robot

Us and Them: Robots Imitating Humans Imitating Robots

by Socrates

Last night I was watching the following 2 YouTube videos together with my wife and it got us talking along the following lines: Robots imitating humans Humans imitating Robots Isn’t it ironic how we try to be more like them and they try to be more like us? What happens if or when both us [...]

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Top 10 Robot Videos

by Socrates
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Here are the top 10 robot videos that I have seen since the beginning of this year. As you will see the robots in those videos are all very different from each other and range from industrial and mech-warfare robots to androids. Thus they are very hard to compare and for this reason I will [...]

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NASA and GM Develop Robonaut 2

by Socrates
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The Robonaut is a robotic astronaut first developed about 10 years ago by DARPA and NASA with the goal of assisting human space exploration or, ultimately, conducting non-human space exploration altogether.  Though the original version never actually made it into space it seems that version 2.0 is being developed by NASA and GM. The new [...]

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Artificial Intelligence: Its Meaning and Its Future

by Socrates
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Professors Noel Sharkey and Kevin Warwick discuss what AI is, and what it might become… Video: Artificial intelligence: Will machines ever out-think us? | silicon.com Related articles by Zemanta the Rise of Robotic Artificial Intelligence (singularityblog.singularitysymposium.com) Call for debate on killer robots (news.bbc.co.uk) Military killer robots ‘could endanger civilians’ (telegraph.co.uk)

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The Rise of Robotic Artificial Intelligence

by Socrates

Here is a fascinating video interview with Prof. Noel Sharkey Sheffield University professor of robotics and AI. Prof. Sharkey discusses the rise of robots and Artificial Intelligence and the implications thereof. One particularly important area is the ethical issues of arming robots and using them in armed conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan. (This interview [...]

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Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 4)

by Socrates
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Part 4: Military Turing Test — Can robots commit war-crimes? Now that we have identified the trend of moving military robots to the forefront of military action from their current largely secondary and supportive role to becoming a primary direct participant or (as Foster-Miller proudly calls its MAARS bots) “war fighters” we have to also [...]

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Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 3)

by Socrates
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Part 3: The Present — close infantry support and force multiplier Not surprisingly, once robots began migrating from the production lines to the military, death became not an accidental but deliberate and heavily invested in outcome. In 2002 the Air Force officially changed the Predator’s designation from RQ-1 (R for reconnaissance) to MQ-1 (M for [...]

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Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conficts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 2)

by Socrates
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Part 2: The Past — Robot Etymology, Brief History and Military Classification Contrary to what popular intuition may dictate the idea of thinking machines or artificial beings has existed for millennia. Some of the first examples can be found in the ancient Greek myths and legends such as the bronze giant Talos of Crete and [...]

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Dawn of the Kill-Bots: the Conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Arming of AI (part 1)

by Socrates
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Warfare, while seemingly the opposite of large scale industrial production, in so far as it is usually perceived to be large scale destruction, exhibits most if not all of the main characteristics of the capitalist mode of production. Features such as specialization, personal discipline within an ethos of team spirit, standardization of procedures, processes and [...]

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Robo Library

by Socrates

The British Library gets robotized. Reuters Television has an exclusive first look at the high-density, oxygen-controlled facility built to house seven million items from the UK’s national library’s collection.

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