEEN TESTING THEM FOR OVER A YEAR
For a full decade, Gudmundur Olafsson was unable to move his right ankle. That’s because it wasn’t there. Olafsson’s amputated lower leg was the delayed casualty of an accident from his childhood in Iceland, when he was hit by an oil truck. “I lived in pain for 28 years,” says Olafsson. “After 50-plus operations, I had it off.” For years after the operation he wore a Proprio Foot, a prosthetic with a motorized, battery-powered ankle, sold by the Reykjavik-based company Ossur.
A London-based startup has combined some of today’s most disruptive technologies in a bid to change the way we’ll build the future. By retrofitting industrial robots with 3D printing guns and artificial intelligence algorithms, Ai Build has constructed machines that can see, create, and even learn from their mistakes.
Scientists have figured out how to make nerve fibres repair themselves in mice, having identified a gene that inhibits fibre regrowth when nerve connections become damaged.
This gene, called Cacna2d2, acts as ‘molecular brake’, but now that we know how to turn the brake off, it could help us to develop treatments for conditions like paralysis and other spinal cord injuries.
A 28-year-old man left paralyzed after a car accident has been able to feel as though he was touching something with his fingers after a robotic arm was connected directly to his brain in a world-first breakthrough.
Nathan Copeland, who was injured after crashing his car on a rainy night in Pennsylvania when he was just 18, spoke of experiencing a “really weird sensation” as he touches things.