Tag: AI

When demonstrating innovative concepts in robotics, engineers are inevitably subjected to a good-natured Skynet-ribbing about contributing to the wholesale extinction of the human race. It really doesn't help the scientists' cause, though, when language like "precise aggressive maneuvers" is used to describe an autonomous and intimidating flying object -- particularly one with deadly, twirling ...

Rock, Paper, Scissors doesn't immediately seem like a game you'd want to play alone. The only apparent purpose of the ancient one-on-one contest is to determine a winner in a seemingly irresolvable dispute. So, a solo mode doesn't sound like very much fun, or even slightly entertaining, really. That lack of solitary playability hasn't stopped a slew of nerds from creating extremely geeky ways ...

No one has ever confused Woody Paige with Arthur Rimbaud. And there's a good reason: daily sportswriting is, by definition, Mojave-dry. Beat writers covering a Major League Baseball team, for instance, have to find a way to churn out stimulating articles daily, over the course of a Homeric 162-game regular season. Understandably, then, the writing tends toward the cliché-ridden and the ...

The advent of automated assembly lines, besides allowing for mass production of various wares, saved humans from long, arduous hours, physical exhaustion, lost digits, and other various labor-related injuries. But creating robots to perform difficult human jobs just wasn't enough. People have apparently grown so incredibly lazy that they can't even play games for themselves, anymore. According ...

The winner of the ongoing Mario A.I. Competition must create, using a learning algorithm, a controller (or agent) that can complete the most difficult levels of the game 'Infinite Mario' without any human aid. According to Joystiq, a video of one recent entry looks like it may be tough to top. Creator Robin Baumgarten, a PhD student at Imperial College, London, writes on his site that he ...

In another step towards self-awareness, researchers at University of California, San Diego have developed a robot that teaches itself facial expressions. The realistic Einstein bot formerly required individually programmed facial movements, but through a trial-and-error technique UCSD has dubbed 'body babble,' the AI experiments with its mug until it achieves a real expression. Linked to facial ...

The groundwork for robotic morality was laid by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, who created the 'Three Laws of Robotics.' Taking these ideas to war, Georgia Institute of Technology professor Ron Arkin has tried to establish ethical mores for bots on the battlefield. Arkin, who used an advanced simulation system called MissionLab to create scenarios based on real-life, tested artificial ...

What happens when you take one large group of nerds, throw them in a convention, and tell them to cut loose? Well, we'll give you a hint: it doesn't involve boatloads of booze, loud music, or a conga line. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers challenged the attendants of its convention to create a big, bad bot to ultimately win a one-on-one tournament in DEFCON -- a strategy ...

Once again, a team of well-meaning scientists is giving an intelligent, autonomous robotic vessel everything it needs to take over the world. Sigh... According to CNN, eight third-year engineering students from the university ETH Zurich in Switzerland have created a four-meter-long, carbon-fiber yacht potentially capable of piloting itself across the Atlantic Ocean. Avalon, as its creators like ...

Currently all battlefield robots have humans at the controls -- be they 100 yards away, or across the globe. But military machines are becoming more advanced and soon could be making decisions on when to fire and where to bomb, without human input. In anticipation of that day, Professor Ronald Arkin, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, is developing software to govern the behavior ...

Years after building a computer called Deep Blue that gave chess champion Garry Kasparov a run for his money, IBM is now taking aim at another human-only intellectual pursuit -- 'Jeopardy!' IBM is developing a supercomputer, along with an accompanying program called Watson, to compete on the popular game show, and may even face off against the painfully brilliant Ken Jennings, who holds the ...

Victory! We can still claim superiority over the machines! And as long as we continue to be better at picking winners during the NCAA's March Madness, we should be safe from the emergence of Skynet. Computer scientists have been using statistics, databases, and computer models for years to try and predict the outcome of sports tournaments. Of particular interest is the NCAA's basketball ...

Researchers at Aberystwyth University in Wales have developed a robot that is being heralded as the first machine to have discovered new scientific knowledge independently of a human operator. Named Adam, the device has already identified the role of several genes in yeast cells, and has the ability to plan further experiments to test its own hypotheses. Ross King, from the university's computer ...

You know, when armchair futurists (and jive talkin' bloggists) make note of some of the scary new tech making the rounds in defense circles these days it's one thing, but when the Doomsday Scenarios come from official channels, that's when we start to get nervous. According to a report published by the California State Polytechnic University (with data made available by the U.S. Navy's Office ...

Machines are getting smarter, no doubt, potentially able to engage in a conversation and, erm, kill their captors. But, telling just how hot a given person is has remained outside of the computer's grasp thus far. That's about to change thanks to software that can tell how attractive women are. A program written by an Israeli computer scientist as a Masters thesis can take an image of a given ...