World first as Google DeepMind’s AI crushes the world’s top Starcraft players
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Starcraft is a game of strategy, and as a result DeepMind’s AI had to learn an entirely new type of game play in order to thrash its opponents. AI agents developed by Google’s DeepMind subsidiary have finally beaten human pros at Starcraft II — a first...
Creative AI’s have learnt how to create their own video games
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI is getting increasingly capable at creating quality synthetic content, and that includes books, scripts, and worlds. Today we have AI’s building other AI’s and fake news stories, and AI’s that write their own code, and doing a better job of it than the...
The US Pentagon releases it’s plan to become a world leader in AI
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial Intelligence has great promise in the civilian and military realms, and as countries weaponise it the US doesn’t want to be left behind. The Pentagon, which last year embedded the world’s best robo-hacker into its critical systems to protect them from cyber attacks,...
New AI Fake News generator is too dangerous to release, say its creators
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF It will not be long before we cannot differentiate the difference between real content and fake content, and that has a myriad of very serious implications, none of which we are prepared for. There are several very scary AI’s in existence today, take for...
Nvidia unveiled a new AI engine that renders virtual world’s in real time
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Arguably the most complex part of creating VR content is coding and building the environments, Nvidia just bought those barriers crashing down. Nvidia have announced that they’ve introduced a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) Deep Learning model that “aims to catapult the graphics industry into the AI...
Create Digital Humans in minutes, Soul Machines unveils Digital DNA platform
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Avatars that resemble real people, in their behaviours and speech, are on the rise, and some people are using them to create immortal versions of themselves. Soul Machines, the company behind some of the world’s most human-like digital avatars that are already in service...
MIT’s new neural network can explain its decisions
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As AI gets more deeply embedded into the world’s digital fabric, in everything from self-driving cars to high frequency stock trading, it’s crucial we know how it makes its decisions. A child is presented with a picture of various shapes and is asked to...
Researchers want to revolutionise AI by combining Quantum computers and Neural Networks
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today, I talk not just about Exponential Technologies but also about Exponential Combinations, by combining Quantum Computing with Neural Networks we’d revolutionise both. A new research project led by researchers at the Heriot-Watt University in the US aims to harness the power of quantum computers, computers...
Researchers successfully weaponise AI to create a “Biometric master key”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As criminals continue to weaponise artificial intelligence they are inevitably going to find new ways to exploit weaknesses in existing security systems. Just like any lock can be picked if you have the right key any biometric scanner can be fooled. For years now...
Breakthrough AI hacking tool cracks millions of user passwords in minutes
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Artificial Intelligence is a cyber security game changer, for better and worse, and we need to be better prepared for what’s coming. Last year the credit reporting agency Equifax announced that malicious hackers had leaked the personal information of over 143 million people after their system...
NASA’s ISS robot companion CIMON gets caught copping an attitude
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As more machines and humans work alongside one another how we interact with one another will become increasingly crucial. As he entered his final month on the International Space Station (ISS) on Monday, Alexander Gerst could be proud that he’s helped given birth to...
Israel’s autonomous crane takes aim at the fully automated construction sites of the future
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF New technologies like AI, machine vision and autonomous robots and machines mean one day we’ll see fully autonomous construction sites – and they’ll need cranes. A little while ago I discussed how tomorrow’s construction sites will become increasingly autonomous thanks to the arrival of...
Stuntmen face the last act as technology comes to replace them
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF There are increasingly few areas of work and society that technology isn’t influencing, and even stuntmen aren’t immune. A new Artificial Intelligence (AI) system has been used to create computer animated stuntmen that could make action movies cooler than before. Researchers at University of...
Death isn’t forever, companies build digital avatars so people can “live on after death”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Digital Avatars will mean that physical human death is simply a doorway into a new digital reality where our descendants interact with our Avatars instead of the real, physical us. Over the past couple of years, asides from the giant strides we’ve seen in...
Inside Google’s plan to make sure AI is safe
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As AI becomes more deeply embedded into our every day lives it is imperative that there are safeguards in place to make sure it’s safe. Making sure Artificial Intelligence (AI) does what we want and behaves in predictable ways will be crucial as the...
China debuts the world’s first AI news anchor
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As it gets easier to create high quality, natural sounding “human-like” avatars we’ll see more emerge and take on new and varied roles. Over the past couple of years there’s been a huge increase in the amount of press columns devoted to the topic...
Scientists get funding to grow neural networks in petri dishes
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The future of computing isn’t silicon or quantum, it’s biological. Will the computers of the future be built in factories as they are today, or will they be grown in labs like cell cultures? You might think that this is a daft question, and...
World’s first AI government policy maker gives China a diplomatic advantage
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI will play an increasingly central role in both government policy making and governing as China rolls out their first AI policy maker. If you’re a foreign policy maker with a government then, whether you like it or not, you’ll soon be working with...
Mine hunting bees tracked with Lidar help farmers boost crop yields
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Bees help pollinate nearly 75 percent of our crops, this new system can track their progress and predict deadly colony collapses before they happen. You might expect to hear an angry buzzing when honeybees have been disturbed. But some apiarists reckon they can also...
This creative AI paints like the old masters
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF We’re always told ai cannot be imaginative or creative, but human creativity can be cloned. Recently art made by Artificial Intelligence (AI) software has become a field in its own right and it’s become quite a niche market in certain circles. As a result...
