Technology, features and articles | Educational Science

Mar 2, 2018

A Floating 'Brain' Will Assist Astronauts Aboard the Space Station

The crew on board the International Space Station (ISS) will soon welcome a new member — one that is 3D-printed from metal and plastic and is described by its creators as a kind of flying brain. It goes by the name CIMON, short for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion. Built by...

Mar 7, 2018

Google Wants to Make Military Spy Drones Even Smarter

Google has partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense to help the agency develop smarter drone software. According to a report from Gizmodo, Google has agreed to provide the DOD with machine-learning software that will help the department's computers better detect objects in surveillance drone footage. The new partnership, which...

Apr 5, 2018

Google Employees Are Livid About Company's 'Evil' Military Partnership

There's a motto at Google: Don't be evil. Today, more than 3,000 Google employees fear their company is on the verge of breaching that code by helping the U.S. military improve its spy drone software. According to The New York Times, some 3,100 Google employees, including dozens of senior engineers,...

Apr 5, 2018

'Killer Robot' Lab Faces Boycott from Artificial Intelligence Experts

The artificial intelligence (AI) community has a clear message for researchers in South Korea: Don't make killer robots. Nearly 60 AI and robotics experts from almost 30 countries have signed an open letter calling for a boycott against KAIST, a public university in Daejeon, South Korea, that has been reported...

Apr 6, 2018

Elon Musk Worries That AI Research Will Create an 'Immortal Dictator'

Imagine your least-favorite world leader. (Take as much time as you need.) Now, imagine if that person wasn't a human, but a network of millions of computers around the world. This digi-dictator has instant access to every scrap of recorded information about every person who's ever lived. It can make...

May 7, 2018

Google AI Expert: Machine Learning Is No Better Than Alchemy

A prominent researcher of machine learning and artificial intelligence is arguing that his field has strayed out of the bounds of science and engineering and into alchemy. And he's offering a route back. Ali Rahimi, who works on AI for Google, said he thinks his field has made amazing progress,...

May 9, 2018

This Horrifying AI Thought Experiment Got Elon Musk a Date

It's Elon Musk at his Elon Musk-iest: According to news reports, the space-and-electric-car entrepreneur met his current girlfriend by making a joke about treacherous artificial intelligence. Musk and the musician Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher, went to the Met Gala as a couple Monday (May 7). According to...

May 24, 2018

Will AI Ever Become Conscious?

One example of a sci-fi struggle to define AI consciousness is AMC's Humans (Tues. 10/9c starting June 5). At this point in the series, human-like machines called Synths have become self-aware; as they band together in communities to live independent lives and define who they are, they must also battle...

Jun 1, 2018

Can Machines Be Creative? Meet 9 AI 'Artists'

One of the behaviors considered to be uniquely human is our creativity. While many animal species create visually stunning displays or constructions — think of a spider's delicate web or the colorful, intricate structures built by bowerbirds — they are typically created with a practical purpose in mind, such as...

Jun 4, 2018

Google Will End Its 'Evil' Partnership with the US Military, But Not Until 2019

Following months of employee outrage and media scrutiny, Google has decided not to renew its contract to develop AI image recognition software for U.S. military drones, Gizmodo reported. On Friday (June 1), Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene told employees that the company would allow its controversial contract with the Department...

Jun 8, 2018

Why Does Artificial Intelligence Scare Us So Much?

When people see machines that respond like humans, or computers that perform feats of strategy and cognition mimicking human ingenuity, they sometimes joke about a future in which humanity will need to accept robot overlords. But buried in the joke is a seed of unease. Science-fiction writing and popular movies,...

Jul 11, 2018

What If AI Psychopath 'Norman' and Amazon's Alexa Got Together?

If, like Rip Van Winkle, you've been asleep for the last decade and have just woken up, your flip phone has become super-popular among retro technologists and survivalists alike, and, oh yeah, artificial intelligence (AI) is either going to kill you or save you. AI is the latest in a...

Sep 7, 2018

We're Probably Living in a Simulation, Elon Musk Says

Elon Musk thinks we're all probably trapped in a Matrix-like pseudo existence. The universe is 13.8 billion years old, so any civilizations that may have arisen throughout the cosmos have had loads and loads of time to hone their technological know-how, the SpaceX founder and CEO explained early this morning...

Oct 18, 2018

How Close Are We to Kubrick's AI-Controlled Vision of the Future?

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. Movie audiences first heard these calmly intoned and ominous words in 1968, spoken by a spaceship's intelligent computer in the science-fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. With that one phrase, the computer named HAL 9000 confirmed that it could think for...

Oct 23, 2018

Portrait 'Painted' by AI Up for Auction at Christie's in NYC

An unsettling portrait created by artificial intelligence (AI) is making a historic appearance on the auction block at Christie's in New York City this week. It will be the first artwork created by an algorithm to be offered for auction in the world of fine art. The portrait — designed...