Robotics is finally reaching the mainstream and androids - humanlike robots - are everywhere at SXSW Experts believe humanlike robots are the key to smoothing communication between humans and computers, and realizing a dream of compassionate robots that help invent the future of life.
Elon Musk's Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the AI Apocalypse Elon Musk is famous for his futuristic gambles, but Silicon Valley's latest rush to embrace artificial intelligence scares him. And he thinks you should be frightened too. Inside his efforts to influence the rapidly advancing field and its proponents, and to save humanity from machine-learning overlords. March 26, 2017 http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x [with embedded videos]
The Age of Stupid - full documentary (Official) - further in particular to http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=126997323 Hello. This is the official, full-length (89 min) version of our 2009 movie, The Age of Stupid. This film was made completely independently (we arguably invented crowd-funding to fund it) over five long years. We're a tiny independent film company always struggling to make ends meet, so if you watch for free here, please make a donation - http://spannerfilms.net/donate - and also sign up to our email list: http://www.spannerfilms.net/mailing_list . Thanks v much and enjoy the film, Franny & Lizzie from Spanner Films - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Age of Stupid stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, The Usual Suspects, Brassed Off) as a man living in the devastated future world of 2055, looking back at old footage from our time and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance? Launched at a Guinness World Recording-winning solar-powered premiere in London's Leicester Square, the film was released in cinemas worldwide, topped the UK box office (by screen average), became one of the most talked-about films of 2009 and garnered sensational reviews: The Telegraph called it "Bold, supremely provocative and hugely important", the News of the World described it as "A deeply inconvenient kick up the backside", ABC Australia said "So tightly constructed and dynamic you leave the cinema energised rather than terrified... hits home like a hammer blow" and the LA Times said "Think 'An Inconvenient Truth', but with a personality". Multi-award-winning documentary director Franny Armstrong (McLibel, Drowned Out) and Oscar-winning producer John Battsek (One Day In September, Restrepo) pioneered the now ubiquitous "crowd-funding" model to finance the film, and then spent four years following seven real people's stories to be interweaved with Pete Postlethwaite's fictional character: an Indian entrepreneur struggling to start a new low-cost airline, a Shell employee in New Orleans who rescued more than 100 people during Hurricane Katrina, an 82-year-old French mountain guide watching his beloved glaciers melt, two Iraqi refugee children searching for their elder brother, a young woman living in desperate poverty in Nigeria's richest oil area and a windfarm developer in Britain battling the NIMBYs who don't want his turbines to spoil their view. The Age of Stupid led to the formation of the 10:10 carbon reduction campaign which now operates in 45 countris (www.1010global.org). Recognising the film's unique contribution to independent filmmaking, the Huffington Post said that it "represents the future of film, film culture and film distribution and marketing". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va_MVxpboqg [since gone dark - find another if possible] [though it clearly is dated]
A sobering look at what Betsy DeVos did to education in Michigan — and what she might do as secretary of education The people who best know the education advocacy work of Betsy DeVos, the billionaire tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be his education secretary, are in Michigan, where she has been involved in reform for decades. DeVos is a former Republican Party chairwoman in Michigan and chair of the pro-school-choice advocacy group American Federation for Children, and she has been a shining light to members of the movement to privatize public education by working to create programs and pass laws that require the use of public funds to pay for private school tuition in the form of vouchers and similar programs. She has also been a force behind the spread of charter schools in Michigan, most of which have recorded student test scores in reading and math below the state average. Many pro-school-choice groups have praised the choice, saying DeVos will work hard to grow new programs that give parents more school choice. But public education advocates say that they fear she will help propel America’s public education system toward destruction. The Detroit Free Press has written a number of articles about DeVos’s education record in Michigan. Here is an important piece [ http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/stephen-henderson/2016/12/03/betsy-devos-education-donald-trump/94728574/ ] looking at what a DeVos Education Department could be expected to do, written by someone who has watched her work for some time. He is Stephen Henderson, editorial page editor of the Free Press, where this first appeared. He gave me permission to republish it. [...] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/12/08/a-sobering-look-at-what-betsy-devos-did-to-education-in-michigan-and-what-she-might-do-as-secretary-of-education/
Teacher to Trump’s education pick: Let’s ‘address the elephant in the room.’ It’s you. The selection of Betsy DeVos by President-elect Donald Trump as his education secretary nominee has been attacked by public school advocates who see her longtime support for school “choice” and private Catholic education as evidence that she does not support America’s public education system. In this post, that sentiment is explained by an educator who has written an open letter to DeVos. He is Patrick Kearney, facilitator for Teacher Leadership in the Johnston Community School District in Iowa. He spent 25 years as a band director in private and public schools of Iowa, and is a past-president of the Iowa Bandmasters Association and past co-chair of the Iowa Jazz Championships. He was also a founding board member of the Jazz Educators of Iowa. His wife teaches in the Des Moines Public Schools and his son is studying education at Drake University. Here’s the letter, which first appeared on Huffington Post [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/an-introduction-from-public-school-teachers-to-betsy_us_5845e2fbe4b0707e4c8171a3 ]. Kearney gave me permission to republish it. [...] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/12/10/teacher-to-trumps-education-pick-lets-address-the-elephant-in-the-room-its-you/
Welcome to the era of cognitive business Start your cognitive business journey by learning more about cognitive solutions like Watson and the IBM Cloud platform that supports cognitive workloads. http://www.ibm.com/cognitive/
The material that could let robots REPAIR themselves: Wolverine-style substance heals within 24 hours The material is transparent, stretchable, and can conduct electricity The material can stretch 50 times its original length without being damaged As well as its use in robots, researchers believe it could be used to extend the lifetime of batteries in electric cars, and improve biosensors in the medical field http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4070900/The-material-let-robots-REPAIR-Wolverine-style-substance-heals-24-hours.html
Scientists built an AI that is smarter than most adults Computers can already hold a massive amount of instantly-retrievable data in a manner that puts most humans to shame, but getting them to actually display intelligence is an entirely different challenge. A team of researchers from Northwestern University just made a huge stride towards that goal with a computational model that actually outperforms the average American adult in a standard intelligence test. [...] http://bgr.com/2017/01/19/ai-smarter-than-humans-northwestern/ referencing (among other): Making AI systems that see the world as humans do https://phys.org/news/2017-01-ai-world-humans.html study http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/rev0000039
Mnuchin: Losing human jobs to AI "not even on our radar screen" Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin joined Axios' Mike Allen this morning at the debut of his News Shapers event series to talk about his new role in the Trump Administration. On AI supplanting human jobs: "it's not even on our radar screen.... 50-100 more years" away. "I'm not worried at all" about robots displacing humans in the near future, he said, adding: "In fact I'm optimistic." Other big ticket items: [...] https://www.axios.com/treasury-secretary-mnuchin-interviews-with-axios-live-updates-2327865447.html
Evolution Strategies as a Scalable Alternative to Reinforcement Learning We’ve discovered that evolution strategies (ES), an optimization technique that’s been known for decades, rivals the performance of standard reinforcement learning (RL) techniques on modern RL benchmarks (e.g. Atari/MuJoCo), while overcoming many of RL’s inconveniences. https://blog.openai.com/evolution-strategies/
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