Lifeboat Foundation

A series of tests designed to challenge some of the best AI systems in the world has pitted them against the human IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test to find that their intelligence currently sits at the level of a 4-year-old child.

Conducted by a team from the University of Illinois in the US, the tests found that our most advanced AI systems match the average toddler in terms of smartness. When the age was upped to seven, the software programs found themselves well beaten.

The IQ test is just one measure of intelligence, of course, and computers are way ahead of us in some tasks (like the speed of their calculations). What the test tries to do is assess the ability of someone to rationally understand the world around them — it’s in this particular area of self-awareness where software is still some way behind.

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Apple has bought a company that makes image-recognition technology for smartphones, its second artificial-intelligence deal in four days.

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The drone scouts ahead and provides map data to the four-legged robot. (via Vocativ)

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) machines can already do several remarkable things: they are far better than humans at performing complex calculations, and they’re pretty good at playing chess. Researchers have once again tested the limits of AI by putting one of the world’s most intelligent AI machines through its paces with an IQ test, and the results are in: it has the same IQ as an average four-year-old child, as reported by MIT Technology Review.

Measuring intelligence through an IQ test is thought to be the best way to determine the intellectual capacity of people from a huge range of human cultures. A team of researchers, led by Stellan Ohlsson at the University of Illinois, decided to apply this concept to an intelligence outside of any normal human culture: an AI machine developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The intelligent machine, dubbed ConceptNet 4, was given a verbal reasoning examination calibrated for four-year-old children. Known as the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, it calculates a child’s IQ by asking a selection of questions from five categories.

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Swiss-based scientists have developed a robot double act in which a hexacopter helps a dog-like, land-based robot find its way around obstacles. The technology could be deployed in space exploration or warfare.

“Flying and walking robots can use their complementary features in terms of viewpoint and payload capability to the best in a heterogeneous team,” says an intro to a video posted on YouTube by the team at ETH Zurich, Switzerland’s leading tech research institution.

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They’ll be back.

Experts have previously voiced their fears of malevolent Terminator -style artificial intelligence developing sufficient smarts to pose a risk to humans in the future, but the very real dangers of robotic warfare are already becoming a problem.

Despite the best efforts of a huge coalition of scientists and tech leaders calling for a ban on the development of autonomous weapons systems, the failure of the United Nations to effectively regulate the ‘killer robot’ industry is already enabling the makers of dangerous technology, according to a report in The Guardian.

Continue reading “Risk of robotic warfare edges closer as UN regulation stalls, experts warn” »

1. A heart of foam.
2. Artificial arteries.
3. Brain implants.
4. Robotic hand that can recognize objects by Feel.
5. Upside-Down Rover to explore Europa.

Welcome to #18 Avatar Technology Digest. Again, get ready for exciting news on Technology, Medical Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence. Thank you for watching us. You are welcome to Subscribe, follow us in social media, leave your comments and join the conversation. And here are the top stories of the last week.

1) A heart of foam could replace your own. Existing artificial hearts have multiple moving parts, which increases the chance of failure, but this new device is just a single piece of material. Researchers inspired by soft robots have built a pumping artificial heart that could one day replace the real deal.
The team of Bioengineers at Cornell University build their robots out of a solid, plastic foam, which naturally has an interconnected network of tubes to let air flow – just as our muscles are permeated by blood vessels. A solid coating of plastic seals everything inside like a skin.

Continue reading “#18 Avatar Technology Digest / Paralyzed Patients Control Comp…” »

Leave a human baby with some toys and it’ll quickly learn to pick them up. Now a robot with deep learning capabilities has done the same thing.

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More details on Honda’s secretive humanoid project.

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