In a piece for Slate titled “My Puny Human Brain,” former-Jeopardy-greatest Ken Jennings talks briefly through his experience playing against IBM’s Watson. If you were hoping for some sour grapes, you won’t find it here, but Ken gives a great insight into what it feels like to be an underdog human up against a PR darling supercomputer. “Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It’s very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman.” Ken wraps it up on an uplifting, humans-are-going-to-be-alright-after-all note, and we seem to have something in our eye… Ken Jennings talks about losing to Watson, being human after all originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Feb 2011 18:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | source Slate | Email this | Comments

Shared by Daniel haha what the hell The insane epicness of this movie cannot possibly be overstated. And somehow, the fact that it’s overdubbed in Russian makes it just that much more awesome. It’s called Robot, and if you get a copy, send it to me. Immediately. Update: the full movie is here on YouTube (all 2+ hours of it), with English captions! VIA [ Laughing Squid ]

Watch these two TED Talks from robot researchers Heather Knight and Cynthia Breazeal, on interactive robot comedy and why we don’t have robots in our homes yet

This thread is a mess, filled with too many analogies and lofty idealistic rhetoric that is appropriate to the dramatic circumstances but fail to help us think clearly through them. Forget this consciousness stuff, it isn’t helping. Let us start again. On the one hand, we have Uglycat arguing that we are experiencing a fundamental shift in social organization, a shift made possible by the democratizaton of incredibly powerful networked technologies. On the other hand, we have Petey’s much more moderate claim in the main Revolution thread: Petey posted: – social media played some unknown but presumably nontrivial role in both a) spreading the word about the self-immolations among sympathetic citizens and b) facilitating the organization of collective action protests I think everyone will agree with Petey about the nontrivial role of social media and internet organization. The operative question in this thread is what substantial role these new technologies have played, and does this represent a fundamental shift in the narrative, or is this just a continuation of old themes in slightly new packaging. I think the key to understanding this is being specific about what would count as a ‘fundamental’ shift. I’m going to point to Deep Hurting’s latest comic to give a sense of what fundamental means in this context. Ignore Deep Hurting’s political comment for a second, and just think about the appropriation of the famous painting of Lady Liberty in the throes of revolution, holding a smartphone in her outstretched hand. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the protestors today is their use of these social devices. It is a badge of self-identification, it distinguishes and marks off as unique the revolutions currrently underway from those in the past. The causes are the same (liberty), but the defenders of that cause are equipped differently. In […]

Shared by Daniel ht becca

Back in July, we wrote about how UPenn’s GRASP Lab had taught their quadrotors to work together to grasp and move things. The next step, it seems, is teaching the quadrotors to work together to grasp and move things and actually build buildings. The video above shows a team of quadrotors cooperating to construct the framework of a (rather small) building. The building’s structure is held together with magnets, and the quadrotors are able to verify that the alignment is correct by attempting to wiggle the structural components around, which is pretty cool. It’s fun to speculate about how this technology might grow out of the lab into the real world… To build actual buldings, you’d either need much bigger quadrotors (which is possible), lots of small quadrotors cooperating in big pieces (also possible), or buildings built out of much smaller components (which might be the way to go). The quadrotors probably wouldn’t be able to do all the work, but they have the potential to make construction projects significantly more efficient. [ GRASP ]

It looks like that desert testing we wrote about in May of last year has paid off, and UPenn’s KodLab has developed a new version of their RHex wheeled/legged robot called X-RHex. X-RHex is about the same size and weight as RHex, but it’s stronger, more durable, and has as longer run time of up to two hours. It’s also got a couple mil-spec rails mounted on top along with standardized electrical connections, which could be just for convenience or could be because X-RHex has a probable military future, or both. X-RHex doesn’t seem as capable of the speeds exhibited by other leg/wheel hybrid robots such as Whegs, but its strength is in its adaptability and the way it can make it through basically any sort of terrain, even things that would challenge conventional wheeled or tracked robots. [ X-RHex ]

The T-1000 shape-shifter robot in ‘Terminator 2’ serves as a terrifying upgrade over its Arnold predecessor. But, that intimidation doesn’t arise from its morphing capabilities, because the robot truly horrifies us when it breaks into — with those disturbing swinging arms — an emotionless, unflinching sprint. Well, finally, an engineer has decided real robots should possess those same stupefying skills. MIT scientist Ryuma Niiyama is developing a running robot, simply named ‘Athlete,’ that employs seven complex muscle systems. The artificial muscles, which mimic human sets like the gluteus maximus and the hamstring, power prosthetic blades similar to those utilized by amputee athletes. Embedded sensors and inertial measurement units monitor the bot’s orientation, so that it — conceivably — can maintain a steady, sickening sprint. Continue reading Stumbles Prevent Robo-Sprinter From Spreading Abject ‘Terminator’ Terror Stumbles Prevent Robo-Sprinter From Spreading Abject ‘Terminator’ Terror originally appeared on Switched on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 10:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments