Science, Space, & Robotics - Page 427

Astronauts on-board the International Space Station should be frightened and/or excited that they've found a new "shape-shifting" bacteria on-board the floating technology fortress.

The "clever shape-shifting" was detected in bacteria that was being experimented on in the near-weightlessness of space, something that scientists believe the bacteria was doing to survive. In what feels like as a scenario ripped right out of a movie 'Life' with Ryan Reynolds (trailer below), the space bacteria showed a 13x increase in cell numbers, and a 73% reduction in cell column size.

The study's lead author, Dr Luis Zea, explains: "We knew bacteria behave differently in space and that it takes higher concentrations of antibiotics to kill them. What's new is that we conducted a systematic analysis of the changing physical appearance of the bacteria during the experiments".

Elon Musk has warned about the threats of artificial intelligence before, but now the Space X and Tesla founder has come out swinging at AI on Twitter again, prompted by recent remarks from Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Putin recently said: "Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind. It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world". Some stern words from Putin, that's for sure - and I kind of agree with him.

Musk then took to Twitter, where he said: "China, Russia, soon all countries w strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo". @JakeBlueatSM tweeted Musk saying "an automated WWIII at that. That's a worry..." to which Musk replied: "May be initiated not by the country leaders, but one of the AI's, if it decides that a prepemptive strike is most probable path to victory".

Elon Musk has posted the first official photo of the SpaceX spacesuit on Instagram. Musk noted that the photo shows an actual working suit and not just a mockup.

According to Musk, the space suit was already tested to double vacuum pressure. The suit looks elegant, and Musk admitted that it was incredibly hard to balance aesthetics and function. However, you can see that the result is good.

SpaceX suits are meant to be worn by astronauts inside the company's Dragon capsule. The suits aren't meant for spacewalks but during the ride inside the capsule.

Microsoft has teased that it's working on AI technology, with the heart and soul of Redmond's artificial intelligence powered by Intel's new Stratix 10 field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip.

Microsoft calls its AI hardware platform "Project Brainwave", which is capable of a huge 39.5 teraflops of machine learning performance, with less than 1ms of latency. What makes Microsoft's ventures into AI better than their competitors? Well, the new chip handles complex AI tasks as they're received instead of batching the operations together and working on them after.

Thanks to Project Brainwave relying on a "soft" dynamic neural network processing engine using off-the-shelf FPGA-based processors, Microsoft's own AI framework (Cognitive Toolkit) also works with Google's own TensorFlor, and other systems. This means you can build a machine learning system, and run everything in real-time instead of being bottlenecked by hardware.

Elon Musk is known for his views on artificial intelligence. In January 2015, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, and dozens of artificial intelligence experts signed an open letter on artificial intelligence calling for research on the societal impacts of AI. The letter affirmed the potentials of AI but called for a detailed research on how to prevent potential dangers.

Now, Musk decided to raise awareness again by tweeting that AI is a bigger risk than North Korea. If you were following the news lately, you are aware that the tensions with North Korea are rising again.

Read also: Musk says Zuckerberg has limited understanding of AI

SIGGRAPH 2017 - NVIDIA had a lot to show at SIGGRAPH 2017 this year, with Quadro P6000 systems that were editing 8K video in real-time, to multiple different demonstrations of artificial intelligence and deep learning systems.

One of the AI demonstrations was an AI system called Isaac, who was a Pixar-style robot that you played dominoes against. NVIDIA had a sealed off room that you stepped into, with 3 x systems all powered with high-end Quadro P6000 graphics cards. One of the systems was powering a HTC Vive headset, while the other two were GPU grunt for the AI system, Isaac.

In the VR world, you stand in a class room, across the table from Isaac. Isaac is there to play dominoes against, with NVIDIA building their AI system to detect your moves in the game, and then countering them. If you placed a domino down and it had a single dot, Isaac would respond by working out what he's seeing (a domino with a single dot) and then reaching for one of his dominoes, and placing it next to yours - prompting you for your next move.

SpaceX is currently using the Falcon 9 rocket for the company's launches, but the bigger Falcon Heavy should take those launches over soon. Elon Musk first mentioned the Falcon Heavy rocket in a September 2005 news update. The rocket was scheduled to fly in 2014, then 2015, but there have been delays, and now, the company is aiming for the second half of this year.

SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk explained last year that developing the Falcon Heavy proved to be much more difficult than they previously thought, but it seems that the company is on track. Back in May SpaceX conducted the first Falcon Heavy static fire test which was a success.

Elon Musk has now announced that the company plans the first Falcon Heavy launch for November.

During a Facebook Live open interview with users, Mark Zuckerberg commented on artificial intelligence, saying people who warn of "doomsday scenarios" regarding AI are "pretty irresponsible."

Elon Musk doesn't feel the same since in the past, he warned about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence and now, he said that he talked to Zuckerberg about AI and that his "understanding of the subject is limited."

Musk also added that AI is improving at a "double exponential rate," by which he meant that "AI hardware & software are both exponential."

Google is pushing more and more into the world of artificial intelligence, announcing a new venture capital firm, Gradient Ventures, that will provide funds and "technical mentorship" to AI startups.

AI startups will be able to talk directly with technical experts at Google, something that includes the minds of Ray Kurzweil, Matias Duarte, and X lab boss Astro Teller. Gradient Ventures is already home to four teams, with Algorithmia a community creating a marketplace for AI-based algorithms and models.

Aurima is making an alternative sensing approach and AI modeling, while Cape is virtualizing drone hardware that lets people fly drones remotely. Lastly, there's Cogniac that is writing software that helps people build convolutional neural networks.

Toyota has just announced its new Toyota AI Ventures initiative, which is a new venture capital subsidiary that will eye down tech companies that are working on AI. The new fund has already received a $100 million injection of funds from the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), which is an AI/robotics/autonomous car-focused initiative the Japanese carmaker started in 2015.

Toyota AI Ventures will focus its investments directly into AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles, as well as data and cloud technology. It w ill also offer companies that it invests in both mentorship, and support at its HQ in Silicon Valley. TRI VP Jim Adler said in a statement: "One of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs face is knowing if they're building the right product for the right market. We can help them navigate that uncertainty, and we're committed to doing so in a founder-friendly way because their success is our success".

This new venture will be a little different, with TRI not just waiting for pitches from investors, but it will look for, and support companies that are on the path towards solving something Toyota is interested in. TRI has already funded 3 startups, with Silicon Valley-based Nauto, a company that designs systems for companies that monitors their driver and road environments to stop accidents or bad driving.