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This week’s episode—Oxygen—is the first to show Bill in serious danger, courtesy of a malfunctioning spacesuit that nearly kills her and also, ultimately, saves her from dying: a dichotomy that seems to point to the uneasy relationship some people have with capitalism—a theme that is explored here. And again racism is challenged. I’m reminded of classic Star Trek episodes that score an A-plus for science fiction, while still finding time to scrutinize mode

Biz & IT Google brings 45 teraflops tensor flow processors to its compute cloud Up to 256 chips can be joined together for 11.5 petaflops of machine-learning power. Ars Staff – May 17, 2017 2:04 pm | 69 The 180 TFLOPS Cloud TPU card. Credit: Google The 180 TFLOPS Cloud TPU card. Credit: Google Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav Google has developed its

At some point, we’ve all wondered about the incredibly strange names for paint colors. Research scientist and neural network goofball Janelle Shane took the wondering a step further. Shane decided to train a neural network to generate new paint colors, complete with appropriate names. The results are possibly the greatest work of artificial intelligence I’ve seen to date. Writes Shane on her Tumblr, “For this experiment, I gave the neural network a list of

SpaceX’s drone landing ships have already proven that uncrewed vessels can handle some of the most dangerous jobs at sea. Now, two Norwegian companies are poised to put robo-boats into one of the most dull: hauling cargo down the fjord. Two Norwegian companies are teaming together to construct a short-range, all-electric coastal container ship that will eventually operate autonomously—eliminating up to 40,000 diesel truck trips per year. The ship, the Yara

There aren’t many people in the world who can justifiably call Mark Zuckerberg a dumb-ass, but Elon Musk is probably one of them. Early on Tuesday morning, in the latest salvo of a tussle between the two tech billionaires over the dangers of advanced artificial intelligence, Musk said that Zuckerberg’s “understanding of the subject is limited.” I won’t rehash the entire argument here, but basically Elon Musk has been warning society for the last few years

Gaming Elon Musk’s Dota 2 AI beats the professionals at their own game But humans did eventually prevail over the computers. Ars Staff – Aug 14, 2017 12:06 pm | 74 Shadow Fiend, looking shadowy and fiendish. Credit: Valve Shadow Fiend, looking shadowy and fiendish. Credit: Valve Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav OpenAI takes on Dendi. Last week was th

Working from offices in Kendall Square—a neighborhood that’s become an incubator for many hybrid academic/corporate startups—researchers at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab will be focused on basic research with an eye toward commercializing what they discover. IBM wants to “encourage MIT faculty and students to launch companies that will focus on commercializing AI.” MIT has had a number of these academic/corporate partnerships over the years. Perhaps most famou

SAN FRANCISCO—Speaking at the Noisebridge hackerspace Tuesday evening, Chelsea Manning implored a crowd of makers, nerds, and developers to be ethical coders. “As a coder, I know that you can build a system and it works, but you’re thinking about the immediate result, you’re not thinking about that this particular code could be misused, or it could be used in a different manner,” she said, as part of a conversation with Noisebridge co-founder Mitch Altman.

Each month, the patent lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation shine a spotlight on one particular patent they believe is a drag on innovation. This month, they’re looking at one of the fastest-growing sectors of technology: machine learning and artificial intelligence. EFF lawyer Daniel Nazer has picked out an artificial intelligence patent belonging to Hampton Creek, a San Francisco food-tech company that markets products under the brand name “just

Mattel has scrapped a “smart home” device designed with kids in mind after awful reviews and privacy concerns. “Aristotle” was first shown off at CES earlier this year. The red-and-white device is meant to be kept in a child’s room where its WiFi-enabled camera acts primarily as a voice-controlled baby monitor. It can adjust lighting levels, noting when babies wake up and then playing a lullaby or turning on a night light. The device also claimed to be abl

The New York Times obtained an email from Cook to Apple staff explaining the new hire: Our technology must be infused with the values we all hold dear… John shares our commitment to privacy and our thoughtful approach as we make computers even smarter and more personal. Giannandrea joined Google in 2010 as part of the company’s acquisition of Metaweb, the company behind Freebase, a community-driven database of data and information that was eventually lever

A RoboThespian (seriously). Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting A RoboThespian (seriously). Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting Sophia is a humanoid bot from Hanson Robotics. Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting Sophia is a humanoid bot from Hanson Robotics. Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting A RoboThespian (seriously). Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting Sophia is a humanoid bot from Hanson Robotics. Tommy Pallotta and Femke Wolting Johan Hoorn sits with Alice, a new Ca

Anduril Industries has announced the successful demonstration of a new satellite-based sensor designed to track other spacecraft that may be hiding their maneuvers in Earth’s shadow. Funded with Anduril’s internal capital, the company’s oven-sized satellite launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission in July with a package of tech demo payloads: an edge-compute processor, a power-management system adaptable to different mission types, and a long-wave infrared s

Machine learning is not artificial intelligence! Microsoft continues its quest to bring machine learning to every application Machine learning is getting easier to use and enabling new applications. Ars Staff – May 7, 2018 11:30 am | 43 Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav SEATTLE—We’ve been tracking Microsoft’s work to bring its machine learning platfor

DeepMind is an artificial intelligence research company that specializes in deep learning. That’s an approach, inspired by neural networks, that passes an input through multiple, sequential layers of analysis (the “deep”) to come up with an output. The method seems to be working pretty well for the company; it’s the one that made AlphaGo, which it claims is “arguably the strongest Go player in history.” On the grid Now that DeepMind has solved Go, the comp

NEW YORK—Evidently, I didn’t walk into a run-of-the-mill press event. Roughly two months after its annual I/O conference, Google this week invited Ars and several other journalists to the THEP Thai Restaurant in New York City. The company bought out the restaurant for the day, cleared away the tables, and built a little presentation area complete with a TV, loudspeaker, and chairs. Next to the TV was a podium with the Thai restaurant’s actual phone—not som

More like an ARM-s race? The AI revolution has spawned a new chips arms race There’s no x86 in the AI chip market yet—“People see a gold rush; there’s no doubt.” Andy Patrizio – Jul 9, 2018 10:12 am | 226 A lot has changed since 1918. But whether it's a literal (like the City of London School athletics' U12 event) or figurative (AI chip development) race, participants still very much want to win. Credit: A. R. Coster/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images A lot

Shall we play a game? Elon Musk-funded Dota 2 bots spank top-tier humans, and they know how to trash talk The only way humans won? When they stacked the deck in their favor. Ars Staff – Aug 6, 2018 1:40 pm | 131 Shadow Fiend, looking shadowy and fiendish. Credit: Valve Shadow Fiend, looking shadowy and fiendish. Credit: Valve Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimiz

Robin Sloan writes about artificial intelligence in his latest novel, Sourdough, but he has also been writing with help from AI, too. In the latest episode of Ars Technica Live, filmed before actual humans at Oakland bar Eli’s Mile High Club, I talked to Sloan about his work. We started out by discussing how Sloan does his research, because Sourdough has some of the most accurate representations of robots you’ll find in a work of fiction. But it also has i

Ars Unite More than an auto-pilot, AI charts its course in aviation Artificial intelligence steps up on the flight deck and in the back office. Alyson Behr – Dec 5, 2018 11:00 am | 64 Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Credit: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Credit: Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Min