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Europe regulates robotics: Summer school brings together researchers and experts in robotics

Robohub

After a successful 2016 first edition, our next summer school cohort on The Regulation of Robotics in Europe: Legal, Ethical and Economic Implications will take place in Pisa at the Scuola Sant'Anna, from 3- 8 July. When the Robolaw project came to an end – and we presented our results before the European Parliament – we clearly perceived that a leap was needed not only in some approaches to regulation but also in the way social scientists, as well as engineers, are trained. Indeed, in order to undergo technical analysis in law and robotics, without being lured into science fiction, an adequate understanding of the peculiarities of the systems being studied is required. A bottom-up approach, like the one adopted by Robolaw and its guidelines, is essential. Social scientists, and lawyers in particular, often lack such knowledge and thus tend to either make unreasonable assumptions – of technological developments that are farfetched or simply unrealistic – or misperceive what the pivoting point in the analysis is going to be.


Facebook user convicted for Liking 'defamatory' comments after vegan street food festival row

The Independent - Tech

A Facebook user has been convicted for Liking defamatory comments on Facebook. The comments, which were posted in 2015, accused Erwin Kessler, the president of animal rights group Verein gegen Tierfabriken, of racism and anti-Semitism. They were made during heated online discussions about which animal rights groups should be allowed to attend a vegan street festival, reports Tages Anzeiger newspaper. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.


Microsoft pays people to use Bing over Google

The Independent - Tech

Microsoft Rewards has launched in the UK, and aims to tempt more people over to Bing. Microsoft will reward you for using the Bing search engine, with points you can exchange for a number of freebies. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.


Researcher to develop bio-inspired 'smart' knee for prosthetics

Robohub

A researcher at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) is developing a bio-inspired'smart' knee joint for prosthetic lower limbs. Dr Appolinaire Etoundi, based at Bristol Robotics Laboratory, is leading the research and will analyse the functions, features and mechanisms of the human knee in order to translate this information into a new bio-inspired procedure for designing prosthetics. Dr Etoundi gained his PhD in bio-inspired technologies from the University of Bristol where he developed a design procedure for humanoid robotic knee joints. He is now turning his attention to nature, a growing area in robotics known as Bio-mimicry, combining curiosity about how biological systems work with solving complex engineering problems, in order to develop a prototype smart knee joint for prosthetics. Andy Lewis, a Paralympic Triathlon Gold Medallist (Rio 2016), who wears a lower limb prosthetic, will try out the new joint once developed, to compare its energy consumption and gait efficiency to current prosthetics.


Augmenting human creativity

#artificialintelligence

Where things stand, per the Post: In early May, Sec of State Tillerson raised he possibility of returning the compounds if construction was allowed to move ahead on a new U.S. consulate in St Petersburg, but dropped the condition about the consulate days later after meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister and U.S. Ambassador in Washington. It's not a done deal, though -- a Tillerson adviser said "the U.S. and Russia have reached no agreements." The Flynn connection: Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor, discussed the Obama administration's sanctions with Russia's ambassador and "indicated that U.S. policy would change" under Trump. He then misled other officials about the discussions, and was subsequently fired. Bonus anecdote: I spoke with locals in Centreville, Maryland the day after the compound there was closed about the espionage in their backyard, and what they thought would happen next.


CfP: Rethinking AI

#artificialintelligence

The meaning of AI has undergone drastic changes during the last 60 years of AI discourse(s). What we talk about when saying "AI" is not what it meant in 1958, when John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky and their colleagues started using the term. Take game design as an example: when the Unreal game engine introduced "AI" in 1999, they were mainly talking about pathfinding. For Epic Megagames, the producers of Unreal, an AI was just a bot or monster whose pathfinding capabilities had been programmed in a few lines of code to escape an enemy. This is not "intelligence" in the Minskyan understanding of the word (and even less what Alan Turing had in mind when he designed the Turing test). There are also attempts to differentiate between AI, classical AI and "Computational Intelligence" (Al-Jobouri 2017). The latter is labelled CI and is used to describe processes such as player affective modelling, co-evolution, automatically generated procedural environments, etc. Artificial intelligence research has been commonly conceptualised as an attempt to reduce the complexity of human thinking.


Can AI Outperform Humans? This Study Says It Can And Very Soon

#artificialintelligence

Artificial intelligence systems could outperform humans in all tasks within the next 45 years, according to a new study which also suggests that all human jobs will be automated in the next 120 years. According to a survey of over 350 artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, machines are predicted to be better than us at translating languages by 2024, writing high-school essays by 2026, driving a truck by 2027, working in retail by 2031, writing a bestselling book by 2049 and surgery by 2053. However, there is only a five per cent chance that computers will bring about outcomes that may lead to human extinction, researchers said. The survey, by the University of Oxford in the UK and Yale University in the US, was conducted among 352 researchers who had presented their research at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems or the International Conference on Machine Learning - the two major conferences in the field of AI. "There is accumulating evidence that machines can overpower human intelligence in complex, though specific tasks," Eleni Vasilaki at the University of Sheffield in the UK, told the'New Scientist'. However, there is little evidence that AI with human-like versatility will appear any time soon, Vasilaki said. The survey results showed that researchers in Asia typically gave shorter time frames than those in North America - predicting that AI would outperform humans on all tasks within 30 years, compared with 74 years.


Artificial intelligence: Europe needs a "human in command approach," says EESC

Robohub

The EU must pursue a policy that ensures the development, deployment and use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Europe in favor, and not conducive to the detriment, acts of society and social welfare, the Committee said in an initiative opinion on the social impact of AI which 11 fields are identified for action. "We have a human need in-command approach to artificial intelligence, with machines remain machines and people always maintain control of these machines" said rapporteur Catelijne Muller (NL – Workers' Group). She was not just about technical check: "People can and must decide whether, when and how AI is used in our daily lives, what tasks we entrust to AI and how transparent and ethical is all. Eventually, we decide whether we want that certain activities are carried out, care or medical decisions are made by AI, and whether we want to accept that our AI security, privacy and autonomy might be jeopardized," said Mrs. Muller. Artificial intelligence has recently undergone rapid growth.


Five different ways Swedish startups are using AI to disrupt the industry - Swedish App Scene

#artificialintelligence

We all know that'AI is the new black', but how true is it in the Swedish thriving app scene? AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology is taking the world by storm. Over the last two months, Spotify has acquired two AI-based startups with the aim to improve their content recommendations. From Microsoft to Ikea to Tesla, tech and non-tech companies are looking at AI similarly to how the world looked at the Internet during the 90's: in awe and wonder. The era of AI has come, and it is here to stay.


henQ invests in Medical AI start-up Aidence, which Raises € 2.25 million Seed round - henQ

#artificialintelligence

Aidence, an Amsterdam-based start-up applying Artificial Intelligence to the interpretation of medical images, today announced its raise of €2.25M in seed funding from notable investors Northzone, HenQ, Health Innovations, and the medical specialists of the Haaglanden hospital group. The investment will be used to strengthen its sales and technical teams and expand international reach. Aidence is improving healthcare using Computer-Aided Diagnostics, with a first application in lung cancer. Aidence's software enables faster, cheaper, and more accurate diagnoses of X-ray, MRI and CT images. The key enabling technology is Deep Learning, a revolutionary type of Artificial Intelligence that is capable of analysing medical images with human-level accuracy.