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Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

For discussions of events and conditions not necessarily related to Peak Oil.

Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sat 13 May 2017, 14:30:01

Here’s how the Russians might have snuck a recording device into the Oval Office

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A puppet and his master. Smell your fingers if you're home sick for Putin.

When this photo became public, people were quick to question the wisdom of allowing into the Oval Office at least one Russian (the photographer) who hadn’t been screened enough to identify his dual role. Much less, one who brought with him electronic equipment in the form of his camera.The Russians would love to place a recording device in the Oval Office, of course, and have a track record of using innocuous-seeming methods to bug their opponents. (Gizmodo noted that the Russians had once had schoolchildren present the U.S. ambassador to Russia with a decorative carving that included a listening device.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Trump to host Lavrov in the White House, emphasizing how unusual such access would be. It also makes clear that the Russian government actively sought that access, which is relevant to the current discussion.

The Russian Embassy tweeted a photo of Trump shaking the hand of Russia's ambassador in what appears to be the Oval Office. Current and former US intelligence officials have accused Kislyak of being a top spy and recruiter of spies, a notion that Russian officials have dismissed.

A White House statement after the meeting omitted any mention of Kislyak's presence, instead focusing on Trump's conversation with Lavrov, which the President described as "very, very good."

Lavrov, who started off a news conference at the Russian Embassy by remarking that "relations between our countries ... are not in the best condition," also fielded several questions about Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 race to obvious irritation, he mocked the idea, saying it must be "humiliating for the American people to realize the Russian Federation is controlling the situation in the United States."

Life Imates Art - Like Saturday Night Live - Putin is "just in town, you know, hiding in the walls" — and he brought along a little Christmas gift. "This is Elf on the Shelf — it's fun!" Putin says, revealing an elf with one eye that's definitely a camera lens. "You just put it right here, next to your internet router. You keep it there all year. It's fun, yes?"
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sun 14 May 2017, 09:29:59

Ransomware cyber-attack threat escalating: Next cyber-attack could be imminent, warn experts

Friday's cyber-attack has affected more than 200,000 systems in 150 countries, Europol chief Rob Wainwright says.

Speaking to Britain's ITV, he said the world faced an escalating threat, and there was concern about the level of potential attacks on Monday
morning.

Mr Wainwright said he was concerned that the numbers of those affected would continue to rise when people returned to work on Monday morning.
"We're in the face of an escalating threat, the numbers are going up"

"We are running around 200 global operations against cyber crime each year but we've never seen anything like this. "The latest count is over 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries. Many of those victims will be businesses, including large corporations. The global reach is unprecedented."

"It's very important that people patch their systems now.
"We have stopped this one, but there will be another one coming and it will not be stoppable by us.

"There's no reason for them to stop. It's not really much effort for them to remove the "kill switch" that helped to stop it and then start over. So there's a good chance they are going to do it... maybe not this weekend, but quite likely on Monday morning."

"Version 1 of WannaCrypt was stoppable but version 2.0 will likely remove the flaw. "

Fellow security researcher Darien Huss, from tech firm Proofpoint, echoed MalwareTech's view.

"I highly suspect that, with the amount of coverage that this incident is getting, there are probably already people that are working to incorporate the exploit that was used for spreading," he said.

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LONDON — Security experts are warning that the global cyberattack that began on Friday is likely to be magnified in the new workweek as users return to their offices and turn on their computers.

Many workers, particularly in Asia, had already logged off on Friday when the malicious software, stolen from the United States government, began proliferating across computer systems around the world. So the true impact of the attack may emerge on Monday as employees return and log in.

Moreover, copycat variants of the malicious software behind the attacks are likely to spread, since the malware uses mostly open-source code and is easily replicable.

Cyber-attack: Europol says it was unprecedented in scale

Animated Map of Attack - A cyber-attack that hit organisations worldwide including the UK's National Health Service was "unprecedented", Europe's police agency says.

Europol also warned a "complex international investigation" was required "to identify the culprits".

The 22-year-old British researcher, whose Twitter handle is @MalwareTechBlog and who confirmed his involvement but insisted on anonymity because he did not want the public scrutiny, found the kill switch’s domain name — a long and complicated set of letters. Realizing that the name was not yet registered, he bought the name himself. When the site went live, the attack stopped spreading, much to the researcher’s surprise.

“The kill switch is why the U.S. hasn’t been touched so far,” said Matthieu Suiche, founder of Comae Technologies, a cybersecurity company in the United Arab Emirates. “But it’s only temporary. All the attackers would have to do is create a variant of the hack with a different domain name. I would expect them to do that.”

Real-Time Cyber Tracker Map
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sun 14 May 2017, 15:06:35

Round Two: WannaCry Ransomware is Back With UpGrades

On Friday, a variation of the WannaCry ransomware ripped across the globe, infecting UK hospitals, a Spanish telecom company, and companies in various other sectors. After several hours, the attack was suddenly blocked from spreading much further when a security researcher registered a domain which ordered the malware to stop infecting new machines.

But, as many expected, that was only a temporary fix. Over Friday and Saturday, samples of the malware emerged without that debilitating feature, meaning that attackers may be able to resume spreading ransomware even though a security researcher cut off the original wave.

"I can confirm we've had versions without the kill switch domain connect since yesterday," Costin Raiu, director of global research and analysis team at Kaspersky Lab told Motherboard on Saturday.

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Microsoft Security Bulletin MS17-010 - Critical
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby Cid_Yama » Sun 14 May 2017, 16:59:25

So the US Government created a monster, but because our security is so lousy, someone stole it and is using it against, apparently everyone. Good job, US Cyber-Command.

Hope our nukes are better protected or they will be going off in their silos.
"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." - Patrick Henry

The level of injustice and wrong you endure is directly determined by how much you quietly submit to. Even to the point of extinction.
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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Sun 14 May 2017, 19:29:52

Cid_Yama wrote:So the US Government created a monster, but because our security is so lousy, someone stole it and is using it against, apparently everyone. Good job, US Cyber-Command.

Hope our nukes are better protected or they will be going off in their silos.

The NSA/CIA created many monsters, like a hydra, and now the bill is coming due. Unfortunately there's no Hercules, looking to make some spare change for some extra labors, when you need him.

The weak link on the nuclear pull chain is sitting in the Oval Office.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late.
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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby ritter » Mon 15 May 2017, 17:20:08

vox_mundi wrote:
The weak link on the nuclear pull chain is sitting in the Oval Office.
LOL
8O
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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Tue 16 May 2017, 13:22:54

When the World Is Led by a Child

Video - At certain times Donald Trump has seemed like a budding authoritarian, a corrupt Nixon, a rabble-rousing populist or a big business corporatist.

But as Trump has settled into his White House role, he has given a series of long interviews, and when you study the transcripts it becomes clear that fundamentally he is none of these things.

At base, Trump is an infantalist. There are three tasks that most mature adults have sort of figured out by the time they hit 25. Trump has mastered none of them. Immaturity is becoming the dominant note of his presidency, lack of self-control his leitmotif.

First, most adults have learned to sit still. But mentally, Trump is still a 7-year-old boy who is bouncing around the classroom. Trump’s answers in these interviews are not very long — 200 words at the high end — but he will typically flit through four or five topics before ending up with how unfair the press is to him.

His inability to focus his attention makes it hard for him to learn and master facts. He is ill informed about his own policies and tramples his own talking points. It makes it hard to control his mouth. On an impulse, he will promise a tax reform when his staff has done little of the actual work.

Second, most people of drinking age have achieved some accurate sense of themselves, some internal criteria to measure their own merits and demerits. But Trump seems to need perpetual outside approval to stabilize his sense of self, so he is perpetually desperate for approval, telling heroic fabulist tales about himself.

In a short period of time I understood everything there was to know about health care,” he told Time. “A lot of the people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber,” he told The Associated Press, referring to his joint session speech.

By Trump’s own account, he knows more about aircraft carrier technology than the Navy. According to his interview with The Economist, he invented the phrase “priming the pump” (even though it was famous by 1933). Trump is not only trying to deceive others. His falsehoods are attempts to build a world in which he can feel good for an instant and comfortably deceive himself.

He is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence. Trump thought he’d be celebrated for firing James Comey. He thought his press coverage would grow wildly positive once he won the nomination. He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies.

Third, by adulthood most people can perceive how others are thinking. For example, they learn subtle arts such as false modesty so they won’t be perceived as obnoxious.

But Trump seems to have not yet developed a theory of mind. Other people are black boxes that supply either affirmation or disapproval. As a result, he is weirdly transparent. He wants people to love him, so he is constantly telling interviewers that he is widely loved. In Trump’s telling, every meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes but his guests stayed two hours because they liked him so much.

Which brings us to the reports that Trump betrayed an intelligence source and leaked secrets to his Russian visitors. From all we know so far, Trump didn’t do it because he is a Russian agent, or for any malevolent intent. He did it because he is sloppy, because he lacks all impulse control, and above all because he is a 7-year-old boy desperate for the approval of those he admires.
"I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day" - d.tRump

There is a golden rule in the world of espionage that when one government supplies intelligence to another it must not be passed on to a third party without permission of the original supplier. The reason is simple: it could put the lives of their human informants at risk.

The “We badly want to understand Trump, to grasp him,” David Roberts writes in Vox. “It might give us some sense of control, or at least an ability to predict what he will do next. But what if there’s nothing to understand? What if there is no there there?

And out of that void comes a carelessness that quite possibly betrayed an intelligence source, and endangered a country.Russian leak story reveals one other thing, the dangerousness of a hollow man.


Our institutions depend on people who have enough engraved character traits to fulfill their assigned duties. But there is perpetually less to Trump than it appears. When we analyze a president’s utterances we tend to assume that there is some substantive process behind the words, that it’s part of some strategic intent.

But Trump’s statements don’t necessarily come from anywhere, lead anywhere or have a permanent reality beyond his wish to be liked at any given instant.

We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.

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Clip's In; Hammer's Back; Safety's Off - Little Finger's Squeezing Trigger
“Obviously, they are in a downward spiral right now and have got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that’s happening,” ... “The chaos that is being created by the lack of discipline is creating … a worrisome environment.”

- Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), - Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

U.S. Ally ‘Might Stop Sharing Intelligence’ After Trump’s Leak

Donald Trump’s first overseas trip as president was already poised to be awkward. Foreign Policy magazine reported yesterday that our NATO allies are “scrambling” to tailor their upcoming meeting “to avoid taxing President Donald Trump’s notoriously short attention span.”

A source briefed extensively on the meeting’s preparations explained, “It’s kind of ridiculous how they are preparing to deal with Trump. It’s like they’re preparing to deal with a child – someone with a short attention span and mood who has no knowledge of NATO, no interest in in-depth policy issues, nothing…. They’re freaking out.”

And that was before our NATO partners learned that Trump apparently shared highly classified secrets with Russia for unknown reasons. The Associated Press reported today that U.S. allies “have anxiously wondered” if America’s strange amateur president could be trusted with sensitive national security information, and now those countries have “new reasons to worry.”
“If it proves to be true that the American president passed on internal intelligence matters, that would be highly worrying,” Burkhard Lischka, a senior German lawmaker, said in a statement to The Associated Press.

A second European official told the AP that their country might stop sharing intelligence with the United States as a result of Trump’s disclosure to Russia.

...
I have been asking Director Comey & others, from the beginning of my administration, to find the LEAKERS in the intelligence community.....
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 16, 2017
Look in the Mirror


Why Is Donald Trump So Obsessed With Surveillance?

... Trump himself has claimed that he possesses information on the personal lives of his hotel guests. In a little-noticed passage in his 2000 book The America We Deserve, Trump wrote that he knew of at least one conservative senator who had “spent more than a few nights with his twenty-something girlfriend at a hotel I own.” He also wrote that a married conservative columnist “brought his girlfriend to my resorts for the weekend." ...
Last edited by vox_mundi on Tue 16 May 2017, 14:17:59, edited 1 time in total.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late.
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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Tue 16 May 2017, 13:57:17

Never mind custody decisions, let's AI up our police cars

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Not long after the news that UK cops may use artificial intelligence to make decisions on custody, Nvidia was showing off AI-for-cops at its GTC event – except this time it's the vehicular sort.

... From the outside, it’s a typical mid-sized SUV in police trim – although the roof-mounted drone would probably attract a bit of attention.

There are three unobtrusive surveillance cameras, two mounted on the sides of the light bar, plus what appears to be one rear camera (I’m not positive about the rear camera – but it would make sense to me).

The cameras relay lots of information to the officers seated inside the car. In the picture below, the cop car is cruising through a suburban parking lot and on the surrounding streets.

As the car moves, it captures images of each car it passes from the front, and both sides. In the parking lot, it was capturing licence plates and, presumably, has the capacity of running those plates through a central database to ferret out wrong doers at the local Lowes. Parking ticket scofflaws beware.

There was another display inside the car that was running different video. In this scenario, the car was driving along downtown streets, merrily capturing the faces of pedestrians, matching them up with images of super villains, underworld kingpins, tortfeasors and punks. Oh, and people like us too.

Capping off the dream cop car is, of course, a drone. It could be used for crowd control situations, it looks like it has a loudspeaker on it, so it could order crowds to disperse. Considering that the drone must have an extremely high fidelity 4k camera on it, any self-respecting rioter would certainly make destroying the police drone priority one. Besides, it would make one hell of a trophy.

The technologies on this police car aren’t pie in the sky, they’re available today – it’s just a bit of engineering and software away from being deployed on the street where you live. But, like everything, it comes at a cost in terms of money and, something less quantifiable, our privacy. Is it worth it?

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Stories from the Front ...

Fighting in Megacities - The Army’s Next Challenge

The Human Domain and the Future of Army Warfare: Present as Prelude to 2050

Influencing Behavior in Mid-21st Century Asymmetric and Irregular Warfare

The Weapons of World War Four

The Long Telegram of 2050

Plutocratic Insurgency Note No. 3: No Shoring: Job Obsolescence Via Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics

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Russian Autonomous Weapon Systems - 2017


Russia Developing Autonomous 'Swarm of Drones' in New Arms Race With U.S., China

Russia is working toward developing artificial intelligence for unmanned aerial vehicles that could one day be unified to form “swarms of drones,” the company responsible for harnessing the technology said Monday.

In Russia, the Kronstadt Group is in charge of developing the technology for both military and civilian usage. The company’s CEO has said it is inevitable that “swarms of drones” will one day fly over combat zones, “It will, undoubtedly, happen in the future,” Armen Isaakyan told Russia’s state news agency Tass. “To date, it’s too early to talk about such ‘swarms’ except for some secret programs, perhaps. Still, there already exist completely autonomous AI operation systems that provide the means for UAV clusters, when they fulfill missions autonomously, sharing tasks between them, and interact.”

China also has been experimenting with the technology. In February, it set a world record when a formation of 1,000 drones performed at an air show in Guangzhou. The state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corporation has claimed that “our swarming drone technology is the top of the world.”


Self-learning neuromorphic chip that composes music

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Today, at the imec technology forum (ITF2017), imec demonstrated the world's first self-learning neuromorphic chip. The brain-inspired chip, based on OxRAM technology, has the capability of self-learning and has been demonstrated to have the ability to compose music.

The chip is self-learning, meaning that is makes associations between what it has experienced and what it experiences. The more it experiences, the stronger the connections will be. The chip presented today has learned to compose new music and the rules for the composition are learnt on the fly.

Robots are coming for your asparagus

While for the cultivation of green asparagus the degree of automation is quite high, automation of harvesting is still an unsolved challenge. Several approaches for automated machines have been made, but none of the known automated harvesters can guarantee a picking rate and quality like manual labour. This is mainly because of the difficulty and the complexity of the asparagus detection.

Today harvesting is done by seasonal workers, however, the increasing labour costs and the lack of available labour supply forces farmers to optimize the harvesting process and to introduce harvesting aids. With automated harvesting the availability of labour force would play a less important role and make the harvesting much more flexible and cost efficient. In addition, data collection supports yield forecast and planning of the next harvest run.

... and Apples

... and Lettuce

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“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Tue 16 May 2017, 15:49:23

Meet SkyNet ...

HPE unveils 'world's largest' single memory computer

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HP unveils a new supercomputer that is up to 8,000 times faster than existing PCs.

The device, called The Machine, had a Linux-based operating system and prioritised memory rather than processing power, the company said.

The prototype unveiled today contains 160 terabytes (TB) of memory, capable of simultaneously working with the data held in every book in the Library of Congress five times over — or approximately 160 million books. It has never been possible to hold and manipulate whole data sets of this size in a single-memory system, and this is just a glimpse of the immense potential of Memory-Driven Computing, HPE said.

Based on the current prototype, HPE expects the architecture could easily scale to an exabyte-scale single-memory system and, beyond that, to a nearly limitless pool of memory — 4,096 yottabytes. For context, that is 250,000 times the entire digital universe today.
With that amount of memory, HPE said it will be possible to simultaneously work with every digital health record of every person on earth, every piece of data from Facebook, every trip of Google’s autonomous vehicles, and every data set from space exploration all at the same time — getting to answers and uncovering new opportunities at unprecedented speeds

Memory-Driven Computing, as HPE calls this type of computer, puts memory, not the processor, at the center of the computing architecture. By eliminating the inefficiencies of how memory, storage, and processors interact in traditional systems today, Memory-Driven Computing can reduce the time needed to process complex problems from days to hours, hours to minutes, and minutes to seconds to deliver real-time intelligence.

The new prototype has 160 TB of shared memory spread across 40 physical nodes, interconnected using a high-performance fabric protocol. It has an optimized Linux-based operating system (OS) running on ThunderX2, Cavium’s flagship second generation dual socket capable ARMv8-A workload optimized System on a Chip.

It also has photonics and optical communication links, including the new X1 photonics module. And HPE has built software programming tools designed to take advantage of abundant persistent memory.

Image
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late.
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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby asg70 » Thu 18 May 2017, 00:20:12

PStarr, your qualifications as a technological futurist are as questionable as those for petroleum geology or macro-economics. You're clearly anti-technology and you hardly keep up with developments so posts like the above are another example of the sort of trolling you say you hate.

BTW, this is the first result from a google news search on "quantum computers". Just 16 hours old. The future of computing is ultimately not dependent on traditional chip fabrication.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3196799/ ... power.html

I know that's not what you want to hear, but it's the truth. It's happening. We're already well into the 21st century and haven't fallen back into the World Made by Hand yet. Better to just accept it and be miserable than pretend that technology is flat-lining when it isn't.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby asg70 » Thu 18 May 2017, 02:31:20

Squilliam wrote:Wait... So there is an actual quantum computer? As in a working one? That can be used for things? Strange to never have anything mentioned about it.


Maybe this will help you out.

Maybe if some of you guys would stop hitting F5 over Zerohedge all day you'd be more aware of the greater world around you.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Thu 18 May 2017, 15:13:13

Google's Cloud TPU is Ready for AI Training and Inferencing

At its I/O conference today, Google introduced a second-generation version of its Tensor Processor Unit from a year ago, called the Cloud TPU. This new processor is a unique creation designed to both train and execute deep neural networks—machine learning systems behind the rapid evolution of everything from image and speech recognition to automated translation to robotics.

Google can combine multiple Cloud TPUs into four-chip clusters, and the cluster pictured below offers up to a claimed 180 TFLOPS of floating-point capability. The search giant didn't say whether that's for FP16 or FP32 math, but given the hardware's focus on machine learning tasks, that figure surely refers to reduced-precision number crunching. For comparison, Nvidia's just-introduced Tesla V100 accelerator leans on dedicated tensor hardware to provide 120 machine-learning TFLOPS.

Image
A board loaded with four of Google's new TPU Artificial Intelligence Chips.

The new TPUs can be assembled into what Google calls pods. Each pod contains 64 second-generation TPUs and should be good for an aggregate 11.5 PFLOPS of compute power. The previous TPU was used for inference (execution tasks) only, but Google says the new TPU can be used for both training and inference tasks. As an example, the company says that a training task that required a full day for "32 of the best commercially-available GPUs" can be done in an afternoon on eight of the new TPUs.


Google’s focus on AI means it will get even deeper into our lives

... Using AI, Gmail will now suggest phrases for your replies, based on its interpretation of your conversation. Google Photos will figure out which of your snapshots are best for sharing, and it will use facial recognition to figure who should get those photos. A program called Google Lens will analyze your photos and be able to remove obstacles, such as a chain-link fence, that obscure your shot. Google Assistant will also be more proactive, now nudging you to leave earlier if the traffic to your next appointment is bad, rather than waiting for you to ask about it. Google Assistant will also be showing up on the iPhone.
“Many of these new features in Google Assistant, Photos, and Home add value but also require the sharing of a lot of personal voice, photo, video and location information”

“Google has the most personal information, [and] does the processing in the cloud, so I think right now they have the richest consumer AI capabilities,” said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insight and Strategies.

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GE Appliances to get Google voice control option

"Everyone's busy these days and our consumers are looking for simpler and more convenient ways to control their home, especially when busy in the kitchen or working around the house," said Liz VerSchure, vice president at GE Appliances, a unit of the Chinese electronics group Haier.

"Integrating our full suite of connected appliances with the Google Assistant makes it easier for owners to control their appliances and get on with their day."

Consumers will be able to use voice commands to preheat their own meals, or check if laundry or dishes are cleaned with connected GE appliances, the companies said.

‘SNL’ Introduces ‘Amazon Echo Silver’ for Seniors

In a faux ad (below) aired over the weekend, Amazon and AARP promote a smart speaker designed specifically for “the greatest generation.”

Echo Silver trades the traditional sleek black cylinder for a wood-grain barrel, complete with gold accents and matching stand—a perfect fit for any retirement home decor.

Allegra. Armyna. Odessa. “Saturday Night Live’s” Amazon Echo Silver responds to any name “even remotely close to ‘Alexa'” (including “Excedrin” and “Alopecia”), and comes with an “Uh huh” feature for long-winded anecdotes.
Video - Amelia, where did I put the phone?

“The phone is in your right hand.”

Clarissa, how many times did Satchel Paige strikeout last night?

“Satchel Paige died in 1982.”

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“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Thu 18 May 2017, 15:45:48

Squilliam wrote:Wait... So there is an actual quantum computer? As in a working one? That can be used for things? Strange to never have anything mentioned about it.

On Wednesday, IBM put a 16-qubit quantum computer online for IBM Q Cloud platform customers to experiment with, a big leap from the five-qubit machine it had previously made available. The company said that machine has already been used to conduct 300,000 quantum computing experiments by its cloud service users.

But that’s not all: IBM now has a prototype 17-qubit system working in the labs, which it says offers twice the performance of the 16-qubit machine.

D-Wave, a quantum annealing system with 2000 qubits, was made commercially available on January 24, 2017: its first customer was Temporal Defence Systems Inc.

Google plans to create a 49-qubit processor by the end of this year.

The target of around 50 qubits isn’t an arbitrary one. It’s a threshold, known as quantum supremacy, beyond which no classical supercomputer would be capable of handling the exponential growth in memory and communications bandwidth needed to simulate its quantum counterpart. In other words, the top supercomputer systems can currently do all the same things that five- to 20-qubit quantum computers can, but at around 50 qubits this becomes physically impossible.

Leaks from Edward Snowden reveal a $79.7 million research program called "Penetrating Hard Targets," including classified funding to research a quantum computer that could be used for cryptography.
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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Thu 18 May 2017, 16:14:01

pstarr wrote:Actually too much memory will slow processing down. All that extra memory needs be accompanied with additional bus length. As we all know . . . Moore's Law is finally a function of chip density and proximity. Computational speed improvements have not been hijacked by bad architecture, lazy engineers or corrupt government. The laws of physics and the inability to etch smaller lines on quartz crystals has stopped the dream dead in its tracks.

It's all too bad. It would have been nice to own an automated combat gopher killer. I had to shoot the little bastard all by my lonesome. the blood is on my hands. :P :twisted: :)

pstarr's opinion :) ...
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Memory-Driven Computing Explained

Today, each computer component is connected using a different type of interconnect: memory connects using DDR, hard drives via SATA, flash drives and graphics processing units via PCIe and so on. In fact, in today’s computers it’s estimated that 90 percent of work is devoted to moving information between tiers of memory and storage.

Memory-Driven Computing sets itself apart by giving every processor in a system access to a giant shared pool of memory—a sharp departure from today’s systems where relatively small amounts of memory are tethered to each processor. The resulting inefficiencies limit performance.

Every component is connected using the same high-performance interconnect protocol. This is a much simpler and more flexible way to build a computer. One key reason it’s faster is that data is accessed one byte at a time using the same simple commands used to access memory: just “load” and “store.” This eliminates the necessity to move many large blocks of data around and is much more efficient.

... HPE has previously shown off some of these components, like its X1 silicon photonics module. The X1 module is capable of transferring data at up to 1.2Tbps (150GB/s of bandwidth) over a 30-50 meter distance. HPE has also demonstrated silicon photonics technology that can move data up to 50 kilometers (30 miles) at 200Gbps. HPE’s major goal with The Machine is to create a system in which non-volatile memory (NVM)serves as a true DRAM replacement, offering at least equivalent latency with drastically reduced power consumption and low-latency optical interconnects.

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https://www.extremetech.com/computing/2 ... s-together
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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby asg70 » Thu 18 May 2017, 17:53:26

BTW, before PStarr latches onto the estimated cost of these early quantum supercomputers, we're not talking about machines being asked to run Minesweeper. They would be trying to solve big questions. Maybe DNA sequencing, climate modeling, etc... Even if it never does scale down to the personal level, the return to society would be well worth the cost of putting these mainframes together.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Fri 19 May 2017, 11:19:08

Robot co-pilot successfully flies and lands Boeing 737

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Building a bot for the co-pilot's seat may be cheaper than adding automation software

Video - An outfit called Aurora Flight Sciences is trumpeting the fact that one of its robots has successfully landed a simulated Boeing 737.

From the co-pilot's seat, ALIAS uses machine vision in which the computer running the system will take and understand visual input, essentially seeing things just as a human would. In addition, it can manipulate the flight controls just like a human.

Similar to the Amazon Alexa voice command assistant, it is capable of speech recognition and speech synthesis, formulating responses to communicate with the pilot.

Aurora's done this stuff before in actual flight, but for light aircraft. Simulating a 737 landing gets it closer to ALIAS' goal of adding a helping hand to crews of large military aircraft.

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What could go wrong? Delta to use facial recog to automate bag drop-off

Delta Air Lines plans to deploy four self-service bag drop machines at Minneapolis–St Paul International Airport this summer, one of which will include a facial recognition system to match those depositing bags with their passport photos.

Delta senior veep of airport customer service and cargo Garth Joyce, in a canned remark, characterized the airline's $600,000 investment in automation as a way to save customers time. "Since customers can operate the biometric-based bag drop machine independently, we see a future where Delta agents will be freed up to seek out travelers and deliver more proactive and thoughtful customer service," he said.

Joyce did not clarify why automating customer interaction would necessarily lead airline employees to take more initiative or to become more considerate, particularly when it might just as well allow Delta to employ fewer people.


Delta claims studies indicate that self-service bag drops have the potential to process twice as many customers per hour as those staffed by employees.

Various academic studies and recent government reports [PDF] document the potential inaccuracy of facial recognition systems. A NIST study [PDF] published in March found that facial recognition systems in a boarding gate scenario misidentify 6 per cent of the people in a 480-person data set, and 18 per cent of people in a 48,000-person data set.

Nonetheless, the technology can be expected to become more common, in part due to a 2004 legislative requirement to expand the use of biometric identifiers. That mandate has led US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to explore various biometric initiatives.

Addressing privacy issues became a lot easier for the CBP earlier this year, thanks to Trump's White House Executive Order that directed all US government agencies to ensure that their privacy policies "exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information."

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Ford Will Cut 1,400 Jobs

Ford is cutting1,400 office staff in the US and Asia — about 10% of its total salaried workforce in the regions — as part of a global $3 billion cost-cutting effort.

"The bottom line is the biggest strategic shift in the history of our company is well under way and gaining momentum," CEO Mark Fields said in a May 11 call with shareholders, referring to the rise of electric and self-driving cars. Fields predicted one out of every five cars sold by 2030 could be an autonomous vehicle and called the shift a "big business opportunity."

"Reducing costs and becoming as lean and efficient as possible also remain part of that work."


A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on the reported layoffs.


A jobs threat worse than mass store closures could fire more than 7 million retail workers

Nearly half of retail workers are at risk of losing their jobs to robots and other automation technology, according to a new study, Retail Automation: Stranded Workers? Opportunities and Risks for Labor and Automation, conducted by Cornerstone Capital Group (Cornerstone) and commissioned by the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute (IRRCi).

Roughly 6 million to 7.5 million retail jobs "likely will be automated out of existence in the coming years, leaving a large portion of the retail workforce at risk of becoming 'stranded workers,'" according to the 56-page report by investment advisory firm Cornerstone Capital Group.

Retail cashiers, 73% of whom are women, will suffer the most job losses, the study found.

The losses will also disproportionately affect the working poor, since most hourly retail workers live below the poverty line.

About 16 million people, or one in 10 American workers, are employed in the retail industry. That means the rise of automation will not only impact retail workers, but will also have broad implications for the economy as a whole, according to Jon Lukomnik, the executive director of the Investor Responsibility Research Center Institute, which commissioned the study.

Retail workers are already facing an uncertain future with stores closing at rates not seen since the recession.

Retailers have announced more than 3,400 store closures so far this year, and Credit Suisse analysts expect that number to grow to more than 8,600 before the end of the year. For comparison, 6,163 stores shut down in 2008 — the worst year for closures on record.


Hypnotic video shows thousands of autonomous crates flying through Ocado's robo-factory

At Ocado's warehouse in Dordon, north-east of Birmingham, the complex undertaking is being solved with a combination of AI and automation. "We have to keep track of 8,000 crates flying around at any one time," says Paul Clarke, the company's chief technology officer. "It's the most automated warehouse of its kind."
From the moment an item arrives in the warehouse, a human never touches it until it's placed into a shopping bag just minutes before it goes out for delivery

The 90,000-square-metre warehouse, which opened in February 2013, is the starting point for 190,000 customer deliveries every week. Inside, more than 35 kilometres of conveyor belts shuttle plastic crates between storage shelves and picking areas. Employees then transfer any of the warehouse's 50,000 items into crates bound for delivery.


Singapore robot guards aim to help ease worker shortage

Video - O-R3, a four-wheeled security robot unveiled by a Singapore technology company on Friday, is designed to patrol large outdoor areas without human guidance, making sure all people on the site are authorised to be there. It navigates itself with an array of sensors including laser scanners and GPS.

The automated guard, which weighs 80kg and stands 1.5m tall, comes with a drone, which pops out of its side to pursue intruders over fences or across difficult terrain.

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The high attrition rate for security guards — the industry in Singapore had a 2.8 per cent resignation rate last year, compared with 1.8 per cent for the labour market as a whole — means robots may have an additional advantage over humans, Mr Ling added.

“It’s not just labour shortage but the accuracy of technology compared with humans,” he said. “A new security guard will not remember the faces of all employees on the compound.”


High-Tech Security Robot Patrolling Prudential Center

Volvo Launches Test of Self-Driving Garbage Truck

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Garbage collection could be handled by robotic vehicles. That’s the premise Volvo Trucks is checking out in tests of a self-driving garbage truck in Sweden.

The truck company has a venture with Swedish waste management company Renova to learn how autonomous refuse vehicles can improve safety, make trash collection more efficient and reduce driver injury.

The work is parallel to the testing of an autonomous Volvo truck operating in the Kristineberg Mine in northern Sweden that started last year.


Report – UK to deploy AI smart traffic lights

The so-called “smart” street lights will be introduced in the town of Milton Keynes in 2018 as the authorities are looking at using artificial intelligence systems in a bid to try and reduce congestion rates.

The city is spending £3 million to deploy the technology that should detect congestion on its own and then change the traffic light sequences to help vehicles keep moving. When live, the system will monitor major junctions and car parking spaces in a 50 square mile zone, and be tasked primarily with tackling congestion.

The traffic lights will need more than 2,500 cameras around Milton Keynes to keep tabs on the traffic levels, and then “the AI camera accurately identifies and reports road usage, removing the need for cumbersome manual interpretation and significantly reducing the potential for human error.” In the future the technology could be taken a step further – by allowing it to communicate with connected and autonomous cars, and thus bringing road status updates directly inside the car.


Self-driving cars will disrupt more than the auto industry. Here are the 10 winners and losers

It's obvious self-driving cars will disrupt car manufacturers. However, disruption is not an isolated event and doesn't impact just one industry at a time. Although an industry may seem safe on the outskirts, innovation can change that in an instant.

This very thing will happen with automated cars, with many industries feeling the impact:


Report: Autonomous Cars to Reduce Collision Repair Revenue 48 Percent by 2030

KPMG, an audit, tax and advisory firm, projects that OEM collision repair revenue, which was $5.6 billion in 2015, could drop to $2.7 billion by 2030 and dwindle to $1.4 billion by 2040.

The new report, entitled "Will autonomous vehicles put the brakes on the collision parts business?" notes that despite accounting for less than 3 percent of OEM revenue, collision parts make up on average 10 to 20 percent of operating profits. Based on the revenue impact, OEMs can expect a 4 to 9 percent reduction in operating profits by 2030 and a reduction of 13 percent by 2040.


Roger Penske explores use of autonomous vehicles for his truck fleet

... Penske Truck Leasing keeps 244,000 trucks on the roads today; it leases fleets to FedEx and other major carriers. And with annual sales of more than $20 billion, Penske Automotive, his network of auto dealerships, remains among the nation’s largest sellers of Toyotas, Hondas and many other brands.

Penske revealed Friday that his truck-leasing operation is looking at “platooning” trucks — running three in a row, with the first and third operated by humans and the middle truck running “driverless,” but with a human ready to take over as needed. Platooning is one of many modes of operating autonomous vehicles being discussed. Penske cited increased productivity as a potential benefit.

“We’re definitely involved (in) looking at that, seeing at how we’ll be involved,” he said. “Car-sharing is another area. With 244,000 trucks, we know how to run a big fleet. We might do the same thing with a fleet of cars.”


Infographic: The Top 263 Companies Racing Toward Autonomous Cars

Driving in some cities is a blood sport. Can autonomous cars compete?

Robots and carbon targets may signal the end of globalisation
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

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Re: Fully Automated Combat Robots Pt. 2

Unread postby vox_mundi » Tue 23 May 2017, 11:31:51

Google’s AlphaGo Defeats Chinese Go World Master in Win for A.I.

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HONG KONG — It isn’t looking good for humanity.

The world’s best player of what might be humankind’s most complicated board game was defeated on Tuesday by a Google computer program. Adding insult to potentially deep existential injury, he was defeated at Go — a game that claims centuries of play by humans — in China, where the game was invented.
“Last year, it was still quite humanlike when it played,” said Mr. Ke after the game. “But this year, it became like a god of Go.”

The human contender, a 19-year-old Chinese national named Ke Jie, and the computer are only a third of the way through their three-game match this week.

After Mr. Lee’s loss, Mr. Ke had said publicly on Chinese social media that the program “can’t beat me.”

Mr. Ke’s tone changed earlier this year, after he lost three online speed games to the program. At that point, he said on Chinese social media that computers seemed to be showing that some of what humanity thought about the game was incorrect.

Mr. Ke, who smiled and shook his head as AlphaGo finished out the game, said afterward that his was a “bitter smile.” After he finishes this week’s match, he said, he would focus more on playing against human opponents, noting that the gap between humans and computers was becoming too great. He would treat the software more as a teacher, he said, to get inspiration and new ideas about moves.

Mr. Ke will have two more chances to get the better of AlphaGo with games on Thursday and Saturday. Most experts do not give him much of a chance.

... Chinese officials perhaps unwittingly demonstrated their conflicted feelings at the victory by software backed by a company from the United States, as they cut off live streams of the contest within the mainland even as the official news media promoted the promise of artificial intelligence.
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