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News Analysis: After AlphaGo's achievement, do humans need to fear artificial intelligence?

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CAMBRIDGE, United States, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Google's computer program AlphaGo stunned the world this week by defeating a top professional player at Go, a board game that has trillions of possible moves and often requires players' intuition. "The AlphaGo success shows again that this is a golden era for the development of intelligent software that can be as intelligent or more intelligent than humans in narrow domains of intelligence," Tomaso Poggio, professor of Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told Xinhua. While many people around the world witnessed the achievement accomplished by artificial intelligence (AI) with excitement, some also expressed a renewed wariness over the technology and wonder: It is a boon or a bane for mankind? AI, a field that has existed for more than 50 years, grows along with the development of cognitive science and neuroscience. Poggio regards the subject of intelligence as the greatest one in science, because it has to do with the question of how human brain works and what is the mind.


What Wonder Woman experts had to say about 'Batman v Superman's' Diana Prince

Los Angeles Times

Wonder Woman can still draw a crowd. After this weekend's debut of the long-awaited Wonder Woman (played by actress Gal Gadot) the WonderCon panel "She's Finally Here! Wonder Woman: Her Fandom's Perspective," was packed to the gills (some attendees started waiting 30 minutes before the scheduled time) with people ready to discuss the new Diana Prince. And if the stakes weren't high enough for this character, just read at what the panel was previously labeled in the paper WonderCon program, "Wonder Woman: Will She Finally Be Done Right?" Moderated by Jessica Tseang, the lineup featured Steven L. Sears (executive producer, writer "Xena: Warrior Princess"), Lisa Klink ("Star Trek Voyager," "Roswell"), Barbra Dillon (managing editor of Fanboy Comics), Eric Diaz (writer for Nerdist, Topless Robot), Michael Fitzgerald Troy ("Going Gaga!," "Adele #1," Prism Comics) and Drew Johnson (who worked with Greg Rucka on DC's "Wonder Woman"). So what did this panel of experts think about "Batman v Superman's" new Wonder Woman? See more of Entertainment's top stories on Facebook Here's what the pop culture experts had to say.


Orbital's Cygnus arrives at space station with Easter delivery

Washington Post - Technology News

The six astronauts at the International Space Station got an early Easter treat this weekend with the arrival of a supply ship full of fresh food and experiments. Instead of the usual bunny, Saturday's delivery came via a swan -- Orbital ATK's Cygnus capsule, named after the swan constellation. The cargo carrier rocketed away from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday night. NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra used the station's big robot arm to grab the capsule, as the two craft soared 250 miles above the Indian Ocean. Four hours later, the capsule was bolted firmly to the complex.


The state has lost control: tech firms now run western politics - Artificial Intelligence Online

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By now, the fact that transatlantic democratic capitalism, once the engine of postwar prosperity, has run into trouble can hardly be denied by anyone with the courage to browse a daily newspaper. Hunger, homelessness, toxic chemicals in the water supply, the lack of affordable housing: all these issues are back on the agenda, even in the most prosperous of countries. This appalling decline in living standards was some time in the making โ€“ 40 years of neoliberal policies are finally taking their toll โ€“ so it shouldn't come as a shock. However, coupled with the spillover effects of wars in the Middle East โ€“ first the refugees, now the increasingly regular terrorist attacks in the heart of Europe โ€“ our economic and political malaise looks much more ominous. It's hardly surprising that the insurgent populist forces, on both left and right, have such an easy time bashing the elites.


Boston Dynamics' new Atlas robot can't be pushed around

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Robotics company Boston Dynamics released a new video showcasing its upgraded Atlas robot, and the footage features a slew of impressive (and somewhat unsettling) new capabilities. The humanoid Atlas robot, which has been overhauled with a sleeker design, can be seen at the beginning of the video walking around untethered before it opens the front door to Boston Dynamics' office and steps outside. The bot is then seen walking on uneven and snowy terrain, maneuvering around trees and correcting its balance several times. The new-and-improved robot is "designed to operate outdoors and inside buildings," Boston Dynamics wrote in a description of the video posted on YouTube. "It is specialized for mobile manipulation. It is electrically powered and hydraulically actuated. It uses sensors in its body and legs to balance and LIDAR and stereo sensors in its head to avoid obstacles, assess the terrain, help with navigation and manipulate objects."


Thanks For Ruining Another Game Forever, Computers

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We may have reached an inflection point. The problem space of chess is so astonishingly large that incremental increases in hardware speed and algorithms are unlikely to result in meaningful gains from here on out. Turns out I was kinda โ€ฆ totally completely wrong. The number of possible moves, or "problem space", of Chess is indeed astonishingly large, estimated to be 1050: Deep Blue was interesting because it forecast a particular kind of future, a future where specialized hardware enabled brute force attack of the enormous chess problem space, as its purpose built chess hardware outperformed general purpose CPUs of the day by many orders of magnitude. In the heady days of 1997, Deep Blue could evaluate 200 million chess positions per second.


Artificial Intelligence Writes Novel, Nearly Wins Japan's Unique Literary Prize

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A novel written by artificial intelligence was a finalist in Japan's Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award. The award is named after Hoshi Shinichi, a Japanese science fiction author whose books include The Whimsical Robot and Greetings from Outer Space. The unique contest accepts submissions from humans and machines, and judges for the prize, now in its third year, weren't told which novels were written by humans and which were penned by human-AI teams. This year was the first time the committee received submissions written by AI programs. The AI's novel is called The Day A Computer Writes A Novel, or Konpyuta ga shosetsu wo kaku hi in Japanese.


The biggest mystery in AI right now is the ethics board that Google set up after buying DeepMind

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Google's artificial intelligence (AI) ethics board, established when Google acquired London AI startup DeepMind in 2014, remains one of the biggest mysteries in tech, with both Google and DeepMind refusing to reveal who sits on it. Google set up the board at DeepMind's request after the cofounders of the 400 million research-intensive AI lab said they would only agree to the acquisition if Google promised to look into the ethics of the technology it was buying into. Business Insider asked Google once again who is on its AI ethics board and what they do but it declined to comment. A number of AI experts told Business Insider that it's important to have an open debate about the ethics of AI given the potential impact it's going to have on all of our lives. Artificial intelligence is the field of building computer systems that understand and learn from observations without the need to be explicitly programmed, as defined by Nathan Benaich, an AI investor at venture capital firm Playfair Capital.


AlphaGo beats human Go champ in milestone for artificial intelligence

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First went checkers, then fell chess. Now, a computer program has defeated the world's top player in the ancient east Asian board game of Go -- a major milestone for artificial intelligence that brings to a close the era of board games as benchmarks in computing. At the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, Google DeepMind's AlphaGo capped a 3-0 week on Saturday against Lee Sedol, a giant of the game. Lee and AlphaGo were to play again Sunday and Tuesday, but with AlphaGo having already clinched victory in the five-game match, the results are in and history has been made. It was a feat that experts had thought was still years away.


DARPA's next challenge could lead to AI-powered radios

Engadget

The competition will take a while. It doesn't start until 2017, and won't pick a winner until early 2020. DARPA will even have to create a giant wireless testbed to see how the competitors fare in relatively realistic conditions. It could be worthwhile, though, as the winner will scoop up a 2 million prize. The institution notes that there could be clear advantages to AI-based radios in the military, which could keep communications up and running on the battlefield.