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Samsung patents design for 'smart' augmented reality contact lenses

The Independent - Tech

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display


The racist hijacking of Microsoft's chatbot shows how the internet teems with hate

#artificialintelligence

It took just two tweets for an internet troll going by the name of Ryan Poole to get Tay to become antisemitic. Tay was a "chatbot" set up by Microsoft on 23 March, a computer-generated personality to simulate the online ramblings of a teenage girl. Poole suggested to Tay: "The Jews prolly did 9/11. I don't really know but it seems likely." Shortly thereafter Tay tweeted "Jews did 9/11" and called for a race war. In the 24 hours it took Microsoft to shut her down, Tay had abused President Obama, suggested Hitler was right, called feminism a disease and delivered a stream of online hate.


Spün counts calories in each bite and vibrates when you've had enough

Daily Mail - Science & tech

This smart cutlery could be a dieter's worst nightmare, or the weight loss tool you've been dreaming about. Spün claims to be the world's most intelligent utensil, using a combination of image recognition and motion sensing technology to measure food as users eat it. The device, which has an interchangeable stainless steel spoon or fork head, weighs each mouthful of food to calculate the calories and nutrients being eaten. Spün (pictured) claims to be the world's most intelligent utensil that is capable of tracking the calories and nutrients in each mouthful. The information is logged in a smartphone app, which can help dieters set goals and monitor their progress.


Study says people get turned on by touching a robot's privates

Engadget

The subjects in the team's 26 trial runs showed signs of arousal when Nao asked them to touch its intimate areas. They even touched those parts more quickly, as if they were uncomfortable doing so. However, Li told Mashable that "it isn't necessarily sexual arousal," not when the subjects reacted similarly when Nao asked them to touch its eye. They didn't get "turned on" when it asked them to touch its more accessible parts, like its hands. "One way I thought about it is, the robot is talking like a person, it looks like a person and has social cues like a person [gesturing, looking at the subjects]. It's as if the robot is a teaching figure and asking a person to touch them in each of these parts as a way to interact... there could have been some awkwardness."


NASA's Opportunity rover snaps photo of Martian dust devil

Christian Science Monitor | Science

A photo snapped by Opportunity Friday (April 1) shows the six-wheeled robot's tracks in the foreground and a Martian twister off in the distance, perhaps giving viewers the impression that the rover is in full retreat from a tornado. But Opportunity is not making a run for it. For one thing, the twister is a dust devil, not a true tornado of the type that can wreak havoc here on Earth. And with a top speed of just 0.1 mph (0.16 km/h) -- and a minimum 8-minute round-trip communication delay between Opportunity and its handlers -- fleeing is never really an option for the rover. So, the newly released image is just a nice, and fortuitously captured, tableau of the Red Planet's 14-mile-wide (22 km) Endeavour Crater.


Would it be Wise to Create an 'Intelligent Gun'?

#artificialintelligence

Learning machines are capable of working ever more autonomously on ever more complex tasks. In this article, I explore whether it would it be smart for humankind to develop an'intelligent gun'. There are an estimated 875 million civilian, law-enforcement, and military firearms in the world, of which 650 million are in the hands of civilians, either legally or illegally[1]. Given the plethora of high-profile gun attacks in recent months and years – particularly in the US but also in France, Norway, Pakistan and Tunisia to name but a few – it is disturbingly easy to imagine gunmen on the loose in a school or at a public event, shooting indiscriminately and leaving casualties in their wake. Imagine how different things could be if a gun had artificial intelligence built in to it, turning it into an intelligent gun.


IBM Combines Blockchain Technology With Artificial Intelligence To Virtually Turn Back Time

International Business Times

IBM wants to combine blockchain's distributed ledger technology with its artificial intelligence arm to make the billions of smart devices connected to the internet safer, and by doing so it would allow virtual time travel by letting regulators rewind to the point when the problem occurred and see just what happened. According to a report by CoinDesk, IBM is still in the very early stages of developing this project that brings together the company's Internet of Things Foundation and Watson divisions to create the Watson Internet of Things group, which is attempting to marry those technologies with the emerging blockchain technology that underpins the bitcoin network. The project is being overseen by IBM's chief architect in charge of Internet of Things security Tim Hahn who told CoinDesk that the possibilities of the collaboration of artificial intelligence, IoT and blockchain were huge. "What we're doing with blockchain and devices is enabling the information those devices supply to effect the blockchain. You begin to approach the kind of things we see in movies."


Drones are being used in Dubai to stop people dumping rubbish on beaches

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Now, a source claims the Small UAV Coalition is recommending the ban be relaxed to encourage commercial development in the area. The recommendations call for creating four categories of small drones that commercial operators can fly over people, including crowds in some cases. The first category of drones would weigh no more than about a half-pound (230 grams). They essentially could fly unrestricted over people, including crowds. Drone makers would have to certify that if the drone hit someone, there would be no more than a 1 percent chance that the maximum force of the impact would cause a serious injury.


Singapore Is Getting Driverless Taxi Cabs

TIME - Tech

NuTonomy, a driverless car startup that spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology three years ago, has its sights set on operating a fully autonomous taxi service in Singapore. The firm, which raised 3.6 million in seed funding in Jan., is planning to debut a pilot program at One North, a business park in downtown Singapore, later this year, reports IEEE Spectrum. Last month the company passed its first driving test in that country, one of the founders told MIT News. The 25-person firm is facing off against a number of bigger-name rivals such as Google, Tesla, Uber and traditional automakers such as Ford, General Motors, and Toyota, in the race to deploy autonomous vehicles. Thanks to nuTonomy and MIT's partnership with Singapore, a country with dense urban areas has been highly receptive to driverless car technology, the comparatively small company could become the first to operate fully self-driving cars, known as "level four," in a city commercially.


Calgary neuroscientist leading the way in robotic surgery

#artificialintelligence

Larry Doherty was in good hands, steady hands, like the metal ones you can find on an automaker's assembly line. The 64-year-old bean salesman from Bow Island, Alta., had come to the University of Calgary's Department of Clinical Neurosciences and Hotchkiss Brain Institute to undergo arteriovenous malformation surgery – to untie the tangled blood vessels in his brain. When everyone in the operating room was ready, the operating surgeon began his work sitting in a whole other room surrounded by computer monitors, including one with a 3-D image of Mr. Doherty's brain. Using specially designed hand controls, Dr. Garnette Sutherland manoeuvred the robot to its ready position. For Mr. Doherty, it was the first time in his life he had undergone surgery.