検索キーワード： 著者 "Will Knight" すべてのカテゴリー

By experimenting, computers are figuring out how to do things that no programmer could teach them.

Face-detecting systems in China now authorize payments, provide access to facilities, and track down criminals. Will other countries follow?

No one really knows how the most advanced algorithms do what they do. That could be a serious problem as computers become more responsible for making important decisions.

Uber is moving quickly. The company created its Advanced Technology Center, where it’s developing its driverless cars, in February 2015 by hiring a number of researchers from the robotics department at nearby Carnegie Mellon University.

Spending thousands of hours playing Grand Theft Auto might have questionable benefits for humans, but it could help make computers significantly more intelligent. Several research groups are now using the hugely popular game, which features fast cars and various nefarious activities, to train algorithms that might enable a self-driving car to navigate a real road.

Extraordinary progress has been made in artificial intelligence of late. But to achieve their full promise, machines must understand language, and that will be the most difficult step yet.

Automobiles are starting to resemble robotic smartphones on wheels. Unfortunately, that makes them a pretty juicy target for would-be hackers. So far there have been relatively few incidents of car hacking beyond demonstrations by security researchers. However, GM CEO Mary Barra said today that car security would become a significant public safety issue in the years to come. “A cyber incident is not a problem just for the automaker involved,” Barra said at an industry conference held in Detroit.

Inside a large, windowless room in an electronics factory in south Shanghai, about 15 workers are eyeing a small robot arm with frustration. Near the end of the production line where optical networking equipment is being packed into boxes for shipping, the robot sits motionless.

A startup called Zipline will use a fleet of long-distance drones to airdrop precious blood and medicines to remote medical facilities across Rwanda. The potentially life-saving project hints at the potential for unmanned aerial vehicles to revolutionize the delivery of some goods. But it also highlights the fact that drone delivery currently makes most sense only in extreme situations.

From the street, through Beijing’s heavy smog, it can sometimes be hard to make out IBM’s Chinese headquarters: a towering office building with a distinctive undulating architectural flourish and a large company logo at the top. But just a short distance away, on the northeast outskirts of the capital, IBM computer scientists are using artificial intelligence to develop what they think will be a way to manage China’s notorious and chronic pollution problem more successfully.

A video posted to YouTube last year provides proof that some people can’t be trusted behind the wheel even when their car is doing all the driving.

For all the remarkable progress being made in artificial intelligence, and warnings about the upheaval this might bring, the smartest computer would still struggle to make it through the eighth grade.

Gary Marcus became fascinated by the mind in high school after reading The Mind’s I, a collection of essays on consciousness edited by the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter and the philosopher Daniel Dennett, as well as Hofstadter’s metaphorical book on minds and machines, Gödel, Escher, Bach. Around the same time, he wrote a computer program designed to translate Latin into English.

China is laying the groundwork for a robot revolution by planning to automate the work currently done by millions of low-paid workers. The government’s plan will be crucial to a broader effort to reform China’s economy while also meeting the ambitious production goals laid out in its latest economic blueprint, which aims to double per capita income by 2020 from 2016 levels with at least 6.5 percent annual growth.

At a major robotics competition held in June, several multi-million-dollar robots struggled to perform even simple tasks like climbing a flight of stairs; some even toppled over with what seemed like impeccable comic timing.

It can take weeks to reprogram an industrial robot to perform a complicated new task, which makes retooling a modern manufacturing line painfully expensive and slow.

One of China's leading carmakers is testing technology that promises to prevent accidents and ease congestion by allowing vehicles as well as traffic signals to communicate wirelessly. Although no standard for the technology has emerged in China yet, representatives at the company say it could introduce some form of car-to-car communications in 2018, ahead of many US automakers.

The “artificial intelligence” found in most computer games isn’t very intelligent at all. Characters in the games tend to be controlled by algorithms that produce patterns of behaviors designed to seem natural and realistic, but the characters are actually rigid, with no capacity to learn or adapt.

A philosopher is perhaps the last person you'd expect to have a hand in designing your next car, but that's exactly what one expert on self-driving vehicles has in mind. Chris Gerdes, a professor at Stanford University, leads a research lab that is experimenting with sophisticated hardware and software for automated driving.

A diminutive, 200-pound silver humanoid robot from South Korea called DRC-Hubo claimed first place on Saturday afternoon in the DARPA Robotics Challenge by rising awkwardly from four wheels and ascending several metal stairs with a series of slow, halting steps.