Almost unnoticed outside defense circles, the Pentagon has put artificial intelligence at the center of its strategy to maintain the United States’ position as the world’s dominant military power. It is spending billions of dollars to develop what it calls autonomous and semiautonomous weapons and to build an arsenal stocked with the kind of weaponry that until now has existed only in Hollywood movies and science fiction, raising alarm among scientists and activists concerned by the implications of a robot arms race.
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The architectural implications of autonomous driving: constraints and acceleration - 0 views
The Pentagon's 'Terminator Conundrum': Robots That Could Kill on Their Own - The New Yo... - 0 views
Anatomy of an AI System - 1 views
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"With each interaction, Alexa is training to hear better, to interpret more precisely, to trigger actions that map to the user's commands more accurately, and to build a more complete model of their preferences, habits and desires. What is required to make this possible? Put simply: each small moment of convenience - be it answering a question, turning on a light, or playing a song - requires a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data. The scale of resources required is many magnitudes greater than the energy and labor it would take a human to operate a household appliance or flick a switch. A full accounting for these costs is almost impossible, but it is increasingly important that we grasp the scale and scope if we are to understand and govern the technical infrastructures that thread through our lives. III The Salar, the world's largest flat surface, is located in southwest Bolivia at an altitude of 3,656 meters above sea level. It is a high plateau, covered by a few meters of salt crust which are exceptionally rich in lithium, containing 50% to 70% of the world's lithium reserves. 4 The Salar, alongside the neighboring Atacama regions in Chile and Argentina, are major sites for lithium extraction. This soft, silvery metal is currently used to power mobile connected devices, as a crucial material used for the production of lithium-Ion batteries. It is known as 'grey gold.' Smartphone batteries, for example, usually have less than eight grams of this material. 5 Each Tesla car needs approximately seven kilograms of lithium for its battery pack. 6 All these batteries have a limited lifespan, and once consumed they are thrown away as waste. Amazon reminds users that they cannot open up and repair their Echo, because this will void the warranty. The Amazon Echo is wall-powered, and also has a mobile battery base. This also has a limited lifespan and then must be thrown away as waste. According to the Ay
The Autonomous Economy - 0 views
The Autonomous Revolution: Reclaiming the Future We've Sold to Machines - 0 views
A robotic revolution for urban nature - 0 views
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Drones, robots and autonomous systems can transform the natural world in and around cities for people and wildlife.
What if the car of the future isn't a car at all? - 0 views
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This week, Cruise, the autonomous driving startup acquired by General Motors, announced its Origin, a self-driving vehicle that purports to be what comes next after the car. The Origin looks a bit like a large metal box on wheels. It lacks pedals, a steering wheel, a trunk, or even an engine, and has doors that slide open to reveal an interior with two facing bench seats. It is intended to act as a shuttle service that drives itself. Call the Origin with an app, get to where you're going, and never own a car again. That's the idea, anyway.
The Pentagon's 'Terminator Conundrum': Robots That Could Kill on Their Own - The New Yo... - 0 views
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Just as the Industrial Revolution spurred the creation of powerful and destructive machines like airplanes and tanks that diminished the role of individual soldiers, artificial intelligence technology is enabling the Pentagon to reorder the places of man and machine on the battlefield the same way it is transforming ordinary life with computers that can see, hear and speak and cars that can drive themselves.
Uber Bets on Artificial Intelligence With Acquisition and New Lab - The New York Times - 0 views
Toward Democratic, Lawful Citizenship for AIs, Robots, and Corporations - 0 views
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If an AI canread the laws of a country (its Constitution and then relevant portions of the legal code)answer common-sense questions about these lawswhen presented with textual descriptions or videos of real-life situations, explain roughly what the laws imply about these situationsthen this AI has the level of understanding needed to manage the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
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AI citizens would also presumably have responsibilities similar to those of human citizens, though perhaps with appropriate variations. Clearly, AI citizens would have tax obligations (and corporations already pay taxes, obviously, even though they are not considered autonomous citizens). If they also served on jury duty, this could be interesting, as they might provide a quite different perspective to human citizens. There is a great deal to be fleshed out here.
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The question becomes: What kind of test can we give to validate that the AI really understands the Constitution, as opposed to just parroting back answers in a shallow but accurate way?
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