Asia
China's Space Station Plans In Powerpoint: A Closer Look at Tiangong 3
The Tiangong 3 space station will be completed no latter than 2022, just as the International Space Station enters into retirement. The Tiangong 3's three 20 ton modules will be boosted into space by the LM-5 heavy space rocket. The China Manned Space Agency released several Powerpoint slides showing a closer look at the Tiangong 3, China's planned space station. Scheduled to be commissioned in 2022, the Tiangong 3 will be regularly visited by Shenzhou manned space vessels, and automated Tianzhou resupply vehicles. The Tianhe 1 will be the core module of the Tiangong 3 space station, with a robotic arm (yellow, on the bottom), docking ports (located in the copper color coded section) and the storage section (color coded white) has internal modular racks for storing supplies and scientific experiments.
In US papers - Pentagon, mergers, Macy's and Google
The New York Times has a lead article on collapsing US merger deals in 2016 so far. While last year set a record for the amount of money spent on corporate mergers -- 4.7 trillion -- this year is so far setting a very different record: the dollar amount of deals that have come undone, the famous paper writes. Since the beginning of January, 400 billion worth of corporate mergers have been withdrawn in the United States, almost three times the previous record for the same period, set in 2007, according to Dealogic, which analyzes such data. In the same paper, reporter John Markoff writes that the Pentagon is turning to Silicon Valley for the edge in Artificial Intelligence. On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter made his fourth trip to the tech industry's heartland since being named to his post last year.
Andy Rubin Unleashed Android on the World. Now Watch Him Do the Same With AI
A couple of years ago, Andy Rubin--the celebrated creator of Android and until recently the head of Google's mobile Internet efforts--helped his wife, Rie, build a bakery in a decommissioned train station in Los Altos, California. They called it Voyageur du Temps, French for time traveler. As the name suggests, the bakery conveys visitors to an earlier era--by painstakingly re-creating the flavors and textures of classic European pastry. To pull this off, the Rubins went so far as to hire chefs from Japan, where traditional baking techniques are rigorously studied, and to purchase a rare Bongard Cervap oven, one of only two on the West Coast. The project was typical Rubin, in that it involved throwing an almost comical amount of money, energy, and engineering talent at a hobby, just for the fun of it. But it was also atypical Rubin, in that he usually marshals such resources to build artifacts from the future--like the robotic arm and the retinal scanner he's installed in his house. Even at his backward- looking bakery, Rubin couldn't resist adding some forward-leaning touches. He began writing software for a "closed cash" device that could receive payment, dole out change, and log transactions without a cashier's intervention. And he built a private meeting room in the back, complete with a homemade magnetized lock system.
Are we ready for robots and AI?
Automation and industrial robots have been in the manufacturing and related industries for decades, with the usage prevalent in shop floors and assembly lines. In 2008, a firm called Kiva Systems invented suitcase-like machines that would park underneath racks and move them around in the warehouse. Raffaello D' Andrea, the co-founder of Kiva, said: "You don't have to walk over to the shelves to get things -- the shelves come to you." Amazon acquired Kiva Systems four years later to obtain the technology to sort, organise and transport Amazon's massive inventory. Without a doubt, technology has reduced the need for human labour, especially in manual and routine tasks. It has largely done its job -- simplifying tasks and minimising errors -- although at the expense of eliminating low-skilled factory workers.
US turning to latest weapon- AI technology
To maintain and build a Hi-tech military advantage, the Pentagon is turning to the country's software and technology hub, Silicon Valley and its hottest and latest technology Artificial Intelligence, popularly known as AI. Today, Ash Carter, Secretary of Defense made his fourth trip to the area since his appointment on the post in last year. He had been the frequent traveler of the region in the past as well, he said in his speech given at the Defense Department Research Facility near Google's headquarters. US, currently, is concerned with the re-emergence of China and Russia in the military powers and therefore is looking a unique and a better tool to make the military of the country strong and rigid. This plan was articulated as "Third offset" strategy by Carter at last fall.
Pentagon's research agency showcases future tech
The US military is at the forefront of futuristic tech from lasers on aircraft to stealth jets and now it has been showing off its developments designed to help its soldiers and patients. At a science fair-style event at The Pentagon, the 3 billion agency has demoed its advanced prosthetic arms able to restore the sense of touch and feel to amputees. It also showcased implants that can help restore the memory of people suffering brain injuries or in people with post traumatic stress disorder. At a science fair-style event at The Pentagon, Darpa has demoed prosthetic arms able to restore the sense of touch and feel to amputees. One of the amputees at the event was Johnny Matheny.
SpaceX Dragon returns to Earth with precious science load
A SpaceX capsule returned to Earth on Wednesday with precious science samples from NASA's one-year space station resident. SpaceX reported a good splashdown, with three red-and-white striped parachutes slowing the final descent. The Dragon had been at the station for a month, dropping off supplies as well as an experimental, inflatable room that will pop open in two weeks. It was set free by the station's big robot arm. "Dragon spacecraft has served us well, and it's good to see it departing full of science," Peake radioed from 250 miles up.
Imagine Discovering That Your Teaching Assistant Really Is a Robot
One day in January, Eric Wilson dashed off a message to the teaching assistants for an online course at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "I really feel like I missed the mark in giving the correct amount of feedback," he wrote, pleading to revise an assignment. Thirteen minutes later, the TA responded. "Unfortunately, there is not a way to edit submitted feedback," wrote Jill Watson, one of nine assistants for the 300-plus students. Last week, Mr. Wilson found out he had been seeking guidance from a computer.
Artificial Intelligence News: Artificial Intelligence News Issue 35
About Author The second phase of Delhi's odd-even rule ended Saturday, but restrictions on "surge pricing" used by cab aggregators Ola and Uber to meet demand and supply is not expected to end till the state government issues sector-specific guidelines. Maitreya One, a black futurist and hip-hop artist living in Harlem, steps off the Greyhound bus on a warm morning in Montgomery, Alabama. I walk up to him and give him a hug. Nightmare scenarios involving Artificial Intelligence typically involve computers that become too smart for their own good and turn against their creators. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 famously refused to open the pod bay doors for Dave: Well, now we have an entirely different cause to be wary of AI, and the culprit is human rather than machine.
Competitive analysis of the top-K ranking problem
Chen, Xi, Gopi, Sivakanth, Mao, Jieming, Schneider, Jon
Motivated by applications in recommender systems, web search, social choice and crowdsourcing, we consider the problem of identifying the set of top $K$ items from noisy pairwise comparisons. In our setting, we are non-actively given $r$ pairwise comparisons between each pair of $n$ items, where each comparison has noise constrained by a very general noise model called the strong stochastic transitivity (SST) model. We analyze the competitive ratio of algorithms for the top-$K$ problem. In particular, we present a linear time algorithm for the top-$K$ problem which has a competitive ratio of $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{n})$; i.e. to solve any instance of top-$K$, our algorithm needs at most $\tilde{O}(\sqrt{n})$ times as many samples needed as the best possible algorithm for that instance (in contrast, all previous known algorithms for the top-$K$ problem have competitive ratios of $\tilde{\Omega}(n)$ or worse). We further show that this is tight: any algorithm for the top-$K$ problem has competitive ratio at least $\tilde{\Omega}(\sqrt{n})$.