Remember Aibo, Sony's robot dog? After years in the workshop, the Japanese company has just unveiled an all-new design, one that's much cuter and far smarter than its predecessor. Oh, and it "loves anything pink."
Agtech has largely seemed underserved by emerging startups, though farmers have largely proven more receptive to adopting new tech than most might assume. Ceres Imaging has a fairly straightforward pitch. Pay for a low-flying plane to snap shots of your farm with spectral cameras and proprietary sensors, and soon after get delivered insights that can help farmers determine water and… Read More
Protect your valuables by hiding them in plain sight inside of this concealed compartment shelf. It features an ample 23.5 x 3 x 7.5 inch compartment that easily locks and unlocks using the included RFID key and token – no combinations necessary.
In a bizarre publicity stunt, a lifelike android from Hanson Robotics named Sophia was just granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia, despite her past claims that she wants to exterminate the human race.
Jibo, "the world's first family robot" is a sensor-studded household bot designed to help you out with everyday tasks and help keep your life organized. It's also a bit on the creepy side.
Robots are already a common sight in warehouses (Amazon alone use more than 45,000) but now they’re moving into stores too. Walmart has announced it’s deploying shelf-scanning bots in 50 locations around the US, using the machines to check things like inventory, prices, and misplaced items. The retailing giant says the robots’ introduction won’t lead to job losses, and that the company wants to save employees from carrying out tasks that are “repeatable, predictable, and manual.”
The robots themselves are produced by California-based Bossa Nova Robotics, and are about two-feet tall with an extendable tower containing lights and sensors for scanning shelves. They sit in recharging stations in the store until a human employee gives them a...
Microsoft is finally admitting Kinect is truly dead. After years of debate over whether Kinect is truly dead or not, the software giant has now stopped manufacturing the accessory. Fast Co Design reports that the depth camera and microphone accessory has sold around 35 million units since its debut in November, 2010. Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360 even became the fastest-selling consumer device back in 2011, winning recognition from Guinness World Records at the time.
In the years since its debut on Xbox 360, a community built up around Microsoft’s Kinect. It was popular among hackers looking to create experiences that tracked body movement and sensed depth. Microsoft even tried to bring Kinect even more mainstream with the Xbox One,...
Depuis la dernière conférence Ignite, il ne fait plus aucun doute que Teams (concurrent maison de Slack) sera la seule et unique solution de messagerie à terme pour les entreprises. Il lui manque cependant de nombreuses fonctionn...
Earlier this year, Google announced it would allow add-ons for Gmail, and the time has finally come. Launching today, add-ons will allow third-party developers to integrate their services with Gmail directly. The first partners include Asana, Trello, DialPad, Intuit QuickBooks, and Wrike.
The addition will help enterprise users save a bit of time by not requiring them switch apps constantly. A DocuSign add-on is coming soon, which should be pretty helpful. Right now, Google has only added business-facing add-ons, and it’s unclear when more consumer-facing companies will be able to take advantage of the new Gmail capabilities.
Gmail add-ons are currently supported on the web and on Android, but Google hasn’t said when iOS...
The lights dim and the music swells as an elite competitor in a silk robe passes through a cheering crowd to take the ring. It’s a blueprint familiar to boxing, only this pugilist won’t be throwing punches.
Each match of the International consists of two 5-player teams competing against each other for 35-45 minutes. In layman’s terms, it is an online version of capture the flag. While the premise may sound simple, it is actually one of the most complicated and detailed competitive games out there. The top teams are required to practice together daily, but this level of play is nothing new to them. To reach a professional level, individual players would practice obscenely late, go to sleep, and then repeat the process. For years. So how long did the AI bot have to prepare for this competition compared to these seasoned pros? A couple of months.
So, What Were the Results?
Normally, a professional Dota 2 game is played on a stage with 5v5 teams. This was the bot’s first competition, and the AI only had a couple of months to learn how to play Dota 2 completely from the ground up. It seemed more fair to start off simple with 1v1 matches. Those first matches were against [Dendi], one of the top players in the world, who lost to the bot shown below in the first match within about ten minutes, resigned in the second match, and then declined to play the third.
The OpenAI team didn’t use imitation learning to train the bot. Instead, it was put up against an exact copy of itself starting with the very first match it played. This continued, nonstop, for months. The bot was constantly improving against itself, and in turn it would have to try that much harder to win. This vigorous training clearly paid off.
While the 1v1 results are stellar, the bot has not had enough time to learn how to work in a cohesive manner with 4 other copies of itself to make a true Dota 2 team. After the roaring success of the International, the next step for OpenAI is to form an ultimate 5 bot team. We think it will be possible to beat the top players next year and we’re eager to see how long that takes.
What Does OpenAI Like to do When it is Not Busy Crushing Video Game Competition?
OpenAI has worked on a number of projects before the Dota 2 effort. They explored the effect of parameter noise to learning algorithms which has proven to be advantageous across the board. During exploratory behavior used in reinforcement learning, parameter noise is used to increase the efficiency of the rate at which agents learn.
The left diagram represents action space noise, traditionally used to change the likelihood of each action step by step. The right diagram represents the newly implemented parameter space noise:
“Parameter space noise injects randomness directly into the parameters of the agent, altering the types of decisions it makes such that they always fully depend on what the agent currently senses.”
By adding this noise right into the parameters, it has shown that it teaches agents tasks far faster than before. It’s part of a wider effort focusing on new ways to optimize learning algorithms to make the training process not only faster, but also more effective.
They are not done with Dota 2 either. When they come back with their five bot team next year, it will undoubtedly require a level of teamwork never before seen in artificial intelligence. Think of the possibilities. Will this take the shape of a collective hive mind? Will team dynamics among AI look anything like those of their human counterparts? This really is the stuff of science fiction being developed and tested right before our eyes.
Now, Why Might a Billion Dollar AI Startup Be Meddling in a Video Game Competition?
OpenAI is an open source company dedicated to creating safe artificial intelligence and working from a $1 Billion endowment established in 2015. On their website, they state that the Dota 2 experiment was, “a step towards building AI systems which accomplish well-defined goals in messy, complicated situations involving real humans.” The International was proof of concept that they could in fact implement AI that handled random situations successfully — even better than humans. It leaves us wondering if the next field AI dominates in won’t be something quite as trivial as a video game competition. It is notable that OpenAI’s chairman, Elon Musk, gave a warning statement directly after the victory:
“If you’re not concerned about AI safety, you should be. Vastly more risk than North Korea.”
This is not the first time that Musk has conveyed hesitations towards the upcoming dangers of our superior Dota 2 players. In fact, he has a history as a leading doomsayer:
“With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon. You know all those stories where there’s the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he’s like, yeah, he’s sure he can control the demon? Doesn’t work out.”
It is clear why someone so worried about the future of AI has devoted his time and resources to a company dedicated to ensuring its safety for humanity with this advancing technology. But it almost seems paradoxical. Teaching an AI to compete better than humans appears to be marching that dreaded outcome one step closer. But at the same time, you can’t temper the advancement of technology by refusing to take part in it. The company’s approach is to make sure everyone can study and use the advancements they are making (the “Open” in OpenAI) and thereby prevent an imbalance of power presented if the best AIs of the future were to be privately controlled by a small number of companies, individuals, and state actors.
Earlier this year, Hackaday’s own Cameron Coward wrote up an in-depth article about the potential future of artificial intelligence. He delves into one of the hotly debated topics with this subject: the ethics of strong AI. Will they be malevolent? What rights should they have? These questions will be answered in the upcoming years — whether we want them to be or not. It is our job to make sure that the answers to these questions in the near future are not answered for us. OpenAI is debugging AI before it debugs us.
Depuis quelques temps, une nouvelle tendance émerge sur le web : les GIFs animés à effet 3D. Une illusion qui ne joue qu’avec 2 petites barres verticales pour un effet surprenant !
Depuis quelques années, les GIFs connaissent un regain de popularité sur le web. Ils sont utilisés à toutes les sauces et certains sont devenus de véritables icônes de la culture populaire. On remarque aussi quelques petites innovations dans ce format, notamment celle de créer des GIFs qui simulent un effet 3D. Comment ? Simplement en ajoutant 2 barres verticales, placées à des endroits stratégiques, qui vont donner un effet de profondeur assez impressionnant.
Les personnages, qui apparaissent au départ derrière ces barres blanches franchissent la frontière et créent ainsi ce fameux effet 3D que nous aimons tant. Ces bandes de séparation servent en réalité de marqueurs visuels pour l’arrière plan et le premier plan.
Une fois qu’un élément de l’image passe devant elles (animal, projectile, membre…), votre cerveau identifie automatiquement la scène comme si elle était en trois dimensions. On vous laisse visualiser ci-dessous une série de GIFs qui utilisent avec brio cette technique très astucieuse !
This is "the original" $10 grenade shaped silicone ice mold. It produces 4.5-inch x 3-inch x 2.5-inch Mk 2 'pineapple' style ice grenades. Cool! [ Amazon link ]..(Read...)
Aibo ERS-7.
L'équipe Aibo se reforme. C'est en tout cas ce qu'annonce le Nikkei, qui semble toutefois être très sûr de son fait. D'après les sources du quotidien japonais, Sony a récemment fait une croix sur ses ambitions dans le domaine de la robotique industrielle, mais a reporté son attention sur le marché grand public. La direction pense qu'avec...
Next time you need an emergency order of LaCroix, you can just ask a Google Home to order a case from Target. Google announced today that Target will begin supporting its Google Express shopping service in the contiguous US. That also means Target will be supported through the Google Assistant’s voice ordering feature, which is so far only live on the Google Home and Android TV but is coming “soon” to iOS and Android as well.
Target has only been available through Google Express in New York City and California before now, so today’s announcement marks a major expansion and helps to fill out Google’s service in a big way. It also follows behind Walmart, which is available nationwide through Google Express and added voice ordering support...
Who doesn’t love magnets? They’re functional, mysterious, and at the heart of nearly every electric motor. They can make objects appear to defy gravity or move on their own. If you’re like us, when you first started grappling with the refrigerator magnets, you tried to make one hover motionlessly over another. We tried to position one magnet over another by pitting their repellent forces against each other but [K&J Magnetics] explains why this will never work and how levitation can be done with electromagnets. (YouTube, embedded below.)
In the video, there is a quick demonstration of their levitation rig and a brief explanation with some handy oscilloscope readings to show what’s happening on the control side. The most valuable part, is the explanation in the article where it walks us through the process, starting with the reason permanent magnets can’t be used which leads into why electromagnets can be successful.
[K&J Magnetics]’s posts about magnets are informative and well-written. They have a rich mix of high-level subjects without diluting them by glossing over the important parts. Of course, as a retailer, they want to sell their magnets but the knowledge they share can be used anywhere, possibly even the magnets you have in your home.
Simpler levitators can be built with a single electromagnet to get you on the fast-track to building your own levitation rig. Remember in the first paragraph when we said ‘nearly’ every electric motor used magnets, piezoelectric motors spin without magnets.
Quantum computing: it’s the brass ring in the computing world, giving the ability to exponentially outperform and out-calculate conventional computers. A quantum computer with a mere 50 qubits would outclass the most powerful supercomputers in the world today. Surpassing the limits set by conventional computing, known as achieving quantum supremacy, has been a difficult road. Now, a team of physicists at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Google have demonstrated a proof-of-principle for a quantum computer that may mean quantum supremacy is only months away.
Quantum states are difficult to isolate and sustain, so the practical task of isolating quantum processing machinery from outside interference has proved to be the sticking point in pushing quantum supremacy out of reach. However, to demonstrate quantum supremacy, a computer system doesn’t need to be an all-purpose quantum dynamo; it just needs to show one quantum capability that is beyond the capacity of conventional systems.
Image Credit: Google
To do that, the Google and UCSB team’s strategy comes down to qubits. Qubits are different from ordinary bits (the smallest unit of data in a computer) because they can exist in superposition. Each ordinary bit can be either a 1 or a 0 at any given time, but a qubit can be both at once. Two ordinary bits have 2² potential positions, but again, only one at a time. Two qubits have that same potential all at once. Adding qubits expands potential exponentially, so 50 qubits represent 10,000,000,000,000,000 numbers — an amount a traditional computer would need a memory on the petabyte-scale to store.
Quantum Supremacy In Action
The team’s plan, then, isn’t to create a fully functional quantum computer, but to instead create a system that can support 49 qubits in superposition reliably. If it can do that, so the theory goes, the rest is relatively easy.
Their system is a series of nine superconducting qubits, consisting of nine metal loops cooled to a low temperature with current flowing through them in both directions simultaneously. They were able to show that the supported qubits represented 512 numbers at once, and that the results were reliable, without an accompanying exponential increase in errors.
This is much lower than the number of qubits needed to declare supremacy, but it’s a promising result. The next step will be to create a 50-qubit chip and test if its errors increase at the manageable pace seen in the nine-qubit experiment. Click to View Full Infographic
If the team is right, they may achieve quantum supremacy in a matter of months. If they do, the applications will be staggering. We can expect to see machine learning take place exponentially faster, and artificial intelligence progress much more rapidly. If it does, we may see the singularity approaching long before most predicted.
Quantum computers will make personalized medicine a reality, parsing out the function of every protein in the human genome and modeling their interactions with all possible complex molecules very quickly. We will see simulation-based climate change solutions come to light, and find new chemistry-driven solutions to carbon capture. We are likely to see huge leaps in material science and engineering that allow us to create better magnets, better superconductors, and much higher energy density batteries. And we are almost certainly going to see more technological advances through biomimetics as we find ourselves achieving more insights into natural processes, such as photosynthesis.
In other words, the idea that quantum supremacy will change everything isn’t just hype.
Putting further emphasis on its use of artificial intelligence, Google has launched Google Clips, a new lifelogging camera that uses A.I. to capture and collect life as it happens.
Last year, Google showed off WaveNet, a new way of generating speech that didn’t rely on a bulky library of word bits or cheap shortcuts that result in stilted speech. WaveNet used machine learning to build a voice sample by sample, and the results were, as I put it then, “eerily convincing.” Previously bound to the lab, the tech has now been deployed in the latest version… Read More
Retailers and other commercial operations have long used ambient scenting to influence the customer experience, but global leader Prolitec is adding a new level of control by combining the smell technology with an IoT distribution and regulation system.
[Idée partenaire] OnTune est un objet connecté surprenant qui prend la forme d’un médaillon qui améliore votre voix pour vous aider à chanter juste.
Chanter faux n’est plus une fatalité. Si vous n’avez absolument aucun talent pour le chant, il existe désormais un accessoire révolutionnaire qui va vous aider à y remédier. Deux Français ont imaginé OnTune, un médaillon connecté qui améliore votre voix pour vous aider à chanter plus juste. Et aussi surprenant que cela puisse paraître, ce produit existe bel et bien.
OnTune a été créé en collaboration avec des professionnels de santé, principalement des ORL. Au niveau de l’apparence, le médaillon ressemble à un petit galet qui vient se positionner au niveau du larynx et des cordes vocales. Et c’est là toute la subtilité du produit : OnTune envoie des ondes aux muscles et nerfs de votre larynx pour moduler la hauteur de votre voix. C’est donc en jouant directement sur ces ondes au niveau de votre larynx que le médaillon va être capable de vous permettre de chanter juste.
OnTune possède une autonomie de 6 heures, et le médaillon fonctionne avec une application mobile qui vous permet d’ajuster divers paramètres. Elle vous permet également d’enregistrer, puis de partager vos vocalisations. En bref, OnTune est le produit parfait pour vous assister dans la pratique du chant. Si vous chantez extrêmement mal, OnTune ne fera sans aucun doute pas de miracle, mais le cas échant il vous aidera à chanter juste.
Commercialisé à partir de 129 euros, ce médaillon révolutionnaire devrait être disponible dès l’automne. Pour en savoir plus, rendez-vous sur le site officiel du constructeur ou sur sa page Facebook.
Le câble Marea relie Bilbao en Espagne à Virginia Beach aux USA.
Avec l'aide de l'entreprise Telxius, spécialisée dans les infrastructures télécoms, Facebook et Microsoft viennent d'annoncer le succès du déploiement du câble sous-marin le plus rapide jamais conçu. D'une longueur de 6 600 km, il traverse l'océan Atlantique et peut faire transiter des...
Dungeons & Dragons is growing in popularity in the digital age, and this veteran gamer created his own custom table with a 4K display and touchscreen capability.
What does it take to make a face? Try $4,500. At Landon Meierâs studio, you can try on a new face for a day. Meier specializes in creating hyper-realistic (and hyper-expensive) masks that could easily pass for the real thing. Take a test run at being Walter White, or try on Mike Tyson for sizeâMeierâs surreal and nightmarish creations cover a whole range of celebrities and politicians, including the ever-popular viral sensation âCrying Baby.â Making these masks is no easy taskâeach one could take up to a year to complete. But for Meier, watching the astonished reactions to his craft makes it all worth it...(Read...)
Dropbox has announced the launch of the DBX Platform, a suite of APIs and developer tools for building new capabilities on top of Dropbox. The company also announced the release of two new APIs; Metadata API and File Requests API. These new APIs are built on Dropbox API V2, the revamped API released in 2015 that replaces Dropbox API V1. Version 1 of the Dropbox API will be shut down on September 28, 2017.
2017 is the year of voice — starting at 8mm, ending with 950mm voice devices
We started 2017 with an estimated 8mm voice devices, mostly Amazon Echos with some Google Homes. An industry report from VoiceLabs estimates a total voice-first device footprint of 33 million devices in circulation by the end of 2017.
However, VoiceLabs missed something big. In May 2017, Google announced that its Actions on Google platform was activated for all Android devices natively, meaning that voice search via Google Assistant and Action was fully enabled. Why is this important? Because Google Assistant and Actions are what power Google Home — it basically makes any Android phone the equivalent of a Google Home (and any iPhone that has the Google Assistant app downloaded on it). Assistant the the smart helper behind voice search, and Actions allows any developer to build on top of Assistant and have their action, skill, or app featured on Google.
Google has the best platform for voice search and one of the two best, along with Facebook, for chatbots
Google will end 2017 with between 850–950mm users that have voice search and a fully voice-first device in their pocket and home.
This is a big deal because the quality of the voice-first devices depends on how good the intent matching is, which depends on the total number of users. It’s the economics of big data — the quality of the service depends on the size of the chat data set. So as customers gravitate to the better devices, Google will continue to outpace Amazon Alexa. Most serious tests so far have shown that Google Assistant (available on Home, all Android devices, and iOS) is far superior to Alexa at answering questions and figuring out what users want. See this test with 54 questions and this study with thousands of questions, where they found that Google Assistant is 6 times more likely to answer your question than Amazon Alexa. Finally Google and Higher Visibility have reported that most people use voice search to call people, ask for directions, play songs, and search for information.
Why is Google quiet about voice search if it’s winning?
Because they’re still figuring out how to build their ad business model around voice. Google reported that mobile searches are less profitable with less revenue per click, and the company is still really early in figuring out how to do voice search ads. Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai has also been quiet when Wall Street analysts ask him how they will monetize voice search. Google just doesn’t know — they are running all sorts of internal experiments right now on voice ads. Their engineers are quiet because they have to figure out how to disrupt their own cash cow business of desktop and mobile search.
What does the rise of voice search mean?
Speech will take over typing and texting because it is 3x as fast with 20% fewer errors
Researchers at the Stanford Human Computer Interaction Lab found that with speech recognition, the English input rate was 3.0x faster, and the Mandarin Chinese input rate 2.8x faster, than a state-of-the-art miniature smartphone keyboard. Further, with speech, the English error rate was 20.4% lower, and Mandarin error rate 63.4% lower, than the keyboard.
Websites on the open web are over — no one spends time in browsers
Mobile users spend 33% of time on messaging apps, 8% on the browser — the open web is dying
Chatbots are the new delivery form that will win with voice search
Voice search is about interactivity: questions, answers, guided flows, and conversations. Websites are mostly static, like brochures from the print days. If you look closely at the Google Actions and API.AI platforms, they are essentially chatbot platforms. Facebook Messenger is a massive chatbot platform, as are Kik and Telegram. Still not convinced? Read what the chatbot entrepreneur of Octane AI, Matt Schlict writes: “How Bots Will Completely Kill Websites and Mobile Apps.”
Adtech is going through a big disruption: SEO and SEM business models are getting blown apart
If you thought the move from desktop first to mobile first was a big deal, get ready for the move from mobile websites to “ambient voice-first”, where your phone and other talking devices surround users and are ready to serve them. A static website isn’t enough — you need an interactive AI agent to really engage with users. Here is a list of reasons why voice search will totally change SEO.
Agtech has largely seemed underserved by emerging startups, though farmers have largely proven more receptive to adopting new tech than most might assume. Ceres Imaging has a fairly straightforward pitch. Pay for a low-flying plane to snap shots of your farm with spectral cameras and proprietary sensors, and soon after get delivered insights that can help farmers determine water and… Read More
Last year, Google showed off WaveNet, a new way of generating speech that didn’t rely on a bulky library of word bits or cheap shortcuts that result in stilted speech. WaveNet used machine learning to build a voice sample by sample, and the results were, as I put it then, “eerily convincing.” Previously bound to the lab, the tech has now been deployed in the latest version… Read More
