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artificial intelligence

SCIENCE: AI Is Creepy-Good at predicting Early Death

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ai - pixabay

Medical researchers have unlocked an unsettling ability in artificial intelligence (AI): predicting a person’s early death. Scientists recently trained an AI system to evaluate a decade of general health data submitted by more than half a million people in the United Kingdom. Then, they tasked the AI with predicting if individuals were at risk of dying prematurely — in other words, sooner than the average life expectancy — from chronic disease, they reported in a new study. The predictions of early death that were made by AI algorithms were “significantly more accurate” than predictions delivered by a model that did … Read more

SCIENCE: AI Sucks at Making Adorable Cat Photos

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Artificial intelligence (AI) recently tried to generate cat photos from scratch, and the results were cat-astrophic. This particular neural network (a type of AI modeled after the workings of the human brain) can produce astonishingly realistic original photos of human faces. In fact, the images of these made-up people were nearly impossible for human viewers to distinguish from photos of real people, programmers of the AI reported in a study that was posted December 2018 to the preprint journal arXiv. Felines, however, proved to be another story. The same algorithm that generated flawless human faces created cats with misshapen heads; … Read more

AI Can Now Read Your Mind (Sort Of)

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astronaut brains - pixabay

Neuroscientists are teaching computers to read words straight out of people’s brains. Kelly Servick, writing for Science, reported this week on three papers posted to the preprint server bioRxiv in which three different teams of researchers demonstrated that they could decode speech from recordings of neurons firing. In each study, electrodes placed directly on the brain recorded neural activity while brain-surgery patients listened to speech or read words out loud. Then, researchers tried to figure out what the patients were hearing or saying. In each case, researchers were able to convert the brain’s electrical activity into at least somewhat-intelligible sound … Read more

SCIENCE: Meet the AI Artists

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Botanical Dinosaurs - Chris Rodley - Live Science

One of the behaviors considered to be uniquely human is our creativity. While many animal species create visually stunning displays or constructions — think of a spider’s delicate web or the colorful, intricate structures built by bowerbirds — they are typically created with a practical purpose in mind, such as snagging prey or seducing a mate. Humans, however, make art for its own sake, as a form of personal expression. And as computer engineers attempt to imbue artificial intelligence (AI) with humanlike capabilities and behaviors, a question arises: Can AI create art? The AMC series “Humans,” which returns June 5 … Read more

FOR WRITERS: AI and Romance

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robot - pixabay

FOR WRITERS Today’s writer topic comes from QSFer Tam Ames: Virtual intelligence? AI? Have we discussed this? But could you have a romance between a human and software? Using virtual technology to have sex or communicate, but no physical body? Would we want to in the future? Could a good author really make readers believe it’s “real” romance? Join the chat

TECH: Is a South Korean Company Making Killer Robots?

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killer robot - pixabay

The artificial intelligence (AI) community has a clear message for researchers in South Korea: Don’t make killer robots. Nearly 60 AI and robotics experts from almost 30 countries have signed an open letter calling for a boycott against KAIST, a public university in Daejeon, South Korea, that has been reported to be “develop[ing] artificial intelligence technologies to be applied to military weapons, joining the global competition to develop autonomous arms,” the open letter said. In other words, KAIST might be researching how to make military-grade AI weapons. By Laura Geggel – Full Story at Live Science

SPACE: International Space Station to Get a Floating Brain

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Floating Brain

The crew on board the International Space Station (ISS) will soon welcome a new member — one that is 3D-printed from metal and plastic and is described by its creators as “a kind of flying brain.” It goes by the name CIMON, short for “Crew Interactive Mobile Companion.” Built by the aerospace design company Airbus in collaboration with IBM, CIMON houses artificial intelligence (AI) in an autonomous, spherical body that would “float” in the space station’s microgravity environment, with a screen that can display data readouts for astronauts — or present an image of a friendly face — as well … Read more

Robot Learns the Meaning of Love

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Alex and Bina48

It’s been a typical week for typical college student BINA48. On Monday, BINA attended her robot ethics class. On Tuesday, the second-semester student had an excused absence to ring the bell at the stock exchange, and soon BINA will be assistant-teaching a kindergarten class and getting a face-lift at Hanson Robotics. So maybe BINA’s schedule isn’t that typical, and maybe the artificial-intelligence-driven robot isn’t the average college kid. But that hasn’t stopped the robot, which looks like the bust of a flesh-and-blood woman, from completing a Philosophy of Love course at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. Programmed … Read more

Elon Musk: Regulate AI Before it’s Too Late

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artificial intelligence - pixabay

Tesla and Space X chief executive Elon Musk has pushed again for the proactive regulation of artificial intelligence because “by the time we are reactive in AI regulation, it’s too late”. Speaking at the US National Governors Association summer meeting in Providence Rhode Island, Musk said: “Normally the way regulations are set up is when a bunch of bad things happen, there’s a public outcry, and after many years a regulatory agency is set up to regulate that industry.” “It takes forever. That, in the past, has been bad but not something which represented a fundamental risk to the existence … Read more