1. Artificial Intelligence

Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Film review: Transcendence (12A)

Posted on by

SCIENCE: Johnny Depp as Will Caster.

MAN'S unhealthy relationship with technology takes a sinister turn in Wally Pfister's ham-fisted sci-fi thriller, which imagines the consequences of an artificial intelligence running amok in the digital realm.

Transcendence opens in Berkeley, California in the aftermath of a global blackout.

The narrative then rewinds to the same location five years earlier, where Dr Will Caster (Depp), a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, lives with his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall).

They are at the forefront of a bid to create a machine with sentience.

Extremists R.I.F.T. (Revolutionary Independence From Technology) oppose this advancement and shoot Will with a polonium-tainted bullet.

Doctors give Dr Caster a month to live so Evelyn suggests her beau continues his work by uploading his mind to a super-computer.

When this happens, he infiltrates every hard drive on the planet.

As Will's thirst for knowledge intensifies, experts attempt to create a virus that will protect mankind from his insidious influence.

Transcendence begins promisingly, but after the injection screenwriter Paglen struggles to sustain dramatic momentum.

Continue reading here:

Film review: Transcendence (12A)

Local team gives artificial intelligence artistic boost

Posted on by

BEIRUT: Many of us have had that moment walking down the street, catching the glimpse of an artist sketching a scene in front of him. Wanting to see things through his eyes, we stop to watch the process, eager to understand what makes him tick yet careful as we approach from behind so as not to break his concentration. I tried to recreate this fascination, says Guillaume Crdoz, a Beirut-based architect from Paris who, along with his Lebanese wife Souraya Haddad-Crdoz, runs a 3-D printing operation in Beiruts Geitawi district.

At last months Design Days Dubai, the annual international fair held in the Emirati metropolis, Crdoz, along with Nareg Karaolaghnian, a fluid mechanics engineer and professor at the American University of Beirut, unveiled their new invention: a robot that draws sketches based on images seen and then processed by a computer. The project, which took two months to complete from start to finish, tapped into Arduino, an electronics platform for artists, for the programming, while the body was created with Crdozs 3-D printer.

The concept is as frightening as it is impressive. Could a robot replace the creativity of a human artist? For now, no, but with the rapid development of artificial intelligence, professional sketch artists could be facing competition in the coming years.

The robot, which the men named the Obsessive Drafter for its rapid and repetitive strokes, is an unassuming apparatus that looks more like an elevated camera on wheels than a machine capable of processing detailed three-dimensional images and sketching their likeness.

Though it doesnt resemble a human in shape, the machine nonetheless has certain attributes that most artists possess: three joints, at the base, the middle and then at the end, or the wrist, which turns, bends and rotates the pencil as its sketching.

You still feel theres someone. The computer connects the picture and draws you, says Crdoz, who had the Obsessive Drafter sketch his face for a demonstration in Dubai.

As much as the work is a testament to the advancement of both 3-D printing and computer programming, Crdoz says that it is not an invention he intends to market but merely a piece of art he wanted to share with the public. In the coming months, he and Karaolaghnian will continue to develop the Obsessive Drafter to give it more precise sketching capabilities.

He also wanted to prove that such a complex machine could be made at a low price, one of the advantages of 3-D printing, which now allows once unthinkable feats such as children designing their own toys as well as the production of some products at a low cost.

Then, years ago, this could have only been done by a big company with a good-sized research budget. Now its completely available, Crdoz says. Before the 3-D printer, artists would make molds of everything. Now the little guys without money can sell [their products] on the first day. This will soon be a lot more common.

Excerpt from:

Local team gives artificial intelligence artistic boost

Review: 'The Machine' conjures a stylish sense of wonder, danger

Posted on by

A resourcefully stylish indie sci-fi entry from Britain, "The Machine" drapes sleek visuals over an artificial intelligence tale set in a top-secret British government facility where robots are being developed to fight a cold war with China.

Empathic computer genius Vincent (Toby Stephens) has more on his mind, however, than creating a weapon-strength, self-aware being for his military boss (Denis Lawson). Vincent imagines a revolutionary future in which the brain-damaged (be they wounded soldiers or his medically afflicted daughter) are given their humanity again.

That makes Vincent's breakthrough the Machine (Caity Lotz), an aerodynamic hot bod of a robot who can flip, fight and care deeply into a moral battleground of sorts. With her slick-backed hair, Lotz is a cyberblond right out of Hitchcock's dystopian fantasies.

PHOTOS: Box office top 10 of 2013

Writer-director Caradog W. James is so enamored by the coolly designed future aesthetics of movies like "A Clockwork Orange" and "Blade Runner" that his metaphoric dark-and-darker lighting can get the best of him. (Being able to see an actor's face has been known to be effective.) But even with a cut-and-dried approach to characterization and the issue of man-made consciousness, "The Machine" percolates with an elegantly palpable sense of wonder and danger.

-------------------------

"The Machine"

MPAA rating: Rated R for violence and language

Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes

Playing: At the Arena Cinema, Hollywood

See original here:

Review: 'The Machine' conjures a stylish sense of wonder, danger

'Transcendence' fails to transcend

Posted on by

Published:Thursday, April 24, 2014

Updated:Thursday, April 24, 2014 15:04

Peter Mountain/MCT Campus

Joseph Tagger (Morgan Freeman), Agent Buchanan (Cillian Murphy) and Evelyn Caster (Rebecca Hall) watch Will Caster (Johnny Depp) on a monitor in the new film Transcendence.

Wally Pfisters film Transcendence depicts Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) working toward the advancement of artificial intelligence, but those that work with and for him are taken down by an anti-technology group. Caster gets shot and is dying, which leads his wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), and friend, Max (Paul Bettany), to upload him into the system, creating an artificial intelligence of Caster.

This movie encourages us to think about our relationship with technology and how far we are willing to take it. How hooked are we and how is it controlling our daily lives? It asks if we are willing to let technology get so advanced that it becomes self aware, that it desires to make changes, mend people and take matters into its own hands.

If someone were to be uploaded to such a system, we wouldnt know how much of them remained the human person and how much of them had changed to accommodate the artificial intelligence.

This movie also probes the idea of how long we are willing to hold onto something from the past before letting it go. Evelyn allowed her husbands artificial intelligence to thrive for five years before realizing it was an invasion of humanity and privacy.

Overall, the movie was easy to follow and different, but it wasnt believable. If the solution of destroying an artificial intelligence that has access to every aspect of technology was to simply upload a virus that would utterly destroy all of technology, more people would probably act out.

If people suddenly no longer had access to phones, the Internet and power, riots would break out because todays society relies so heavily on technology.

See the original post here:

'Transcendence' fails to transcend

Programming Artificial Intelligence For Games – A Student’s Perspective – Video

Posted on by


Programming Artificial Intelligence For Games - A Student #39;s Perspective
My talk about Artificial Intelligence at SGA Conference 2014 in Stockholm, Sweden. Visit my website! http://www.adabelletc.com For more info about Troglobyte Studios: https://www.facebook.com/Tro...

By: Adabelle Combrink

Continue reading here:

Programming Artificial Intelligence For Games - A Student's Perspective - Video

The Machine Movie CLIP – We Found A Picture (2014) – Sci-Fi Thriller HD – Video

Posted on by


The Machine Movie CLIP - We Found A Picture (2014) - Sci-Fi Thriller HD
Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6h Subscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUn Subscribe to INDIE TRAILERS: http://goo.gl/iPUuo Like us on FACEBOOK: http://goo.gl/dHs73 The Machine...

By: Film Festivals and Indie Films

See the original post:

The Machine Movie CLIP - We Found A Picture (2014) - Sci-Fi Thriller HD - Video

Google, Facebook and other tech companies race to develop artificial intelligence

Posted on by

The latest Silicon Valley arms race is a contest to build the best artificial brains. Facebook, Google and other leading tech companies are jockeying to hire top scientists in the field of artificial intelligence, while spending heavily on a quest to make computers think more like people.

They're not building humanoid robots -- not yet, anyway. But a number of tech giants and startups are trying to build computer systems that understand what you want, perhaps before you knew you wanted it.

"It's important to position yourself in this market for the next decade," said Yann LeCunn, a leading New York University researcher hired to run Facebook's new A.I. division in December. "A lot is riding on artificial intelligence and content analysis, and on being smarter about how people and computers interact."

Artificial intelligence programs can already recognize images and translate human speech. Tech researchers want to build systems that can match the human brain's ability to handle more complex challenges -- to intuitively predict traffic conditions while steering automated cars or drones, for example, or to grasp the intent of written texts and spoken messages, so they can better anticipate what kind of information, including ads, their users want to see.

Facebook has recruited several well-regarded A.I. scientists, including one from Google, in recent months. Google has been working on artificial intelligence for several years, enlisting prominent researchers such as Stanford's Andrew Ng and the University of Toronto's Geoffrey Hinton to help build computer systems known as "neural networks," which are capable of teaching themselves.

But in a sign it wants to do more, Google paid a reported $400 million in January to buy DeepMind, a British startup said to be working on artificial intelligence for image recognition, e-commerce recommendations and video games. DeepMind had also drawn interest from Facebook. Last month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg invested personally in Vicarious, a Silicon Valley startup working on software that can recognize -- and draw -- images of animals or other things.

"In the last 18 months, every venture capital firm I know has made at least one investment" in artificial intelligence, robotics or related sectors, said Raj Singh, CEO of Tempo AI, which makes a "smart calendar" mobile app that acts like a personal assistant. Tempo uses technology from SRI, the Menlo Park think tank that developed key elements of Apple's Siri and has spun off several artificial intelligence startups.

Competition among digital personal assistants is especially heated: While each works differently, Tempo is vying with Siri, Google Now and Microsoft's new Cortana. Through a series of upgrades, each has tried to outdo the others in providing reminders and anticipating questions by analyzing relevant data from users' calendars, contact lists and email.

The ultimate goal is something closer to "Samantha," the personable operating system voiced by actress Scarlett Johansson in the film "Her," though it undoubtedly will be more businesslike.

Right now, even Siri fans have voiced frustration with its limitations, including balky silences and nonresponsive answers. But there are signs Apple is working feverishly to improve it.

Read more here:

Google, Facebook and other tech companies race to develop artificial intelligence

Smart Wind and Solar Power

Posted on by

Turbines at this wind farm north of Limon, Colorado, collect and transmit massive amounts of data.

Big data and artificial intelligence are producing ultra-accurate forecasts that will make it feasible to integrate much more renewable energy into the grid.

Ultra-accurate forecasting of wind and solar power.

Dealing with the intermittency of renewable energy will be crucial for its expansion.

Wind power is booming on the open plains of eastern Colorado. Travel seven miles north of the town of Limon on Highway 71 and then head east on County Road 3p, a swath of dusty gravel running alongside new power lines: within minutes youll be surrounded by towering wind turbines in rows stretching for miles. Three large wind farms have been built in the area since 2011. A new one is going up this year.

Every few seconds, almost every one of the hundreds of turbines records the wind speed and its own power output. Every five minutes they dispatch data to high-performance computers 100 miles away at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder. There artificial-intelligence-based software crunches the numbers, along with data from weather satellites, weather stations, and other wind farms in the state. The result: wind power forecasts of unprecedented accuracy that are making it possible for Colorado to use far more renewable energy, at lower cost, than utilities ever thought possible.

The amount of wind power has more than doubled since 2009.

The forecasts are helping power companies deal with one of the biggest challenges of wind power: its intermittency. Using small amounts of wind power is no problem for utilities. They are accustomed to dealing with variabilityafter all, demand for electricity changes from season to season, even from minute to minute. However, a utility that wants to use a lot of wind power needs backup power to protect against a sudden loss of wind. These backup plants, which typically burn fossil fuels, are expensive and dirty. But with more accurate forecasts, utilities can cut the amount of power that needs to be held in reserve, minimizing their role.

Before the forecasts were developed, Xcel Energy, which supplies much of Colorados power, ran ads opposing a proposal that it use renewable sources for a modest 10 percent of its power. It mailed flyers to its customers claiming that such a mandate would increase electricity costs by as much as $1.5 billion over 20 years.

But thanks in large part to the improved forecasts, Xcel, one of the countrys largest utilities, has made an about-face.

See the rest here:

Smart Wind and Solar Power

oIsAI-A Version 1 0 – Artificial Intelligence Robot – Video

Posted on by


oIsAI-A Version 1 0 - Artificial Intelligence Robot
We are very proud to announce that the oIsCore Projects latest Artificial Intelligence Robot oIsAI-A 1.0, now has the capability of speaking to you!! After t...

By: oIsCore Project: Friendly Artificial Intelligence, Web Systems and Technology for Homes Businesses

See the article here:

oIsAI-A Version 1 0 - Artificial Intelligence Robot - Video

New artificial intelligence facial recognition system could be 'privacy apocalypse'

Posted on by

Imagine having a pair of Google glasses at a party, turning over to look at an attractive woman, and because of facial recognition technology be able to get to know her on Facebook and ask her on a date on Tinder.

An artificial intelligence system known as "DeepFace" could make that possible in the near future. The controversial facial-recognition software is a marketing companies' dream come true and a nightmare for privacy advocates.

Facebook -- which already uses a less effective facial recognition system to allow users to tag photographs -- has researchers looking into the system. While law enforcement is already experimenting with the system and expanding databases to increase its effectiveness.

Facebook spokeswoman Lydia Chan told Local 10 News contributor CNN Money that the technology was considered "theoretical research" and the company is not using it yet.

The technology has been advancing since the 1960s. The FBI recognizes the technology is not reliable, but it's getting closer. "DeepFace" creates three-dimensional models of the faces and uses "Deep Learning" -- a system that mimics the structure of neurons in the brain.

While studies show humans can identify facial differences about 97.53 percent of the time, "DeepFace" promises to do so at 97.25 percent. The system uses more than 120 million different parameters to analyze large data sets and draw connections.

The FBI is reportedly working on a database of millions of photographs and fingerprints called Next Generation Identification. The technology could be linked to driver's license databases and other data to be classified by an FBI Universal Control Number.

The future of "identification services is rapidly advancing beyond existing capabilities," said the FBI's 2008 "Privacy Impact Assessment" adding that the technology should be used as "an investigative aid and not as a means of positive identification."

Nonetheless, the privacy concerns are such that the American Civil Liberties Union has referred to facial-recognition technology as "The Privacy Apocalypse" The Federal Trade Commission issuedrecommendations that asked commerce to keep consumer privacy in mind. But the ACLU policy makers do not think that's enough.

The potential "socio-political dangers of the technology," and possibilities of the power of the technology are something scholars from New York University to the University of California have been looking into.

Original post:

New artificial intelligence facial recognition system could be 'privacy apocalypse'


  1. Artificial Intelligence