Daily Archives: May 20, 2017

In Brief The Chief Executive of Volvo has announced that, thanks to Tesla, the company is increasing focus on electric vehicles at the expense of diesel engines. The company expects to launch their first electric cars in 2019. Diesels Death Knell Electric vehicles (EVs) are rapidly becoming a juggernaut in the future of personal vehicles. Tesla is leading the charge in bringing electric cars to the mainstream. Now, other companies looking to capitalize on that momentum are joining in on the fun. Volvos President and CEO,Hakan Samuelsson, recently talked to a German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, about how the Swedish car company is ramping up its plans for EVs.

Not only are they looking to expand on electric engines, but the CEO also mentioned in the interview that they will no longer pursue developing diesel engines. From todays perspective, we will not develop any more new generation diesel engines.

Image credit: Volvo

This announcement comes shortly after Elon Musk gave the world a first look at Teslas upcoming all-electric semi-truck.

Samuelsson explained furtherin an email to Reuters, We have just launched a brand new generation of petrol and diesel engines, highlighting our commitment to this technology. As a result, a decision on the development of a new generation of diesel engines is not required.

Samuelsson admits that Tesla is the driving force behind the decision to focus on EVs. We have to recognize that Tesla has managed to offer such a car for which people are lining up. In this area, there should also be space for us, with high quality and attractive design, he said in the email.

Volvo does not intend to completelyphase out the further development of its latest dieselengine it will continue to upgrade the engines to meet tightening emissions standards. Samuelsson expects these stricter environmental standards to add to the price of diesel engines, giving an additional advantage to electric engines. Reuters reports that Goldman Sachs estimates an additional cost of more than $330 to each engine.

The Volvo EVsare expected to become available in 2019 and cost something in the range of $35,000 to $40,000. Volvo is hoping to release the cars with a range of roughly 402 kilometers (250 miles) per charge. These additions to the EV market will give commuters more options than ever to reduce their carbon footprints.

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Volvo Says That They Will Stop Making Diesel Engines, Thanks to Tesla - Futurism

In Brief At its I/O '17 conference this week, Google shared details of its AutoML project, an artificial intelligence that can assist in the creation of other AIs. By automating some of the complicated process, AutoML could make machine learning more accessible to non-experts. Googles AutoML

One of the more noteworthy remarksto come out ofGoogle I/O 17 conferencethis week was CEO Sundar Pichai recalling how his team had joked that they have achieved AI inception with AutoML. Instead of crafting layers of dreams like in theChristopher Nolan flick, however, the AutoML system layers artificial intelligence (AI), with AI systems creating better AI systems.

The AutoML project focuses on deep learning, a technique that involves passing data through layers of neural networks. Creating these layers is complicated, so Googles idea was to create AI that could do it for them.

In our approach (which we call AutoML), a controller neural net can propose a child model architecture, which can then be trained and evaluated for quality on a particular task, the company explains on the Google Research Blog. That feedback is then used to inform the controller how to improve its proposals for the next round. We repeat this process thousands of times generating new architectures, testing them, and giving that feedback to the controller to learn from.

So far, they have usedthe AutoML tech to design networks forimage and speech recognition tasks. In the former, the system matched Googles experts. In the latter, it exceeded them, designing better architectures than the humans were able to create.

AI that can supplement human efforts to develop better machine learning technologies could democratize the field asthe relatively few experts wouldnt be stretched so thin. If we succeed, we think this can inspire new types of neural nets and make it possible for non-experts to create neural nets tailored to their particular needs, allowing machine learning to have a greater impact to everyone, according to Googles blog post.

AutoML has thepotential to impact many of the other AI and machine learning-driven softwares that were discussed at the conference. It could lead to improvements inthe speech recognition tech required for a voice-controlled Google Home, the facial recognition software powering theSuggested Sharing feature in Google Photos, and the image recognition technology utilized by Google Lens, which allows the user to point their Google Phone at an object (such as a flower) in order to identify it.

Truly, AI has the potential to affect far more than just our homes and phones. Its already leading to dramatic advancements in healthcare, finance, agriculture, and so many other fields. If we can use an already remarkable technology to actually improvethat same kind of technology, every advancement made by humans can lead to machine-powered advancements, which lead to better tools for humans, and so on. The potential of AI then draws to mind the title of another sci-fi film: limitless.

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Google's New AI Is Better at Creating AI Than the Company's ... - Futurism

In Brief Students who recently participated in the Caltech Space Challenge share their ideas on how the Moon could be mined for fuel. This would help support missions into deep space by lowering the cost and increasing the frequency of trips. Mining Our Way to Mars

Every other year since 2011,32 of the brightest young minds from across the globe are invited to participate in the Caltech Space Challenge. Theyre split into two teams andgiven five days to come up with a plan toaddress a mission statement. This years directive was to design a launch and supply station on the Moon to support missions into deep space.

In a post on The Conversation, five of the students involved in the challenge have shared their insights on the benefits of such a station and how we could make it happen. They explain that the presence of a lunar refueling station would decrease the energy needed to leave Earths atmosphere. The speed required to break out of the atmosphere is 11 kilometers per second (25,000 miles per hour), which is far easier to achieve without the added weight of excess fuel. Launching with just enough to fuel to get to a lunar gas station with a weaker gravitational pull and then heading on to Mars from there would save both time and money.

The fuel that would power these missions would be drawn from the Moons ice, which could be processed into a hydrogen-oxygen propellant that is already used in many rockets. The studentspropose using three types of rovers on the Moon to perform this task. The Prospector would seek out ice, the Constructor would build a launch pad and roads, and the Miner would collect ice and deliver it to storage tanks connected to electrolysis processing plants, which would transform it into usable energy. From there, the fuel would be transported to a location in stable orbit between the Earth and the Moon where spacecraft could refuel.

The race to get people to Mars has been heating up in recent years, with both governments and private companies competing to be the first to reach the Red Planet.Elon Musk, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and NASA have all stated their intentions, and stopping by the Moon first plays a big part in many of these efforts. NASA plans to build a new space station,the Deep Space Gateway (DSG), in lunar orbit to act as a pit stop on the way to Mars, and the agency has already laid the groundwork for a space fueling station of sortswith theirRobotic Refueling Mission launch in November 2016.

Reaching Mars isnt some Mount Everest/because its there situation for space explorers. The planet could prove instrumental in the survival of the human species. Stephen Hawking has said he believes we only have another hundred years or so on Earth, and right now, Mars is the closest thing we have to a back-up plan. The problem is, we havent even come close to actually stepping foot on it yet. Between the people already in the space industry and students like those who participated in theCaltech Space Challenge, we have no shortage of great minds working to transform humanity into a multi-planetary species.

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A Gas Station in Space Could Allow Us to Reach Other Worlds - Futurism